Every time I try a new self-hosted ebook manager/viewer, I end up back with Calibre-web reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -rwsr-xr-x · 2023-12-27 02:40 I've tried several ebook manager/viewers including Kavita (bottom of the list) to Calibre's own web portal, and I end up back at Calibre, because it still runs circles around the competition in speed, memory footprint and features. It's reader is pretty ugly, however. Don't get me wrong, Kavita has a pretty UI, but its features leave a lot to be desired. The ebook viewer is definitely one of the poorest I've seen/used. Eventually it starts internally failing and can't scale fonts or font sizes, and you have to bounce the container running it to wake it back up again. The [oqurum reader](https://github.com/oqurum/TheReader) looked nice, but is still in rough shape/development. It might surpass the others, with a little more attention and love. [Komga](https://komga.org/) looked nice, but has limited customizations/features (font sizes, columns, text to speech), so it was off the list for ebooks. Great for comics, not so much for other document formats (mobi, epub, pdf). [Jellybook](https://github.com/JellyBookOrg/JellyBook), part of the Jellyfin suite, looked sharp as well, but suffers the same problems as Komga (lack of features) and oqurum (lack of active development), so it stagnated. [Mango](https://github.com/getmango/Mango) was another from the recommended list, but it suffers a greater problem. You have to restructure your entire ebook hierarchy in order for Mango to even ingest it and present those back to you for reading. For collections of thousands of ebooks, that's a non-starter. What are others using that supports the rich features that something like Calibre-web ships with by default, but in a more modern framework and cleaner UI? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- memphisraynz · 2023-12-27 03:57 Might be worth taking a look at AudiobookShelf ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HPnew · 2023-12-27 04:44 This is my go too ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -rwsr-xr-x · 2023-12-27 06:44 > Might be worth taking a look at AudiobookShelf It looks like it *only* handles audiobooks, which none of mine are. Does it handle uploading standard, non-audio books as well? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- memphisraynz · 2023-12-27 06:45 Sure does. The dev does a great web app and mobile app. The name doesn't do it justice. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -rwsr-xr-x · 2023-12-27 07:36 > The dev does a great web app and mobile app. The name doesn't do it justice. Ok, I set that up and imported my local Calibre library (6,300+ titles, 2,160 authors), and it appeared to work. I had to resync the library 2-3 times because it crashed trying to import it a couple of times, but it did make it. It's a nice, clean UI, but it suffers the same reader problem all of these seem to suffer. It also makes me wonder if they're using the same Ereader widget: The flow of the text and font sizes across titles is very inconsistent. On some books, I can scale the font size and line spacing correctly, as expected, but on other titles (same ebook file format), the font stays exactly the same size, but the lines just widen or narrow, and line spacing is completely ignored. I would like to see some margin options as well, so I can set it to single column and then add margins to narrow the width of the page to 'book sized', not full screen width which seems to be the default. That might look good on a mobile, but definitely not on a laptop. No off-white color options for pages, you're either in light mode or dark mode. Too monolithic for reading dozens of chapters in a day on a screen. There doesn't appear to be a way to query the author images from any source, much like DeliciousMonster Library used to do with books and ASINs after scanning the ISBN with your phone to import real paper books into their bookshelf. I'm not sure how or why, but it created a mountain of duplicate titles, with the dupes having some numbering in parenthesis after the title name. I'm going to have to re-scan the library and see if Audiobookshelf did this or one of the other selfhosted ebook reader apps I've tested, duplicating my ebooks within each author's directory. I'll keep poking at it. Thanks for the recommendation! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- memphisraynz · 2023-12-27 07:40 I don't really read many books on my phone, use my kindle mainly. I really just use it for management. The dev has a discord, might be worth jumping in and having a chat with him and see if these things are in development ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -rwsr-xr-x · 2023-12-27 07:53 > The dev has a discord, might be worth jumping in and having a chat with him and see if these things are in development Sounds good, on my way! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Trevor68 · 2023-12-27 09:59 Are you using Calibre, or Calibre-web? As you mention both? The calibre http server is pretty barebones, Calibre-web is much prettier, and integrates nicely with Kobo's ---------------------------------------------------------------------- salzgablah · 2023-12-27 12:35 My issue with calibre-web is getting the books to my Kindle in an easy way. Any suggestions? I was thinking of using the desktop calibre and sync the database and files to the nas....since it's frowned upon to use the desktop app with all files on a network drive. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jasonweiser · 2023-12-27 12:50 Calibre-web has a great “send to Kindle” feature. It’s slightly involved because you need to set up SMTP and then add that email to the kindle’s allowed recipients for documents, but once you do that there’s a little paper air plane icon for each .epub to send it straight from the web UI and, for me, it’s worked every time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jasonweiser · 2023-12-27 12:52 The only thing that keeps me from using calibre-web 100% of the time is that it doesn’t save your spot in books if you use a different browser. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BillGoats · 2023-12-29 00:50 Do you read on your phone? If so, I strongly recommend Moon Reader (Android app) coupled with Calibre-Web (ODPS). If you want open source, I believe Librera also works well. I only tested it briefly, but went back to Moon Reader due to personal preference regarding minor differences.