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Calibre – New in Calibre 7.0
- themadturk 3y agoI love Calibre. All I do is maintain my library on it, and a few extra Kobo things like backing up the database. There's more I could use it for, but don't really need to. Mostly I read books. Calibre helps tell me what I have or don't have. The UI is fine. Updating is fine. It's free, well-supported, and in my experience works fine on my M1 Mac (and it worked fine on Windows last time I used it as well. I've never installed or used it on a Linux machine).
- troupo 3y agoCalibre is seriously good. I used their cli tools for a project, and it just chews through weird ebooks and metadata without a hitch or a glitch
- AlphaGeekZulu 3y agoCalibre is outstanding - really one of my most important research tools. Fulltext search over the content of an entire library is a killer feature. I maintain a couple of hundreds books in PDF format and sync them automatically with a Samsung tablet. Version 7.0 crashes on my Ubuntu 23.10, unfortunately. Had to return to 6.29.0.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y agoWait, full text including into PDFs? I didn't know that, that's really big!
- AlphaGeekZulu 3y agoYep! In the search field above the library window, press the "FT" button on the very left. You have to create the index the first time you use the feature. It takes a while and from there on new books are indexed automatically. FT search has word and phrase search, boolean operators and NEAR search abilities. And there is a really cool match list, giving some context of the match before you actually go to it in the PDF file. You cannot search across libraries, though.
- AlphaGeekZulu 3y agoNote: AS far as I know, Calibre does not do OCR, so a PDF with only scanned content will not work.
- ggpsv 3y agoI've had good luck using Tesseract [0] for scanned PDFs. If you're not CLI-inclined, there are several GUIs for it available [1]. I have had good luck downloading scanned PDFs from archive.org and running them through Tesseract. Did not know about Calibre for this - I was relying on opening each search and searching it individually. [0]: https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract [1]: https://www.opait.com/tessstudio/ https://www.opait.com/tessstudio/
- kristofferR 3y agoOCRmyPDF is a tool using Tesseract, specifically designed for PDFs. I would recommend that over pure Tesseract. https://github.com/ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDF https://github.com/ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDF
- kristofferR 3y agoI recommend running any such PDFs through OCRmyPDF. https://github.com/ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDF https://github.com/ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDF
- Fluorescence 3y agoOh, lol, I never knew that. I created a script that dumped my library of 1000s of books to .txt and then grepped them.
- silentguy 3y agoIf you want even faster search across different formats, you can try ripgrep-all ( https://github.com/phiresky/ripgrep-all https://github.com/phiresky/ripgrep-all ). It can search across epub, docx, pdf, zip, mp4 etc. If you are handy with the tool, you can write custom adaptor to search across images using OCR with tesseract.
- Fluorescence 3y agoIf you run it from the terminal you can see the error. For me on 22.04 it was missing a dependency: sudo apt install libxcb-cursor0
- AlphaGeekZulu 3y agoYess, thanks! Stupid me. Installer is also hinting for the missing dependency now before installation.
- Pepperating 3y agoCould you tell me what software you are using for syncing?
- AlphaGeekZulu 3y agoI am using "Calibre Sync" on Android (Payware: US$ 5,49 and worth every penny). For viewing/annotating on Android I use Flexcil.
- Novosell 3y agoWhy not just use something like syncthing? Does it offer more advanced features than just syncing files?
- AlphaGeekZulu 3y ago> Does it offer more advanced features than just syncing files? Yes! Covers, Metadata (searchable and including custom columns and comments), reading progress, filters (important for me: tags), different layouts, virtual views. And it can use the full text search of Calibre (but only when connected to the Calibre content server).
- account-5 3y agoI utilise zotero for this. Was unaware that calibre could do this; the search bit.
- breakds 3y agoCurious on "as research tools" - do you use it to manage research papers?
- pjmlp 3y agoGreat news, time to do another donation.
- ivolimmen 3y agoI use calibre as well and it's excellent. The only thing I think should have some attention is the awful interface.
- dewey 3y agoThat’s the first thing I always check and think about when I see an update. It’s an amazing tool otherwise though.
- paperhatwriter 3y agoYes I cringe whenever I see the logo. I use it too and it works well enough but it’s so inelegant. I wish visual designers involved themselves more in open source development.
