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Hi, language learners and fellow ebookworms! Hope you’re all having a good weekend, or at least finding a little time to read between everything else. I’m excited to announce that PNL Reader 2.0 is here! This release brings the first Pro feature—voice mode—and a host of enhancements to the reading experience.
Listen Up! (Or Don’t—It’s Your Choice)
Ever find yourself reading a long article or web novel on RoyalRoad or ScribbleHub and wishing someone would just read it to you while you sip your coffee and look thoughtful? Wish granted! With the new audio player, you can now select any text and have PNL Reader read it aloud.
This read aloud feature is part of the Pro plan, but everyone gets a free trial quota of 100 uses—so you can try it out and see if it fits your reading style.
Even better, the audio mode automatically detects the language of the text and supports as many languages as you can think of. Learning Swedish? Give it a try and see if it’s better than 8sidor.se! Whether you want to practice your listening skills, rest your eyes, or just hear what your favorite web novel sounds like in a near-human-yet-still-robotic voice, the choice is yours. And if you prefer the sound of silence, you can still read quietly with a paper-feel background like it’s 2008.Themes for Every Mood
We’ve also given the theme selector a glow-up. Not only can you switch between dark mode, light mode, and a whole palette of other themes, but you’ll also see a handy color preview icon for each one. No more guessing what “Solarized Light” actually looks like—just click and see. Now you can match your reading mood, your wallpaper, or even your cat’s fur color (no judgment).
A Reading Page That Looks Like Paper (But Won’t Give You Papercuts)
The reading page has been prettified with a sharper background, border, and shadow that make it look like a real sheet of paper—minus the risk of paper cuts or coffee stains. It’s easier on the eyes and just feels right, whether you’re reading late at night or pretending to work during a Zoom call.
PDF Support: Now Featuring arXiv and more
For the academics and research enthusiasts among you, PNL Reader now supports loading PDFs from arXiv and a bunch of other sites. For example, you can open a research paper like https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.10028v4 or https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00134-020-06294-x.pdf in your browser. Then, just click the PNL Reader icon—PNL Reader will automatically open the PDF in its distraction-free reader mode. Even better, it’s fully integrated with Dictionariez, so you can look up any word in the PDF instantly with a click. Reading academic papers (and actually understanding them) could be much easier!
Still the Same Great Dictionary Integration
And don’t forget, PNL Reader still plays nicely with Dictionariez, so you can click any word and instantly see what it means. Because who has time to open a new tab just to look up “defenestration”?
Open-source and download links
Full transparency is still the key. PNL Reader is open source, so it’s available for anyone to review and contribute to.
Chrome: PNL Reader on Chrome Web Store
Firefox: PNL Reader on Mozilla Add-ons
Edge: PNL Reader on Edge Web Store
Thanks for reading, and for being part of the PNL Reader community! If you have feedback, suggestions, or just want to share your favorite new theme, drop by Programming N' Language Community. Now go forth and read (or listen) to your heart’s content. And remember, the only thing better than a good ebook is one that reads itself to you.
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Updated the reader app again! Finally added auto page turning + reading. Now I can just listen to books on Royalroad or Scribblehub. Any other ebookworms?
V2.1.0 Oct 26, 2025
- Added automatic page turning for continuous reading, works nicely on websites like Royalroad or scribble.
- Improved "read whole page" mode: now continues reading even if a paragraph is selected.
- Added a visual indicator for "read whole page" mode.
- Fixed error banner overlapping dropdown selectors.
- Fixed an issue where short text could block reading.
- Fixed "continue reading" not working when the voice was changed.
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Something wasn’t quite right. I was caching audio while reading paragraph by paragraph, but if a paragraph was too long, the browser could hit the storage limit and throw a "storage quota exceeded" error. I fixed that in v2.1.1, which also includes improved mobile responsiveness. That’s dev life!
v2.1.1 Oct 27, 2025
- Improved responsive design, especially for mobile devices.
- Fixed a caching issue where large text could trigger a storage quota exceeded error.
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FREE TRIAL & BONUS REWARDS ALERT! 
N.B. The text-to-speech service I use is proprietary and paid unfortunately
, which means it costs real money to run each request.
That’s why it sounds much better than the TTS service built-in in most of computers, such as the built-in reader mode on Firefox. I’ve provided a generous 100-use free trial for everyone
so you can enjoy it without worries.Want to extend your free trial?
Rate the extension on any of the three web stores (Chrome, Firefox, or Edge) or star the GitHub repo
.
You’ll get an extra month of free access as a thank-you for your awesome support
.Please share your username and a link to your comment in the thread of this post
.
I’ll grant the extended trial once it’s approved
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Today just released v2.2.0 on Firefox!
I've finally earned the Available on Firefox for Android
badge. And this update brings tons of improvements. Check it out 
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pnl-reader/Developing for Firefox Android wasn’t easy (especially using WSL on Windows
), but I documented the whole process on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/pnlcommunity.bsky.social/post/3m4hwwsxcn22mV2.2.0 Oct 31, 2025
- Added support for Firefox on Android!
- Improved responsive UI for Android devices.
- Prevented page flash when auto-enabling reader mode by hiding the unstyled original page.
- Reader mode no longer auto-enables when the page host changes.
- Increased player z-index to prevent overlap from Google ads.
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A reddit user asked for custom font support for CJK. Why would I say no?
As a CJK user, I understand the struggle. It’s much cooler to use your own CJK font!
So starting with version 2.3.0, you can now add and manage local fonts.V2.3.0 Nov 01, 2025
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Added a custom font page, allowing users to add and manage local fonts.
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Improved responsive UI for the options page on Firefox for Android.
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Support me!