Offline Reading

Download chapters and read without a signal

Offline reading saves a novel's chapters in your browser's storage so you can keep reading on a plane, on the underground, or anywhere the signal drops. It needs the $5 tier or higher, and covers AI translations only.

Downloading a novel#

Downloads are part of the installed app. Install the app first. In an ordinary browser tab, Download tells you the app is not installed and links to the steps.

  1. Open the novel's page in the app.
  2. Choose Download from the menu beside the title.
  3. Select Download.

A download holds up to 100 chapters around where you are in the novel: the chapter you are on, the 10 before it (so you can go back while offline), and the rest ahead. It keeps up as you read and stays at 100: when you are online, chapters ahead of you are added and ones more than 10 behind you are let go, so a long novel never fills your device. The dialog shows how many chapters that is and roughly how much space they take before you start.

When it finishes, Go to downloads opens the novel's saved chapters. The same dialog later offers Update and Remove.

Everything you have saved is on the Downloads page, also reachable from Downloads in your account menu. It shows the size of each novel and a button to remove it.

Downloads are separate from reading online#

When you have a connection, every chapter comes from the site, always. A saved copy is only opened when there is no connection.

That is on purpose. The live chapter is the current one: terms get renamed, translations get redone, and a saved copy is a snapshot until the next refresh. So a download never stands in for a chapter you could load, and reading online never quietly shows you an old copy.

Saved chapters have their own pages, under Downloads. A chapter there says when the copy was saved, and offers a link to the live chapter whenever you are online.

What can be downloaded#

  • Chapters that already have an AI translation. Downloading never starts a translation, so a chapter nobody has translated yet cannot be saved.
  • Google Translate chapters are never saved. The free translation is produced fresh each time, so there is nothing to keep.
  • Each download holds up to 100 chapters. There is no limit on how many novels you download.

What works with no connection#

The offline reader is the same reader, with the same bar in the same place.

  • Reading downloaded chapters, with your own theme, font, size and width settings.
  • Read aloud, using your device's own voices or the free AI Device voice if you downloaded it on a computer. Speed, pitch and voice are the same Speech settings as online, under Display settings. Auto-advance only moves into chapters that are downloaded.
  • Glossary highlights, with the same toggle in the bar.
  • Tapping a name opens its glossary card: the original text, its portrait, its tags, other names it goes by, and what other readers call it. Portraits are saved with the download; a long novel's cast arrives over a few refreshes.
  • Your own translation of a name. Set or remove it in the card and the chapter changes at once. It is saved on the device and sent to the site when you reconnect.
  • Your place is saved on the device as you read on, and sent when you reconnect. Jump to another chapter and you are asked whether to stay or go back, the same as online. If you read further online in the meantime, the later place wins.
  • The chapter list from the bar shows every downloaded chapter of the novel.

What needs a connection#

  • Comments, feedback votes and likes.
  • Suggesting a glossary change for everyone, a term's change history, AI name suggestions and wiki pages.
  • AI voices for read aloud, retranslating, rescraping and requesting novels.
  • Starting or refreshing a download.

Reading offline does not earn reading XP for that day. It counts toward the day you reconnect.

Refreshing and expiry#

Downloads look after themselves. A download follows you: once you reconnect after reading offline, it fetches the chapters ahead of your new place and lets go of the ones you finished, keeping the 10 behind you. When you are online, the app checks what the site holds and re-fetches only the chapters whose text has changed, so renamed terms and retranslations reach your copies. Each refresh also renews the download for another 14 days.

Warning A download expires 14 days after it was last refreshed, and an expired download is locked even while you are offline. If you are going somewhere without a connection, open the app while you still have one so your downloads are renewed first.

The 14 days are counted on your device's own clock from the last refresh, so a clock that is simply set wrong does not lock anything. Moving the clock back to before the last refresh does: if a download says your date and time look wrong, correct them and connect once.

Expiry does not delete anything. The next refresh unlocks the chapters again. If your membership no longer covers offline reading, the refresh removes them instead.

If a novel is merged into another on the site, its download moves to that novel at the next refresh. If a novel is taken off the site, its download says so and stays readable until it expires; remove it when you are done.

Where downloads live, and how they are lost#

Downloads are kept in this browser's storage on this device. They do not follow you to another device or another browser, and they cannot be exported or shared.

They are removed when you sign out on this device, and when you clear the site's data. Signing out clears them so that the next person to use the device does not find your chapters. Signing out somewhere else, or a sign-in that runs out after 30 days without a visit, is noticed the next time you open the app here with a connection, and the downloads are removed then. The same happens when a different account signs in on this device. Until that connection they stay readable offline, and lock after 14 days. A download that has not been refreshed for 60 days is removed the next time you open the app signed in to that account.

Uninstalling the app does not remove them: on a computer the app and the browser share the site's storage, so the downloads, your login and your settings are all still there if you install it again. To take everything with the app, use Clear all on the Downloads page first, or tick the browser's "also clear data" option when uninstalling.

Note On iPhone and iPad, add RandomTranslator to your Home Screen and open it from there. Safari clears a site's saved data after about a week without a visit, and that is the most common way downloads disappear.

If you are short of space, remove a download from the Downloads page or from the novel's own download dialog. Each novel on the Downloads page shows how many chapters it holds and how much space they take.

Removing your last download also stops the app from opening with no connection, since there is nothing left to read offline. Your next download sets it up again.