nous

Nous is a personal fork of an open source EPUB reader firmware called microreader, built for the Xteink X4, a small e-ink device that uses an ESP32-C3 chip and an 800 by 480 screen. It adds and changes a number of features on top of the original project rather than being a wholly new reader.

The interface offers four visual themes for the book list: one with a clean header and battery indicator, a bare minimal list with no decoration, a two line layout showing title and author with reading time, and a numbered catalog style with capitalized titles. Menu settings let a reader adjust the overall size of menus, sort the library alphabetically or by last opened, choose how much information shows per book in the list, and set list alignment in some themes.

Library features include batch converting an entire collection of books at once with progress shown per book, indicators marking which books have already been converted, per book reading statistics such as open count and total time spent reading, and a hidden books feature where placing EPUBs in a specially named folder on the SD card keeps them out of the normal list and off the recents screen until accessed through a long press gesture.

Other settings cover how the battery indicator is displayed, whether button hint icons show on screen, whether the display is in portrait or landscape orientation, an adjustable auto sleep timer, a custom sleep screen image, and the ability to remap which physical buttons control navigation and page turning. Custom bitmap fonts can also be loaded from the SD card for reading.

Installing Nous requires an unlocked Xteink X4 device and flashing a firmware file either through a browser based tool or with a command line utility called esptool, and the README recommends backing up the existing firmware first. The project can also be built from source using PlatformIO, and it includes a desktop emulator that runs the full interface in a window without needing the physical device. Nous is released under the GPL version 2 license, inherited from the original microreader project it was forked from.