Xteink X4 – 3rd Party Support

The Xteink X4 was launched only a few months ago in December 2025 but already there is a rich third-party ecosystem building up around it. In this post I take a look at all the things that are cropping up from cases to companion apps. Read on to learn more…

Getting Started

The first thing that you will want to do when you get your new device is find out more information and seek out like-minded people. The official site doesn’t offer much help but there are two places that can:

The first is readme.club, an independent site offering links to resources, fonts and a library of X4 optimised wallpapers (currently just over 1,000 at the time of writing). There is a paid option, but currently, the only real value that adds is supporting an indie developer, which is no bad thing.

The second is r/xteinkreader which is a very active Reddit community with users offering everything from images of their new devices to discussions on various different flavours of firmware. The subreddit is moderated by the company who do remove posts not to their liking, so you have been warned. One thing it could do with is a series of flares to help segreate content but other than that it is pretty good place to go if you have questions.

Check out too the r/microreaders subreddit that I moderate.

Alternative Firmware

I’m not going to go into alternative firmware’s in too much detail here as I covered this in my previous post reviewing the device itself. However, there are several to choose from including Papyrix, Sumi, TernReader and my personal recommendation, Crosspoint. I have even seen someone port a Game Boy emulator and was playing Tetris, but I personally can’t see the point of that. For me, the X4 is a reading machine.

One problem I do have is with the endless number of Crosspoint forks that seem to be appearing. Many are individual developers adding functionality which would be out of the scope of the main Crosspoint project, which is fine, but these forks continue to use the Crosspoint name in some way, creating confusion for end users. Also, with a single developer, you don’t know when they are likely to lose interest and abandon the project. I hope that Crosspoint encourage forkers to choose a name that doesn’t include “crosspoint”.

Companion Apps

There are a number of ways to transfer ebooks to your X4. Probably the most reliable is to take the SD card out and put it in a computer of some sort, drag the files to the card and then put it back in the X4. (Remember to eject first folks!) However, this can be a bit of a faff so here are some other ways to achieve file management.

Crosspoint (Web Browser)

If you are running Crosspoint rather than the stock firmware then the built in webserver is a great way to manage your files. Connect your device to the internet and the point your browser to http://crosspoint.local. You should then see a set of screens that allow you to navigate through the folders on your device – you can even change the settings through these pages too which you might find easier than on the device itself.

CrossX (iOS)

CrossX will work with both CrossPoint and stock firmwares and does several things:

• upload your book ePubs directly to the X4
• convert web articles to nicely formatted ePubs
• queue documents for uploading at a later date
• upload wallpapers along with some simple manipulation.

There also is a nascent file browser too.

The standout feature here is the taking of articles from the web, converting them to ePub format and the queing them up for when your device is connected. This is particularly useful if you use the RSS feed feature allowing you to queue all articles from a site’s feed.

The app works well and looks polished however, there were a couple of occasions when once the keyboard was up it was almost impossible to get rid of and find the menu again. Other than that all good.

Available on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS and the code is open source.

CrossPoint Sync (iOS/Android)

CrossPoint Sync, as the name suggests, works only with the CrossPoint firmware (and presumably its forks) but not stock. CrossPoint offers similar features to CrossX but goes about it in a different way:

• upload your book ePubs directly to the X4
• convert web articles to nicely formatted ePubs
• queue documents for uploading at a later date.

In order to add an article to the queue to be sent to your X4 CrossPoint Sync provides a Safari extension that you have to enable. Once done, you then select the extension from the menu on the webpage and follow the instructions. This works well, but, of course, only works in Safari, which won’t bother most people, but if, like me, you don’t use Safari, then this is not a solution for you. I’d prefer if this was a share sheet option rather than an extension.

Visit the CrossPoint Sync website here.

Send to X4 (iOS/Android)

The final third-party app (that I am aware of at the time of writing) is Send to X4, a cross platform app working with both the stock and CrossPoint firmwares. This app offers the most functionality as follows:

• upload your book ePubs directly to the X4
• convert web articles to nicely formatted ePubs
• queue documents for uploading at a later date
• create text notes and send as plain text or ePub format
• upload wallpapers
• choose wallpapers from external sources such as reader.club
• design your own wallpaper from scratch

Send to X4 offers a lot of functionality it whether you use it will depend on your particular use case.

XTEINK (iOS/Android)

Not a third-party app, of course, but included here for completeness. The official app offers the following features for those on the stock firmware:

• convert and upload your file to your device
• add custom wallpapers

As I am using CrossPoint I haven’t checked out the official app.

