cameronbanga / 2024-playdate-playbook

A delightful ebook reader for the Playdate console

PlayBook

A powerful and flexible ebook reader for the Playdate console

Get it here!

How to Use

Welcome to PlayBook! This is an ebook reader specially designed for the Playdate, with some carefully thought out features to make reading on your Playdate a delight. This guide will walk you through how to use your new handheld library. Hope you enjoy!

Adding Books

To get started, plug in your Playdate into your computer/phone and hold [D-Pad Left] + [Lock Button] + [Menu Button] at the same time for five seconds. This will restart the Playdate and put it into USB mode where the files will then be accessible from your device. From your computer/phone, open the "PLAYDATE" drive and go to "Data", then "com.idreesinc.playbook", then "books" which will be initially empty.

PlayBook doesn't support EPUB books directly because that's difficult for such a tiny device. Instead, you'll need to take your EPUB file and use one of the many EPUB to TXT converters available online. I don't recommend using the TXT files directly from Project Gutenberg as they have too many line breaks, instead grab the EPUB files and convert them to TXT yourself.

Take your TXT file and place it directly in the "books" folder. I'd recommend giving it a good name like "A Cool Book.txt" so it's more readable (spaces and capitals work just fine). And that's it! You can now eject the "PLAYDATE" drive and unplug your device. Your book will now be available in the PlayBook app.

Using PlayBook

When you open PlayBook, you'll be greeted with a list of all the books you've added. You can use the crank or D-pad to scroll through your library and press [A] to open a book. Once you've opened a book, you can use the crank or D-pad to scroll through the book. You can also press [B] to go back to the book list.

On the right side of the screen, you'll see a candle animation. This is your progress bar. The candle will slowly burn down as you read through the book, flickering away as you turn the crank. You can disable the candle in the settings if you'd prefer.

To access the settings, press [A] while reading a book. From here, you can change the color scheme, font, crank speed, and more.

That's all there is to it! I hope you enjoy using PlayBook and reading on your Playdate. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to me at idreesinc.com which will have all of my contact information. Thanks for getting PlayBook and happy reading!