- bdeshi 3y agoIf you meant the splash screen when it starts up, this can be turned off in the settings. Otherwise the core app's UI looks fine to me personally, though some of the plugins make some, unusual, choices.
- stavros 3y agoThe UI is a mess of buttons and menus strewn about everywhere. I'm not complaining, Calibre is a great project, but let's not kid ourselves that the UI is even mediocre.
- __rito__ 3y agoUse an icon pack, and it is very likely it has something different already there for Calibre. I use candy icons, and I like the Calibre "logo" in this icon pack.
- d1l 3y agoThe last thing anyone needs is “visual” “designers” shitting up our useful applications. Stick to your todo list apps and stay in your lane.
- arkitaip 3y agoI used Calibre with my Kobo and while it made the Kobo so much more useful, the interface is somewhat complicated and gets worse as you add plugins. Didn't matter in the end because I stopped using the Cobo in favor of my phone (ReadEra is great in creating a good enough reading experience).
- telmo 3y agoI love Calibre, and I am very thankful to the people who work on it. It's a shiny example of an open source project that creates a common good. I just wish it didn't have updates so often. Since you have to do it manually, I feel that every time I start it, this little chore is imposed on me, without any reward. If you really must release updates at this rate for some reason, then I would say that an auto-updater that runs in the background would be a huge huge improvement to the overall experience.
- themadturk 3y agoUpdates are hardly mandatory. I heard advice on Mobileread a few years ago saying don't bother updating unless there's something you need, and I've often skipped several versions between updating mine.
- vvillena 3y agoPackage managers are the way to go for this kind of software. Brew, scoop, snap...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- huytersd 3y agoThis is already possible…
- thek3nger 3y agoI update it with Brew on macOS and Scoop [1] on Windows (but I guess it is included in other package managers such as chocolatey). Of course, a built-in auto-updater would be good, but a packaged version is a nice workaround for me. [1]: https://scoop.sh/ https://scoop.sh/
- crtasm 3y agoIt is: https://community.chocolatey.org/packages?q=calibre https://community.chocolatey.org/packages?q=calibre
- politelemon 3y agoI remember that Calibre 6 required plugin authors to update, so it was a 'breaking change' at the time. Anything similar with Calibre 7, or should plugins continue to work?
- themadturk 3y agoIt looks like plugins work fine. I downloaded 7 and had three plugins that needed updating, but I think that was just a timing issue.
- waynesonfire 3y agoalways a join to update calibre. thank you.
- mundanevoice 3y agoThis is the same guy who wrote Kitty Terminal. Such a nice guy who keeps writing excellent software and giving it away for free.
- dizhn 3y agoA lot of people would disagree with this. I don't want to talk ill of anybody here but maybe you should keep an eye on both projects' GitHub issues for a while. As for a great terminal from (IMO) a genuine nice guy, try wezterm. (I do infact pick open source software based on how they respond to issues since I am likely to spend time interacting with them.)
- tim-hilt 3y agoKovid is super responsive and helpful on GitHub issues. His tone is not always friendly, but I guess you have to grow some teeth in todays open source world
- manifest3r 3y agoHe’s writing software for free. Providing full support for hundreds of issues is beyond reasonable. If there’s a breaking bug, it’s understandable if he will investigate, but nobody has time to investigate every single request. I’ve had my fair share of issues on my own projects and some people are too lazy to diagnose their own issues.
- PurpleRamen 3y agoI'm a bit divided on Calibre. On one side it's very versatile and useful. On the other side had it so many data loses over the years for me, that it's disturbing, and I stopped using it regularly. I wish there would be a good robust alternative. But at this point Calibre is such a Moloch..
- Handprint4469 3y agoAs a counterpoint, I've been using Calibre for 10+ years with hundreds of books and multiple libraries, syncing them across Windows and Linux machines (using Nextcloud), and I've never even once seen any data losses.
- PurpleRamen 3y agoOf course is it not a common problem. Calibre wouldn't be so popular otherwise. And some hundreds book's is not much, unless you change all of them at once. The probability of loses depends on the number of changes. One reason seems poorly implemented writing of data, and lousy communication of pending changes. At least it was the case 2-3 years ago when I last looked at this. But I guess, this is part of the questionable UI..
