Panels - Comic Reader 4+

The best comic reader

Produkt Studio

    • Free
    • Offers In-App Purchases

Screenshots

Description

Elevate your comic reading experience with Panels. Enjoy reading your favorite titles in a clean and delightful interface, with plenty of customization and advanced features.

Key features:
- Universal Compatibility: Support for most common comic types: CBR, CBZ, CB7, PDF and comic ePUB* (not text eBook). Support for multiple image formats, including WebP.
- Cross-Device Sync: Synchronize your reading progress across all your devices and resume reading exactly where you left off.
- Full iCloud Drive support: store your entire library on iCloud and access it from different devices.
- Library Organization: Effortlessly manage your comic library with intuitive tools for easy navigation.
* Themes: support for Light and Dark modes, and many others.
* Reading Presets: Choose from a multitude of reading presets or create your own, including horizontal, vertical, or panel-by-panel guided view.
- Right to Left reading (manga): read any comic with Panels.
* OPDS support: Stream, search and download comics from your OPDS compatible server.
* Secure your content: Keep files locked using a password or Face ID for your collections and files. Use Incognito mode to keep your reading sessions hidden.
- Customize your library collections: change folder color, logos and use custom images to make it yours.
* Customizable Live Text and Subject detection.
* Experimental Features: Access experimental features like screen reading or panel-by-panel navigation.

Native support for importing files from:
* iCloud Drive
* Dropbox
* Microsoft OneDrive
- Substack
* OPDS: Komga, Kavita, Codex and others
* Local network shared files and folders via SMB and Embedded web server
- iTunes
- External drives
- Airdrop
- Drag&Drop from other apps

* Require an active subscription or a one-time purchase.

• You may purchase an Auto-Renewing Subscription to unlock all the premium features while it\'s active; or a one-off purchase to unlock the current major version features forever.

• Your subscription will be charged to your iTunes account at confirmation of purchase and will automatically renew (at the duration selected) unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.

• Current subscription may not be cancelled during the active subscription period; however, you can manage your subscription and/or turn off auto-renewal by visiting your iTunes Account Settings after purchase

• Read our privacy policy and terms of use: https://panels.app/privacy / https://panels.app/terms

What’s New

Version 3.3.7

3.3.7
====================

Fixes:

• Fixed a concurrency issue that made the app crash randomly while loading page thumbnails.


3.3.6
====================

Improvements:

• Reduced memory consumption when reading PDF comics.

Fixes:

• Thumbnails of OPDS servers wouldn\'t render when the URL was external to the server. This issue was reported to affect MyLar, which uses ComicVine images.

• One-finger zoom sometimes crashed the app.

Additionally, this version prevents the creation of new Google Drive connections. The service integration has been discontinued due to the latest Google Drive policies (more information is linked in the app with alternative methods to pull your comics from Google Drive). You will be able to continue using the importer for a while if you already have your account connected, but it\'s very likely to stop working when Google revokes the old entitlements.


3.3.5
====================

Improvements:

More memory management improvements:

• We have reduced the maximum memory allowance per page image from 3% to 2.5% of the total device memory.

• Before decodign an image, Panels now checks whether or not it will fit in the available memory to avoid exhausting it.


3.3.4
====================

Improvements:

• Reduce the allowance of memory usage per page to reduce the chances of crashing due to memory exhaustion.


3.3.3
====================

Fixes:

• Random crash when reading.

• Sometimes the readers crash when using one-finger zoom.


3.3.2
====================


Improvements:

• Speed up PDF rendering.

• Reduce ePUB footprint.


3.3.1
====================

Improvements:

• Readers now consume less memory.

• Added ePUB to imported UTI so Panels can handle it from other apps.


Fixes:

• Page images are not cached when generated from ePUB/PDF.

• Thumbnails are not cached on disk.


3.3.0
====================

Improvements:

• ePUB Comic support

• Live Text now shows a button on top of the reader to give feedback when the text/subject detection is complete. Tapping on this button shows the Live Text detection highlight.

