iPhone & iPad app ​

The BackIssue app for iPhone and iPad is a native companion to your server — not a web page in a wrapper. It reads your library, downloads issues to your device for offline reading, and lets you add or request comics on the go. Books and audiobooks come along too.

Installing ​

The app is in TestFlight, Apple's beta programme, rather than the App Store. There's nothing to apply for — the invitation is open:

1. Install Apple's free TestFlight app from the App Store.
2. On the same device, open the join link.
3. Tap Accept, then Install.

Open the link on the iPhone or iPad itself — on a desktop browser it can only show you these instructions.

TestFlight tells you when a new build is ready, and can install them for you if you turn on Automatic Updates for BackIssue inside TestFlight. Your servers, sign-ins, downloads and settings all survive an update.

Signing in ​

On first launch, point the app at your server and sign in:

• Server address — the URL you use in the browser (e.g. https://comics.example.com).
• Username and password — the same account you use on the web.

Or tap Scan QR code and scan the pairing code shown on your Profile page in the web app, which fills both in without typing.

You can add more than one server and switch between them at any time from Settings → Servers — handy if you run one at home and connect to another. Each server keeps its own sign-in and downloads, held in the iOS keychain.

For extra privacy, turn on the app lock in Settings to ask for Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode every time the app opens.

Reading ​

• Paged and webtoon (continuous scroll) modes, double-page in landscape, and right-to-left for manga.
• Guided view walks a page panel by panel — useful on an iPhone screen.
• Pinch to zoom, margin trimming for scans, a page gap, and reading backgrounds (black, grey, night, eye comfort).
• Resume — it remembers your page and picks up where you left off, and your progress syncs with the web reader and every other device.
• Bookmarks, edge taps or swipes to turn, optional haptic page turns, and keep-the-screen-awake.
• Next issue and previous issue without leaving the reader, and Back to arc when you're working through a reading list.
• A data saver mode downscales pages when you're on mobile data.

Your reading stats — pages read, issues finished, streak, and most-read series — travel with your account.

Books and audiobooks ​

If your server runs the Books or Audiobooks plugin, both share the Library with your comics under a media filter rather than living in tabs of their own.

Books open in a reader of their own, built on the same engine as the web reader so positions match to the word:

• Ink, sepia, paper and true-black themes, Literata, a sans face and OpenDyslexic, text size, line spacing, justification and margins.
• Paginated or scrolling, a two-page spread on iPad in landscape, and a page-turn animation you can switch off.
• Highlights and notes in four colours, exported as Markdown and synced through your account; Define uses the system dictionary offline.
• Search inside a book, footnotes that open in place, a draggable progress scrubber, and an image lightbox.
• Read aloud speaks the book with the device's voice, lighting each sentence and turning pages as it goes.
• Download a book to read with no server; positions and highlights you make offline land when you reconnect.
• PDFs read in the app in a paged viewer.

Audiobooks stream from your server with chapters, speed, a sleep timer and resume, and the home-screen widget offers whatever you were last reading — a comic, or the book if there's no comic mid-read.

Your library, offline ​

• Browse and search everything you own, filter by followed, missing or problem series, and open any series to see which issues you have.
• Home shows what you're in the middle of, what's ready that you haven't started, and the arcs you're working through.
• Download issues to your device for reading with no signal. Downloads continue in the background and can be managed from Settings.

Adding & requesting ​

• If your account can manage the library, add a series straight from the app.
• If your server runs the Requests plugin and your account can make requests, the add button raises a request for approval instead.
• On a series, accounts that manage the library set its monitoring policy, and anyone who can download can want or skip a single issue (swipe an issue row).

What you can do in the app follows your account's permissions exactly, just like on the web.

Activity and notifications ​

The Activity view shows the live download queue and recent history from your server. The notifications view carries the same in-app notification centre the web app has.

If something goes wrong, Settings → Support sends a diagnostic report to your server — see Troubleshooting.

Requirements ​

• iOS 17 or newer, on iPhone or iPad.
• A reachable BackIssue server, and an account on it. Reading needs the Reader plugin on the server — first-run setup offers it pre-ticked, so most servers have it.
• HTTPS is recommended so your credentials and library travel securely.

Android ​

Running Android too? See the Android app — the same library, the same account, progress synced between them.