- Obscurity4340 3y agoWhy doesn't Calibre have a "real" app for iOS like Kybooks that can both render almost all formats relevant (epub+mobi+azw3+pdf+txt+rtf+(audibooks possibly and additionally but its also orthogonal in some sense structurally) and serve as the root folder/Library for all of them? They have an app but it always tiptoes around doing exactly this! No servers or local server stuff or at least don't force people to have that preexisting structure in order to do a facile and intuitive things. Was the implicit act of competing with Apple's Books apps compelled against? If they would do just that, they could have all the donations/money they would ever need
- pasc1878 3y agoSeveral reasons. It is a cross platform application in python using QT so is not really for mobile it even possible. What you state as things it does not need are the things that it was designed to do - reading ebooks came along quite late (v 4 or 5). Its original function is to convert ebooks between formats and store them in a common database.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoI really appreciate your response altho I'm not sure the tenor speaks entirely to the fundamental points I raised. Like it or not, most people who use Calibre to convert books come to view it as a universal ebook library and I'm sure everyone would prefer it at least nodded to that reasonable association if not pivoted whilst retaining the commitment to its converter origins/current mandate. I kinda wish we could "have it all" and I'd have zero issue putting my money towards that end It seems ridiculous to leave that continuity, user-friendliness, and money on the table out of some insistance on never departing from what they essentially are inextricably tied-to and associated with as a manner of household awareness if I might be so bold as to suggest they have reached a degree of ubiquity when it comes to the digital ebook experience
- pasc1878 3y agoI am confused by your comments. I read them as asking why Calibre does not provide a renderer as the main thing but provides other things that people don't need. My comments are that calibre is designed for the things you say people don't need and the renderer on Windows/Mac/Linux is an afterthought and due to its architecture it can't run on mobile devices why KyBooks etc are designed for. I really don't understand the point you are trying to make.
- m00dy 3y agoKindle now accepts epub files directly. Why would you need this app anymore ?
- Cyberfit 3y agoDoes it accept ADEPT encrypted EPUB?
- pasc1878 3y agoCan you look at your library on a PC? Can you use a non Kindle reader? Kindle is a small part of its use.
- dopa42365 3y agoDirectly directly, or "send epub to amazon via email for them to convert it and send it to your device"? Pretty sure it's still only the latter because we can't have nice things. No idea if they're all Ferengi (DRM is good for business?) or there's an actual reason for them to not just support epub actually directly.
- Finnucane 3y agoBecause not everyone uses Kindle? Or Amazon?
- synergy20 3y ago7.0 seems buggy,can't double click to open files anymore,6.x worked well.
- themadturk 3y agoWorks fine for me. I never read ebooks in Calibre, but occasionally open one to take a glance.
- NelsonMinar 3y agoI don't mean to be ungrateful but I'd appreciate some competition for Calibre. The UI feels very dated to me and the functionality is pretty slow and awkward. But it's got such market and mindshare for open source e-reader software that there hasn't been much room for other folks to try something different. I guess there's a few epub readers (Sumatra displays ePubs, someone below mentions Thorium Reader) but I don't know of anything that Calibre does with maintaining a library of e-books in various formats.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoMaybe have a look at Kavita or Ubooquity (possibly Komga, but that's more for comics) https://www.kavitareader.com/ https://www.kavitareader.com/ https://vaemendis.net/ubooquity/ https://vaemendis.net/ubooquity/ https://komga.org/ https://komga.org/
- Gareth321 3y agoCalibre can be a real pain in the ass to set up the first time. Everything from special extensions for certain devices to very specific configurations (which you definitely won’t figure out on your own without a guide) make the experience quite unpleasant. Once it’s up and running it’s… fine. I have a huge library and also long for a better alternative. Of course, this is free, and I try to be grateful for what we have.
