Unfortunately with every year there are less and less such applications, but they are still out there, e.g. SumatraPDF or KeePassXC.
Calibre is an incredible piece of software, but of all the things it does great, the UI isn't one of them.
That's...why it exists?? What else would you do with hover titles besides showing additional information about an options?
I recently picked it up for the first time and had no issue whatsoever getting it to do what I needed it to do without any guidance.
Are tooltips abuse now?
What? How? “Add Books” is a book icon with a plus sign. “View” is a magnifying glass. “Remove Books” is a recycling symbol. “Preferences” is the usual settings-esque gear icon. “Device” is an e-reader. “Send To Device” is an e-reader with an arrow. I’ll grant you that some are vague, like “Download Metadata” being a globe, but the other major part you’ve glossed over is that all of these have their titles directly underneath them. There is no need to guess as to what they do.
> menus are nested and super-specific
I fail to see how that’s bad. Tree-like menus are extremely intuitive, and prevent having 50 items in a single column.
But the functionality as an ebook manager is insanely great in my view.
I like the retro style, but new users are always completely lost with the UI, its off putting to a lot. I know, I introduced (or tried to) introduce some people to calibre in an effort to show them that Amazon what not the best and only way.
But, again, hats off to those making calibre. I will moan publicly when my PR for GUI improvement are not approved, until then I’ll shut up.
www.mumble.info
Great to see improved Kobo support.
For this release Kovid obsoleted many of those plugins by moving the functionality into the base application. He also has his own Kobo now, so he's able to take on that maintenance.
There's probably an O(n^2) page break algo there which is fixed with the kepub format
This was after a year or two of suffering through bad performance and a janky experience. Except for the purchased books of course. Somehow I never thought it was possible to fix.
Nice, but not game changing.
But how do people consume these books on iOS today? I have yet to find any simple and not-get-in-the-way ebook reader for iOS, anyone have any recommendations?
I have not, I still consider myself a iOS newbie and tend to avoid the Apple software because of their lack of features and usefulness. But I'll give Books a try, didn't realize it let you read local files, thanks a lot for the recommendation! :)
For downloading the files themselves, I think I ended up using this: https://github.com/treetrum/amazon-kindle-bulk-downloader
Edit: Oh, just saw the warning from the bulk downloader's README now :/
> As of 26th February 2025, Amazon has removed the ability to download backups of your Kindle books. Unfortunately, this means that this tool is no longer functional.
The Kobo (obok) and ADE methods are still fine and easy to do. I wouldn't bother buying new books from Amazon anymore personally.
2. tiReader: handles more file formats than Bluefire, but is slower and has a strange UI which confuses me even after using it for months. Search works more consistently than in Bluefire.
3. Apple’s own Books app. I don’t like how it mangles epub files rendering them unexportable but it’s great for PDFs
I don't read much on iOS, but I bought MapleRead[0]. It's quite nice and support OPDS endpoints. Books has a nicer UI, but I dislike the focus on the marketplace (same with Music, I don't like not being able to disable the store when I'm not using it and don't plan to)
Drop your books in a directory on your NAS, let Calibre pick them up from there and do your actual processing with Calibre-web.
I gave up on the synced reading position at the same time I sold my Kindle, but I can live with that.
Getting stuff on the device is a bit of a hassle too, because I can't exactly go plug it in to my NAS, but exporting 50+ books to a directory and copying them manually takes a few minutes and I'm set for a year or more - so it's time well spent :D
Having everything (except for comics) consolidated in one place is the main reason I tolerate Calibre's quirks and eccentricities. It's ... opinionated, but it's still by far the best tool available for the price.
I could install it on my laptop, but then nobody else could access it when it's in my backpack :D
It can also automatically convert the books to different optimised formats, for example: you don't need a 4000x3000 resolution full colour front cover if you're uploading the book to a 6" BW eInk reader.
Also Kobo has their own "KEPUB" format that is optimised for their devices and converting standard EPUB to that format results in faster page turns etc.
Do you want the _exact_ book file you've downloaded or just _a_ file of the book you purchased (a license to read)?
For the latter, finding (main stream) ebooks isn't exactly hard, but it also isn't exactly legal.
For example I buy physical copies of books, which I don't have the space for. Then I donate them away and "acquire" the ebook version to read and archive. If an author sells the ebook directly without Amazon (or Rakuten) as a middleman, I purchase it from them directly.
I couldn't make it work on books already downloaded to my kindle - they had to be downloaded via the app - and since it requires an old version of an app that automatically tries to update, I'm not sure how long it'll be possible, so my suggestion is to dump kindle and Amazon if you every want to have any control over your books.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/kobo/comments/1jbsf2n/comment/mhwhx...
I have to setup my Windows again and do it eventually though.
Now I just host a deadsimple webserver in the folder with my files and browse to it on my Kobo, could not be easier.
> without explicitly being asked to do so
You may argue that if you're installing Calibre, you want document file types to be associated with it, but it'd still be nicer if the user was given an option not to do that in the installer itself, instead of just overwriting whatever other file type associations user has had.
Zotero and Calibre are my most important tools for managing my digital books and reading material.
I don’t like the reader of Calibre, I prefer reading on my Kindle or in the iPad. Hence Zotero.
But Zotero is way more than that. You can collect / reference / read and highlight research papers and publications. You can add content via browser plugin or via the DOI number of an article. Super smooth UX.
I think I've even seen (self-published) ePubs getting contaminated with these annoying bookmark tags, and as a result had Calibre open them on some random page (presumably precisely the one at which the editor or author have closed it before deciding that it's now fit for publishing).
Imagine VLC storing the current playback position in every audio or video file! I think not even iTunes does/did that, unless the user actively edits some metadata, and that wasn't very considerate with source files either.
And then, on the other hand, Calibre does not automatically propagate actual metadata updates to the ePub file even after explicitly editing them in the library manager view – the one place where that's usually arguably user intent... (Except when opening and closing the book source editor without touching anything, because that rewrites the metadata at every opening time in its default settings, i.e. not at saving time! Make it make sense...)
The most infuriating thing is that these decisions can all be overridden with some preferences – it just happens that the default is exactly the opposite of what I'd expect to happen. (The reader should not write things by default, but if it must, the metadata editor should damn well too.)
"Kovid has stated numerous times that any patches which work towards python3 compatibility without hurting python2 functionality or performance would be happily accepted. Oddly enough, no one has ever taken him up on that, though a number of people have insisted it is very important that he himself do that work."
Edit: I meant Thorium Reader https://www.edrlab.org/software/thorium-reader/
And, since managing your own (usualy de-DRMed) files is important to you, do you also feel like you want offline audio files?
I'm asking because I'm working on an app for myself that converts my Calibre and Zotero books to clean mp3s for listening on my own. I also find that offline conversion results in much better quality TTS outputs instead of apps like ElevenReader or Speechify.
Interested to try it out.
My favorite voice Is Sir Lawrence Olivier.
But I always tune in to a thread about this app to read the brutal commentary about its UI.
The juxtaposition of that and the app's complete dominance in its niche are always food for thought...
