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How to read CBR/CBZ comics on an iPhone -- for free!
The iPhone's gotten a lot better about PDF support over the years, but comics fans still don't have a perfect way to read files in the CBR and CBZ formats. These formats are both just compressed archives of image files, so you could unzip them and put the JPGs or PNGs onto your phone using iTunes. Keeping them in order is a pain, though, and the Photos app isn't really designed for viewing comics.I had a few CBRs I wanted to read this week, so I worked out what I think is a pretty quick and convenient way to read iPhone comics. It starts with Dropbox, and a free app called iComic Viewer (there's also a paid version without iAds, but the free version works just fine, and there are no ads while you're actually reading comics).
Step 1 is to upload your comics to your Dropbox. Then, pop open Dropbox on your phone, go to one of the CBR or CBZ files, and click the link icon to copy its URL. Unfortunately, iComic Viewer doesn't show up in Dropbox's "Open With" feature, so you'll just have to paste the URL into iComic yourself. Still, it's much easier than typing the whole thing out.
To download your file to iComic, just open the app, go to download, click URL, and paste the Dropbox link. Voila! Your comic is now available to read on your iPhone. Of course, there are plenty of other -- maybe better! -- paid comics apps in the App Store, and you can use any one of them instead of the free iComic Viewer. Just make sure your app supports downloading your files from a pasted URL.
Comments
6
Subscribe to commentsMikeAug 16th 2010 9:08PM
I tried this but whenever I hit download it says "File Format is not valid. Please enter zip or cbz file" even though it is a cbz file.
GreatwizardAug 15th 2010 6:16AM
For the iPad there is Cloudreaders that does it for free
MikeAug 17th 2010 6:33PM
Yeah I have been using this combo for a while, works really well. Ever since Dropbox added support for other apps (CloudReaders was one of the first) it's become kind of like a filesystem for the iPad.
BaronZokAug 15th 2010 10:34AM
You can convert cbr/cbz to pdf and then read it using ibook for iphone.
tomvwOct 1st 2010 12:40PM
ComicZeal is the best ecomic reader I've used on my iPod Touch, I think it even has an iPad version. It's not free (about 4$, I think), but it's worth the cost IMO.
Phil SAug 20th 2010 5:44PM
Isn't a "comic reader" just an ebook reader that renders graphics? Why aren't there more free ecomic readers?
And why can't these free comic readers use the iTunes library for ebooks to sync to the iPhone / iPad?