External Light

Possibly the only downside of the X4 is its lack of light (front light to be specific) meaning that an exernal light source is required for reading in dark places and at night etc. I purchased the offical light from Xteink but I found that due to it being a single LED the light distribution was not that good so I thought I would try this one from Ulanzi, a brand I know and trust.

As you can see from the images below, this has a light strip the same width as the device itself, and that spreads the light evenly across the whole page, which I much prefer. I also prefer that the Ulanzi has USB-C charging rather than the USB-A prong on the Xteink equivalent. One slight niggle is that due to the positioning of the magnets on the X4, which are slightly off-centre, the Ulanzi light is every so slightly offset, but that didn’t affect it in use.

Other than that the functionality between the two is pretty much the same. You can change the brightness and light temperature on both to suit your preferences.

If you are a frequent visitor to r/xteinkreader that you will see other brands being recommended and other who have even made their own lights so there are plenty of options out there.

Cases

Xteink make a magnetic flip case that works well but they are a bit boring, so when I found third-party covers with images, I ordered one.

There seem to be lots of sellers on AliExpress selling them but they are all the same format and you can choose from about 20 different designs.

Firstly, the quality seems very good and equal to that of the official case. Unlike the official case, it is textured, which I find quite a pleasing effect. The magnet is very strong and holds the X4 well, with no danger of it falling out.

This case is ever so slightly larger than the official case, and that is because a clear, rubber back plate is also included for the device. With the X4 in this clear case it still snaps to the flip case and fills the space better. However, I prefer it without the clear case, so I use it without.

I have no idea how long the ink will last on the cover, but overall I like it and with the inclusion of the clear case is pretty decent value for money at about £13/$18.

You can buy this case (and other designs) on AliExpress here.

Utilities

There a few utilities popping up too that help formatting books, creating fonts or solving issues. Here are a few of those I’ve found.

CrossPoint Calibre Plugin

If you are using Calibre to manage your ebooks then you are going to love the CrossPoint Calibre plugin. This allows you to easily send books wirelessly to you device directly from Calibre. All you need to do is install the plugin and then connect your device to the same network as where Calibre is running. Once you do your X4 will be detected by Calibre and you will see the following notification:

Once connection is made a new “Send to device” option will appear on the main menu bar of Calibre. There are plenty of options in the sub-menu but really all you need do is select the book you want and press “Send to device”.

Baseline JPEG Converter

One issue I’ve had is with book covers not displaying on the CrossPoint home screen. There seem to be a variety of reasons why this occurs but one developer has put together a simple web app that allows you to drag and drop your ePub and it will attempt to fix the issues. I’ve used it for a number of books with the missing cover issue and it has fixed them all. The developer is also very responsive and has made a number of changes we discussed. There is even a version of the CrossPoint Calibre plugin with this included.

XTC creator

There have been discussions online about how ePubs haven’t been rendering correctly on the stock firmware, and the solution to this is to convert them to the XTC format. An XTC file is basically the pages from an ePub converted into images. The advantage of this is that you get consistently looking books, but the trade-off is larger files.

There is an online tool, EPUB to XTC Converter, that allows you to convert your ePubs to the XTC format that you can use on your X4. There are lots of settings that allow you to control things such as the font, margins and image quality.

To give you an idea of file sizes I converted a 914kb epub of The Divine Comedy into XTC format. Post convertion this came out at 137mb – so quite the inflation but maybe worth it for the improved readability.

Font creator

Not loving the fonts on the stock X4 firmware? Create your own! At XTEink Web Font Maker you can upload a font in either TTF or OTF format, view a preview of what the font would look like on an X4 page and then convert it to the required BIN format. Don’t fancy doing it yourself then there is a gallery of fonts others have created here.

Page Turners

This isn’t something that I have tried myself but seems to be popular with the visitors to r/xteinkreader. Basically, these are a two-key physical keyboard that is linked to your device via Bluetooth and maps onto the previous and next page buttons. If you have your device in a stand or anywhere that’s not in your hand, you can use these keys to turn the pages.

The device that is most often cited in r/xteinkreader is the Free2, shown in the image below, and is available on AliExpress for about £17.

At present this is something only for those that are on the stock firmware as Bluetooth isn’t (currently) supported on CrossPoint.

Conclusions

I hope that the above has given you some idea of the ecosystem that is building up around the Xteink devices. Right now, all of the above are for the X4, but we can expect to see similar solutions for the recently released X3 too.

Have I missed something? Please let me know in the comments.