Read PDF ebooks directly in your VS Code editor with dark mode, customizable display parameters, and table of contents navigation.
✨ Features
Editor Mode (Main Area)
- 📖 PDF Reading — Open
.pdffiles in the main editor area, just like code files - 🌙 Dark Mode — CSS filter-based dark mode, perfect for scanned PDFs (white paper → dark background)
- 🎨 Customizable Display — Fine-tune 10+ parameters (scale, margin, invert, hue, grayscale, brightness, contrast, etc.)
- 📚 Table of Contents — PDF outline navigation with auto-highlight current chapter
- 💾 Persistent Settings — All parameters saved to VS Code configuration
Panel Mode (Sidebar)
- 🪟 Low-Profile Reading — Read PDF in the Explorer sidebar, hidden in plain sight
- 🔍 Magnifier — Bottom strip shows 2.5× magnified view following your cursor
- 🔎 Smooth Zoom — 0.5×–4× proportional zoom with drag-to-pan and scrollbars
- 🎮 WASD Pan — Keyboard panning: W/A/S/D = up/left/down/right (always active in panel)
- 🔄 Mode Switching — One-click switch between editor (full-screen) and panel (sidebar)
- 💾 Auto-Restore — Reopen VS Code to your last book, last page, and last zoom level automatically
🚀 Quick Start
- Install the extension
- Double-click any
.pdffile in the explorer → opens in editor mode - Or press
Ctrl+Shift+P→ Vook: Open PDF File - For sidebar reading:
Ctrl+Shift+P→ Vook: Open PDF in Side Panel
⌨ Keyboard Shortcuts
Editor Mode
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
← |
Previous page |
→ |
Next page |
Ctrl+D / Cmd+D |
Toggle dark mode |
Panel Mode
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Z |
Previous page |
X |
Next page |
Q |
Zoom out |
E |
Zoom in |
W / A / S / D |
Pan up / left / down / right (when zoomed) |
Ctrl+Scroll |
Zoom in/out |
F |
Toggle collapse/restore panel content (panic button) |
⚙️ Settings
All settings are accessible via VS Code Settings (Ctrl+,) → search "Vook", or click the ⚙️ button in the reader to adjust in real-time.
Display
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
vook.scale |
2.0 |
PDF rendering scale |
vook.marginLeft |
-1 |
Left margin, -1 = auto center |
Dark Mode
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
vook.darkMode.enabled |
true |
Enable dark mode by default |
vook.darkMode.invert |
80 |
Invert level (0-100) |
vook.darkMode.hue |
180 |
Hue rotation (0-360°) |
vook.darkMode.grayscale |
10 |
Grayscale (0-100) |
vook.darkMode.brightness |
85 |
Brightness (0-100) |
vook.darkMode.contrast |
90 |
Contrast (0-100) |
vook.darkMode.fontOpacity |
1.0 |
Font opacity (0.1-1.0) |
Panel Mode
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
vook.panelLabel |
"TODO" |
Panel name shown in Explorer sidebar |
vook.magnifier.zoomLevel |
2.5 |
Magnifier zoom level (1.5–5.0) |
vook.panel.wasdStep |
30 |
WASD pan step size in pixels (5–200) |
🏗 How It Works
Vook uses pdf.js (Mozilla) to render PDF pages. Dark mode uses CSS filters (invert + hue-rotate + brightness + contrast) to transform scanned PDF pages — no pixel-level processing needed for most documents.
📦 Coming Soon
- EPUB support
- Text-layer rendering for text-based PDFs
- Bookmarks and highlights
📄 License
MIT