- evanreichard 3y agoIt doesn't try to solve the same use cases that Calibre does, but I built an open source (EPUB only) manager / reader / statistics tracker called AnthoLume [0]. It mostly stemmed from me reading in KOReader [1] on my Kindle, and not having the ability to sync the progress to my iPhone / iPad. It's got metadata matching, support for multiple users, and statistics tracking which allows me to have a "Leaderboard" that shows how fast you read (words per minute). Fun competition between my wife and I (that I'm 100% losing). It's a Progressive Web App and utilizes a Service Worker to support 100% offline reading as well. There's a demo server [2] (creds are "demo" for both user & pass). [0] https://gitea.va.reichard.io/evan/AnthoLume https://gitea.va.reichard.io/evan/AnthoLume [1] http://koreader.rocks/ http://koreader.rocks/ [2] https://antholume-demo.cloud.reichard.io/ https://antholume-demo.cloud.reichard.io/
- BookFusionHQ 3y ago[dead]
- m_sahaf 3y agoWorthy of note the Calibre-Web[0] project, which builds atop Calibre library to provide powerful web interface. The project and its maintainer deserve some love and support. [0] https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
- mistahchris 3y agoI use calibre-web and love it.
- snapplebobapple 3y agoIt just recently got wifi kobo sync, which is pretty sweet too
- andrewmutz 3y agoI currently use the Amazon Kindle ecosystem extensively and love it. I am a little bothered by how closed off it is, however. Is there an open ecosystem that is just as good? Where do you buy books? Are most books available or is the selection poor? Does it work with library apps like Libby?
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoI used a Kindle for a decade, but then switched to a Kobo device (Libra 2) and I really enjoy it. Kobo is friendly to users modding the device, so you can easily install KOReader that is a superior interface if you read a lot of PDFs. In spite of being an avid reader, I have never actually bought an ebook. All my reading comes from LibGen, Anna’s Archive, or their predecessor communities for free downloads. Consequently, I never suffered from Amazon’s ecosystem: as soon as I took any new Kindle out of the box, I put it in airplane mode and only sideloaded books over USB.
- ebb_earl_co 3y agoPerhaps not precisely what you’re asking, but there are simple ways to download the Kindle books that you paid good money for, and decrypt them to plain ePub or PDF using Calibre.
- mistahchris 3y agoI was a kindle user and recently switched to Pocketbook. I’ve been buying new ebooks from ebooks.com which are often already drm free. For me, there haven’t been any downsides.
- ShaddyDC 3y agoThere are some options where you can buy DRM free ebooks listed at https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide/ebooks https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide/ebooks
- deanc 3y agoI use calibre to transfer ebooks and pdfs to my kindle on MacOS. I literally use no other features and from what I’ve seen it seems like it’s suffering from enshittification.
- beej71 3y agoRight sidebar on GH has multiple ways to donate to this project: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre
- gerardpg 3y agoIt doesn't work on macOS 12, which is strange because even Apple itself still supports macOS Monterey.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoI just tried to launch Calibre. It nuked my Mac and I had to force a manual reboot - which is only necessary maybe twice a year or so.
- sigzero 3y agoIf you use it, think about donating to the project. Please.
- ntnsndr 3y agoAfter I started using Zotero, I found that I stopped using Calibre. Especially with Zotero's recent improvements, it serves as a decent replacement.
- mkidd 3y agoI've used Calibre for years and I like it a lot. It quite good for creating or editing e-books (oh the ghastly things you see if you look inside an e-book...) The Calibre UX is fine. The real UX divide isn't desktops / laptops vs. smartphones / tablets, but rather content creators vs. content consumers. Modern UX is oriented to content consumers but even there manages to waste too much space and has become too flat and minimal. But once your application is at least partly for content creators, a dense interface is ideal and comforting. I've haven't experienced any data loss with Calibre except when the e-book editor crashes while checking a book for errors. This has always been due to memory exhaustion (2 GB limit) when checking books that were unnecessarily complex (see “ghastly things” above). SumatraPDF opens EPUBs almost instantaneously, but at the cost of not rendering every aspect correctly. As I recall the documentation is clear about this limitation. I like the PocketBook app a lot and use it to read books on smartphones. But it has some basic rendering quirks; for example it can ignore margin-top and margin-bottom on paragraphs, seemingly because it does not apply CSS precedence rules correctly. It took me five e-mail exchanges, including sending a very simple hand-rolled EPUB illustrating the problem, to convince the developers that there is a problem.