• Added another Live Text button to highlight the detected subjects to be lift-off the page.

• A new Live Text section in Settings to hide/show the new feedback button, and to select the type of detection we want Live Text to do. (text only, subjects only, text + subjects).

• Improved the internal logic to deal with RTL reading.

• Adds UI feedback when deleting caches. Also shows the cache size.


Fixes:

• Clear cache also deletes URLSession caches and other temporary files.

• Compressed files with a different compression method, but the cbz/zip extension doesn\'t work.

• Dynamic background works incorrectly when reading RTL.

• Dynamic background works incorrectly in vertical pagination and scrolling readers.

• Pages miniatures sometimes fail to render, showing a black loading state forever.

• Opening a comic from the widget can cause the app to present two readers, one on top of the other.

Ratings and Reviews

4.8 out of 5
7.2K Ratings

7.2K Ratings

DocRobertz ,

Can’t Beat It

I’ve been using panels for going on 2 years now. In the beginning, it was really cool to be able to read my manga and comics on my iPad because I switched from physical books to digital thanks to the pandemic. Panels was really nice in the beginning albeit a bit lackluster feature wise. Over the course of my use, it’s been improving each update, adding all sorts of wonderful features and just making it a better experience. By far my favorite feature to day is them adding custom SMB server support. I have it connected to my home server where all my e-books are stored and now it’s just like my Plex server. Panels is definitely my go to app for all things comic related. You honesty can’t beat it in my opinion. I don’t even make reviews for apps but Panels is definitely one that deserves the praise. I put all my friends on to it and they love it just as much as I do. Please keep up the good work Panels time, y’all are truly making something special here for us comic lovers .

Zowzy ,

Worth the convenience.

I was trying to self host my own manga server using Jellyfin and once I got it working, I noticed that manga wouldn’t load to my phone using my reverse proxy. After many hours of troubleshooting, I downloaded Panels after reviewing some Reddit threads and figured it was worth a shot. I was a previous user of Chunky (another manga app that has been deleted I believe) and loved the OneDrive connection capability. I couldn’t find an app I liked since Chunky. Panels has easily taken that spot. I look forward to getting my Jellyfin server running and working properly but I think I’ll try the SMB connection first on Panel. If you are curious and want to try it out for a month, I’d say it’s worth the $2. At the moment, I’d probably pay the one time cost for a total unlock of the app just because of the convenience alone.

AbandonedCart ,

Polished for a Jagged Rock

This is one of the better readers from a basic UI standpoint, but probably one of the worst from a technical one.

You can add files through iTunes, but not whole folders. As for retrieving them from the app, you might as well forget it. You must create the folders in the app separately, either to import into or add to later. These folders also become part of the app and cannot be managed anywhere else. It’s an overly tedious design that hints at poor development or excessive attempts to force subscription without first building the trust that it will be any less tedious.

Subscriptions meant to cover the cost of services make sense. After all, some do charge the developers. Lumping in services that the developers don’t pay a dime to maintain should be a separate, one-time fee to cover the cost of publishing the app. I can’t see paying Panels monthly to cover the cost of using my local server, unless they plan to send out techs to maintain it. After my experience importing files, I wouldn’t want to pay for that experience again.

There is almost no animation to reading beyond the generic slide. For one of the most expensive apps to own, it is sad to fall short of the stock Books app included by Apple.

Overall, I like the basic look of the UI and hope that one day the functionality catches up. Until then, I will continue to sync with Chunky and import the files here to organize when I get to it. If not for the UI, I probably wouldn’t bother at all.

App Privacy

The developer, Produkt Studio, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

  • User Content
  • Identifiers
  • Usage Data
  • Diagnostics

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Supports

  • Family Sharing

    Some in‑app purchases, including subscriptions, may be shareable with your family group when Family Sharing is enabled.

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