QuireHow to bookmark an EPUB and pick up where you left off
Short answer: most EPUB readers remember your place automatically and let you add bookmarks. In Quire EPUB Reader press B, in calibre’s viewer press Ctrl+B, and in Apple Books click the Bookmark button at the top of the page.
What differs is where they’re saved: in the app, in your browser, in your account, or inside the EPUB file. That decides whether they survive moving the file or switching computers.
Updated 15 October 2026. Quire behaviour is covered by its automated tests, run in Chrome for Testing; calibre and Apple Books details follow their manuals.
Bookmarks in Chrome with Quire EPUB Reader
Quire is our extension. It saves your place without being asked and keeps bookmarks tied to the book, not to where you opened it from.
- Open the book
Open it in Quire EPUB Reader from a link, a file or the library. If you’ve read it before, it opens where you stopped.
- Bookmark the page
Press B or click the bookmark button in the toolbar. The button changes to show the page is bookmarked; press B again on that page to remove it.
- See all bookmarks
Press Shift+B to list them, then click one to jump there.
- Just close the tab
Your position is saved moments after every page turn and again when the tab closes, so there’s nothing to save by hand.
Where Quire keeps them
- Bookmarks and positions are stored in your Chrome profile, filed under the book’s contents rather than its name or address. The same file opened from a website, from your Downloads folder or from the library shares one set of bookmarks.
- Removing a book from the library keeps its bookmarks. Open the same file again and they come back.
- Our tests close and relaunch the whole browser, then check that the bookmark is still there and the book reopens at the same place.
- They don’t sync to other computers, and removing the extension deletes them along with your library.
calibre’s e-book viewer
calibre remembers where you were when you close a book. Press Ctrl+B to show or hide the bookmarks panel and Ctrl+Alt+B to add one. Its manual notes something unusual: for EPUB files, bookmarks are saved inside the book file itself, so they travel with it if you copy it to another computer. You can turn that off in the Miscellaneous section of the viewer’s preferences. calibre also has highlights with notes, listed by chapter (Ctrl+H).
Apple Books on a Mac
Move the pointer to the top of the page and click the Bookmark button. It turns solid on a bookmarked page; click it again to remove the bookmark. Show Bookmarks lists them all. Apple’s guide also explains using iCloud to read on all your Apple devices.
Thorium Reader
Thorium, free for Windows, macOS and Linux, lists bookmark management and annotations among its features.
Google Play Books
For EPUB files you upload, Google says bookmarks, highlights and notes work across your devices. This is the simplest option if you switch between a computer and a phone.
How not to lose your place
- Keep the original file. A browser profile or app library is not a backup.
- Reading on two computers? Use something that syncs (Play Books, or Apple Books with iCloud), or calibre, whose bookmarks travel inside the file.
- Different editions of the same book are different files to every reader, so bookmarks from one won’t appear in the other.