Get the Most Out of Your Xteink E-reader

Most people who read e-books do so on a phone or a Kindle, but for the more exacting and adventurous digital reading enthusiasts, I recommend exploring life outside of Amazon’s ecosystem. Specifically, I recommend checking out the Xteink e-readers, which offer a unique and distraction-free reading experience.

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The Xteink X3, X4, and X4 Pro e-readers may seem a bit finicky at first, but once you’ve mastered the basics of navigating their operating systems and loading up a few books, you’ll find that they’re both magically portable and a joy to use.

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Convert Your EPUBs to XTC for Better Formatting

One of the challenges of using Xteink e-readers is getting e-book formatting to match what you’d find in a printed book. While you can read EPUB files loaded onto your Xteink device, they may show up with awkward formatting, such as unnecessary spacing between paragraphs or missing indents. In fact, these devices still can’t display text in bold or italics, never mind if you’re reading something with embedded charts or images.

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To solve this problem, you can convert your EPUB files to a proprietary format called XTC. This format essentially creates a series of bitmap images of the original e-book, preserving all images, stylized headers, and text formatting. However, this comes with a few downsides: the image can look slightly less crisp, and the file will be a lot larger, typically around 50MB or more, depending on the book, versus 2MB or so for most EPUBs.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to transform your EPUBs into XTC files, but the easiest method is to use a web converter. This tool allows you to customize the font choice, page orientation, text alignment, and other factors before downloading the finished result to sideload onto your device.

Flash a Custom Operating System for Extra Features

If converting to XTC is too cumbersome or limiting for you, you have another option: replace the Xteink software entirely. Xteink devices run on dead-simple ESP32 processors, which are mostly open and easily hackable, meaning you can overwrite the stock firmware without the need to jailbreak them first.

Thanks to the efforts of tech-heads and tinkerers, there’s already a custom firmware available for Xteink devices, called CrossPoint Reader. This firmware not only offers a more pleasant user experience but also adds a host of improvements to the e-reading experience, including a wider selection of fonts and more support for customizing your margins, line spacing, and more.

However, CrossPoint is not yet available for the new X4 Pro, though it is in development. In the meantime, you can explore other custom firmware options, such as CrossInk, CrossWordle, CPR-vCodex, CrossPet, and Biscuit, each with its own unique features and options.

Use Calibre to Optimize Your Books for CrossPoint

Even with custom firmware, it can be tough to get your e-book files looking how you want them to on Xteink devices. Fortunately, there’s another one-click tool that can help with that: a plugin for the Calibre app. This plugin, created by a group of developers, will automatically optimize your EPUB files for use in CrossPoint.

To get started, download the .zip file from the Calibre website, then install it by following the instructions in the plugin’s documentation. Once installed, you can use the plugin to optimize your EPUBs and send them directly to your Xteink device.

Create a KOreader Account to Sync Your Reading Progress

Xteink devices are great for reading on the go, but maybe you prefer to use something with a larger screen when you’re not out and about. Well, there’s an easy way to sync your reading progress between devices, provided you’ve got another e-reader that can run KOReader, a free, open-source app specifically designed for e-ink displays.

KOReader syncs automatically with Kobo devices, but you can also sideload it onto an Android device, whether that’s your phone or an e-ink Android tablet like the Boox Palma. On iPhone, you can install the Readest app from the App Store; it has a KOReader sync plugin.

Syncing your progress is pretty simple: just have the same EPUB file loaded on both devices, and sign in to the same KOsync account and server on both of them. The CrossPoint Reader site has a page where you can create a KOsync login: choose a username and password, and leave the server as the default.

Find Better-Looking Public Domain E-books

Xteink devices are great because they use an open platform that doesn’t tie you down to any one retailer. The downside is that it can be a lot harder to find books to read on it, since retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble usually laden their e-book files with Digital Rights Management (DRM) software that will prevent you from loading them on just any device.

One way to get around this problem is to look for titles that are freely available in the public domain. You can find these books on websites like Project Gutenberg, ManyBooks, and the Internet Archive, which offer a wide range of e-books that are free to download and use.

Another option is to buy DRM-free books from retailers like Google Play Books or Apple Books. These books are usually priced competitively with other e-book retailers, and they’re free from the restrictions of DRM software.