Nine hours over the Atlantic, phone in airplane mode, nothing to read but whatever you queued up beforehand. Or a commute that dips through a tunnel for twenty minutes at a stretch. Either way, what you get to read depends entirely on what you downloaded before the signal dropped, because Boundless Reader doesn't cache anything for you on a server somewhere. If it isn't on your device, it isn't there.
Add the titles first
You need at least one source installed before Library has anything to hold. If Browse and Search are both empty, Adding sources covers that setup.
With a source installed:
- Go to Browse and pick a source, or use Search to look for something by name.
- Open a title to reach its detail screen.
- Add it to your library.
The title now sits in Library, and Boundless starts tracking your progress through it from the first chapter you open.
The detail screen and the chapter list
A title's detail screen shows what the source knows about it, plus its full chapter list. It also carries an in-app browser button for that source, which opens the source site inside the app. Worth knowing before a trip too: if a chapter looks wrong or won't load, checking the source directly from here is faster than guessing. Troubleshooting covers the failure cases in more depth.
Long series are the reason the chapter list supports multi-select instead of making you tap through two hundred chapters by hand. Tap Select at the top of the list, then use the quick-select chips: All grabs everything, None clears it, Invert flips the selection, and Unread picks only what you haven't read yet. Tap individual chapters afterward to fine-tune. The bulk action bar at the bottom then applies Download, Read, or Unread to whatever's selected, and Cancel gets you back out of selection mode.
Catching up a series you already read somewhere else is the clearest case for this. Chip to All, mark it Read, then hunt down the handful you're still behind on and unmark just those.
Downloading before you lose the connection
Download a chapter and it lives on your device from then on, readable with no connection at all. That works one chapter at a time from the chapter list, or across a whole selection through the same bulk action bar. Before a flight, a commute with patchy signal, or any stretch where your source site is slow to reach, downloading ahead is the difference between a book and a spinner.
Downloaded chapters use device storage, so fully downloading a long-running series costs real space on your phone. Pick the chapters you're going to read on the way, not the entire back catalogue the night before.
Landing, and finding your place again
The History tab lists what you've read recently and gives you a direct route back to it. It's the fastest way into a title when you spent the flight sampling three different series and can't remember which one you were enjoying by the end.
Boundless also keeps your exact position inside whatever chapter you were on. Reopen a title after landing and it puts you back where you stopped, wifi or no wifi.
Where all of this lives
Your library list, which chapters you've read, your exact position in each one, your history, and your downloads are all stored locally on the device. None of it needs an account, and none of it leaves the device unless you turn on Account Sync, off by default even after you sign in.
Two things follow from that. Nothing about your reading reaches a Boundless server until Account Sync is switched on. And deleting the app takes the local database with it, so reinstalling starts you from an empty library again.
Account Sync is for saving that data across devices, if you want your iPhone and iPad to agree with each other. It's a separate switch, off by default, so signing in on its own doesn't turn it on. Leave it off, or stay signed out, and each device keeps its own library and its own positions.
On iPad and Mac
The library grid adds columns as the window gets wider instead of stretching each cover into an oversized cell, so a full-size iPad screen gets used properly. Long-form screens, the ones with real text on them, stay width-capped and centred rather than running edge to edge on a large display.
Next: Reading covers the two readers themselves, and how tap zones and auto-scroll work once a chapter is open.