Could there be an option or default to open the next title when finished with a title, rather than going to library only? Would make it much more convenient to work through my library. Forgive me if this has been suggested already, I couldn’t find a direct post on topic.
Sorry if I’m misunderstanding what you’re meaning, but when you swipe to the next page after finishing a title a little prompt comes up saying something to the effect of “next title” and then beneath that “return to library”. Clicking next title then just takes you to the next chapter / volume / book in the sort - is this not what you’re after?
The popup has a large section with Continue Reading? on top, with a thumbnail of the next file in the sort. Clicking on that just clears the prompt.
Below that is “Return to Library” - clicking that takes you out to the library.
Below that is “Continue Reading”, and that’s the one that takes you to the next file.
It took me a little while to understand that “Continue Reading” didn’t mean “Continue reading the same file you’re in”, and that clicking the thumbnail wouldn’t take me to that file.
Oh! this is great feedback. It’s a bit confusing indeed.
Nonetheless, the next version of Panels comes with a new Continue Reading, and that modal is gone!
The new Continue Reading doesn’t have any UI. When you reach the last page, you can drag some more, and the page has a bit more resistance. If you surpass a threshold, it takes you directly to the next comic in the collection.
Also, now it allows you to go to the next comic or back to the previous one.
We have rewritten the whole feature from scratch, and it now works with comics at the root level of the library and when you open a comic from Reading Now.
We just released a new beta, including this feature. Give it a try, and let us know what you think.
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I’m in - oh wow, yes that feels great. When I use the same drag I usually do for page turning, it snaps back, and I know I need to do it with purpose to get to the next file. Seeing the arrow helps a lot.
And the sorting is working - thanks!
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This doesn’t seem to be working for me. Is it only for the local library or is it supposed to work with Komga (and other OPDS servers) as well? I believe that I am usng the current Testflight version;
Support Info:
Version: 2.15.0 Build: 202304031422 Env: Production (Testflight)
Support Identifier:
11F4279A-27B2-4E94-82EB-654ED091F0B4
My testing was with a local library.
It only works with the local library at the moment. Making it work with remote content will require more work. We plan to add it at some point, but it’s a bit more complicated.
We can infer the collection from the comic with the local library because we know the folder, and it’s easy to calculate the next/previous title.
But there is no easy way to do the same thing from a remote server. If you open a comic from Reading Now, for instance, we don’t know where the container the comic is in. Also, if you open a comic from “On Deck” or “Keep Reading”, the next/previous comic in those folders are not the next/previous comics to the one you are reading. Figuring them out is way more complicated. On top of that, it involves an asynchronous request over the internet, which can fail, and we would need to add some visual error feedback.
We still need to evaluate what would be the best approach. Maybe using the servers’ REST API (wouldn’t solve the problem for all the OPDS servers)… we’ll see.
As a side note: not all of the Panels features can/will be ported for remote server libraries.
Hopefully, we can port this one at some point.
Hi! I just switched to Panels after years of using yaceader and other readers and am happy to say that Panels is the best comic reader I’ve ever used. Thanks for all your work
One problem I have is that I’d like to be able to automatically open the next comic in my library after completing a comic. I’ve tried tapping and swiping on the last page of a comic but have not had any success opening the next comic. Which means returning to the library after each comic.
I’ve read the posts above but can’t get this to work. Am I missing something? Is the feature stiil in beta?
Thanks!
I think that feature only work if you have the files downloaded directly into Panels and not if you are reading from a remote library like Komga or Kavita (OPDS). Which way are you reading your files?
Thanks. All my comics are directly on my ipad.
I think I may have figured out the problem. Does the feature only work when the comics are sorted into sub-folders (or collections)? I have all my comics as individual files in the Panels library, so they are all in one large folder. But when I put 3 comics with the same title into a sub-folder, they show up as a collection in Panels and the “open next” feature worked for those 3 comics. Is that how Panels works? Do I have to put the comics in collections to use the “open next” feature? If that’s true, shouldn’t Panels also treat the whole Library like a single collection?
If the “open next” feature only works for Collections, does Panels do automatic Collection sorting? I turned on the “Individual Collection Sorting” toggle in the Settings and it didn’t seem to change my Library at all. Is there a way to tell Panels to automatically put comics with the same name (but obviusly different issue numbers) into a collection?
Thanks so much for your help!
I’m not sure about that, there may be something in the docs.
When I had my files locally I used them that way: A folder for the series name, and inside the folder all the comic files. That worked perfectly, the “open next” worked and everything was well organized 
Unsure about your last question, I have been using Kavita for quite some time now, I only download issues to my iPad if I need so for traveling or something like that.
Well, it’s just forcing me to make Collections to use the feature, which is not a big deal.
I guess I could also dump everything into a single folder to activate the feature.
Thanks again!
Sorry for the late reply. Currently “continue reading” only works with collections, yeah. I don’t remember why we didn’t add support for it at the root of a library. We will revisit that decision and, if it makes sense, enable it for library root.
Thanks for the input.
I’m using OPDS from Kavita, and the absence of a “Continue Reading” option is a bit of a deal-breaker and mod killer. I understand that OPDS might not natively support this feature and implementing it across all flows and edge cases may be complex. However, for the most common scenario, navigating to a series, viewing the list of chapters, and opening one, the functionality seems feasible.
Since the full list of chapters or issues is already retrieved on the previous screen, the panel view should be aware of the current chapter and able to determine the next one. Right now, I have to go back to the chapters list, remember where I left off, and manually select the next chapter, which feels unnecessarily cumbersome and unintuitive.
That only works if you’re opening your comics from an OPDS feed that is listing a specific series. But OPDS is not structured or hierarchical. A feed can contain anything and many servers use this to their advantage to build feeds like “On Deck”, “Keep Reading”, etc, which are dynamic and their content varies as you read.
If you started reading your comic from “On Deck”, for instance, the moment you finish reading your comic, the content of the feed will vary, removing your just-read comic from the feed and adding a different one. So there’s no way to know which title is “the next one”. Also, feeds like this can contain comics from different series at the same time. So the next in the feed doesn’t have to be (and most likely won’t) the next one you want to read.
This is a limitation on the OPDS protocol, not Panels. We would love to build “continue reading” for OPDS, but the only correct solution is to include a reference to the next/previous comic in the OPDS entry. That way, even if you started reading from “On Deck”, the reference to the next/previous wouldn’t be in the fee, and clients like Panels wouldn’t have to try to guess (and most likely fail) what the next chapter is.
Is there an official way to propose this to be added the OPDS spec?
It’s very technical, and participants are mostly developers of OPDS servers. But their OPDS Drafts repository has a discussion forum where people normally start conversations to get feedback from the rest of the community. Proposing a change or an addition normally requires a technical draft with tech specs.
In Panels, we have very little leverage because we are just consumers of the protocol. When something is added to the standard, you have to convince all the servers implementing OPDS to adopt those new features. We participate in discussions and provide feedback, but we don’t know the implications of an API change. That’s why we normally refrain from creating specific proposals, since we won’t end up really having to implement them (the biggest lift is on the server side), and also, many more OPDS client apps don’t necessarily have certain features or share the same vision or have the same needs.
We keep constant communication with the OPDS creators, community, and the biggest comic server creators (Komga, Kavita, Codex, Stump,…). And we have discussed this topic many times, and everyone is aware that this is a very commonly requested feature.
But introducing changes in an open source spec sometimes takes time because you have to convince a lot of people.
I hope that makes sense