Annotate an EPUB online — free, no upload
Search for an online EPUB annotator and you mostly find sign-up walls, upload boxes, and a Save button that turns into “Upgrade.” Here's how to mark up an EPUB in your browser for free, with the file never leaving your device.
The pattern is familiar. You want to underline a few passages in a book you already own, and the tool wants your email address, your file on its server, and eventually ten dollars a month. For a task that is fundamentally you, a book, and a marker.
ReadHere runs the reader in your browser. The EPUB is opened and stored on your device, and your annotations are written to that same local storage as you make them. There's no upload step to wait through, because there's no upload.
Annotate an EPUB in three steps
- Open the reader — no account, no upload box.
- Drag your .epub onto the page and click the cover.
- Select text to highlight it, then attach a note if the passage deserves one.
Annotations that hold their place in a reflowing book
An EPUB has no fixed pages — it reflows to your screen. That's a genuine problem for annotation: change the font size and anything pinned to a screen position ends up in the wrong paragraph.
Here each highlight is anchored into the book's own text structure, so it stays on the right words no matter how you resize, restyle, or rotate. Your reading position works the same way, which is why picking a bigger font never costs you your spot.
A workflow, not just a marker
- Four highlight colors to separate the kinds of attention you're paying — key claim, disagreement, follow-up.
- Notes on the passage, not floating stickies that drift out of place.
- A sidebar listing every highlight and note in the book, so a re-read becomes scanning a list instead of flipping chapters.
- A per-book journal for the thinking that doesn't fit in a margin — summaries, arguments with the author, notes for an essay.
- In-book search to find the passage you half-remember.
Where the annotations live
On your device, immediately, free — which also means they're there with the wifi off. The catch is the usual one for local storage: clear your browser's site data and it's gone.
Pro ($10/yr) backs the books and every annotation up to your own Google Drive and syncs them across your devices, so a dead laptop costs you a laptop and not a semester of notes.
Related: annotate PDFs online free, highlight an EPUB without a Kindle.
Common questions
Do I have to upload my EPUB to annotate it?
No. The book is opened and stored in your browser on your device. On the free tier nothing is sent to a server — there is no upload screen at all.
Is annotating really free?
Yes. Highlighting, notes, and the per-book journal are free with no account. There is no watermark and no paywall on saving your annotations.
Where do my annotations go when I close the tab?
They are saved locally as you make them and load again when you reopen the book, offline included. Clearing your browser’s site data clears them, so Pro ($10/yr) adds a backup to your own Google Drive.
Can I annotate PDFs the same way?
Yes. The same colors, notes, sidebar, and journal work on PDF and EPUB alike, in one library — no second app for your papers.
Annotate your EPUB now
Open the book, highlight what matters, keep your notes — free and private.