Why can't I do that on mobile?

Overview

If you've bumped into a missing button or a feature that only half-works on your phone, you're probably not missing a setting. A handful of features in Lexxio only exist on desktop. This page lists all of them in one place, so you don't have to hunt down the answer separately for each one.

What's desktop only

Importing your own EPUB files. You can bring your own books into Lexxio, but only from the Mac and Windows apps. To read one of those books on your phone, sync it over from desktop instead. See Getting books onto your phone.

Downloading public-domain books. Searching and downloading free, out-of-copyright titles works the same way, desktop only, for the same reason as EPUB imports: get the book into your desktop library first, then sync it to your phone.

The standalone Translate tool. The screen for translating pasted or typed text, separate from reading a book, is desktop only. On mobile, opening Translate shows a message pointing you to the desktop app instead of the tool itself.

"Look up with AI." The AI-powered escalation in the word lookup popup, the one that sends a word and its sentence to the AI for a fuller explanation, is desktop only. The free lookups underneath it, an offline dictionary and Wiktionary, still work on mobile.

HD narration. The premium, on-demand AI narration voice is desktop only. The standard read-aloud voices work fine on mobile.

Word lookup still works, just with a different gesture

Looking up a word itself isn't desktop only. On desktop you double-click a word to open the lookup popup. On mobile, where there's no mouse, you long-press it instead. Same popup, same free sources, just a different way to trigger it. See Looking up a word while you read for the full rundown of what each lookup source covers.

Why these are desktop only

The mobile app is built as a lighter companion to the desktop app, not a full copy of it. Books you read on mobile have already been processed and translated on desktop before you synced them over, or they came from the built-in Lexxio Originals catalog, which works fully on both platforms. Because of that, mobile doesn't need its own translation pipeline or its own API key setup. Desktop does the heavy lifting once, and mobile reads the result.

What mobile is good for

None of this makes mobile a stripped-down afterthought. It's fully capable at what it's built for:

• Reading your synced library, including Lexxio Originals
• Listening to books with the standard read-aloud voices
• Looking up words for free, with the offline dictionary and Wiktionary
• Practicing verb conjugation and reviewing your saved words

If what you're trying to do falls into one of those, it should just work on your phone. If it's on the desktop-only list above, that's expected, not a bug.