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Comment by _the_special_ | Hacker News Reader

Calibre is awesome to use on desktop. But as someone who wants to sync his Calibre library with other devices (iphone + ipad), it gets really frustrating.

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Do you want to sync the whole library with the iphone or just search and download from the iphone? Calibre can be used to just transfer a few books by installing the calibre app on the phone and select books on the computer to transfer. There are also solutions for searching and downloading books from the phone but I haven't tried them much, found it much easier to use the computer to do that.

I can't fit my library on the phone so haven't even thought of syncing the whole thing.

I want to sync the whole thing. Apple Books ineptly forces you to manually copy all of the books themselves to each device, but then syncs collections that you've set up to organize them.

Have you tried Resilio Sync?[0] I'm using it on Android but seems to exist for iOS [1] too. I'm not syncing the library though, might want to make sure you only run the sync when Calibre isn't running to prevent data loss.

[0] https://www.resilio.com/individuals/

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1126282325

No it doesn’t. If you use Books with iCloud any book you add on any device will be automatically synced with the others. Works really well.

It does, but there is an ongoing bug [0] - which I suffer myself - that is always removing the local version of the book. I grew tired of always having to redownload books after a few days.

[0] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/344271/books-autom...

I wish that were true; but I just checked the computer I'm typing this on, and it's missing books from my other one (which is logged in with the same iCloud account).

I have "download new purchases automatically" on.

I've been using KyBook 3 http://kybook-reader.com

Enable the Calibre web server, then use KyBook to connect to it and download the books you want while on the same network as the Calibre server. You can set up a public URL if you want to access them remotely

I do something similar by running Calibre Web on a raspberry pi and then using KyBooks on my devices. It works really well.

I use dropbox for syncing. I point my calibre library to the dropbox folder, and in my ipad I open the dropbox app and "share" the book I want to read to the Books app.

The calibre manual warns against using dropbox on the main library folder, users have lost their complete libraray doing that. Might want to at least pause dropbox while running calibre.

Didn't know that, thanks for the heads up! I backup my data periodically so I'm not worried as much.

I have using calibre with dropbox for 10+ years now. The warning was given out mostly for the internet speeds of the time where the time for your edits to be synced took very long. I had a problem only once in 10 years even then because of dropbox revert file ability was easily able to revert. The only caveat is I do not use calibre server so I usually start calibre do what I want and exit. If you use the server and keep calibre on all the time then Dropbox might not work as well for you though just restarting calibre after any library edits should be enough.

The Calibre Sync app for iOS is pretty good.

Awesome is disbutable. The amount of awesome parts is equal to the amount of aweful parts. Calibre is really a prime example of product which shines despite the manifold deep flaws. And this makes it really problematic, as it seems to dominate it's space so strong, that no many even care to work on an alternatives. Very problematic for the health of the ebook-space.

Let's say it differently. It is the best ebook manager by far, because for 90% of features it's basically the only one...

I think you should start an alternative.

It is easy to criticize, but it takes a toll to fix books in ebook processing. I had to do some minor ePub work and I was like „WHAT, that’s the standard? This can’t be right“ but yeah the formats are trash and complicated. To be dedicated over a decade to fix and develop software is hard.

"Awesome" is a serious stretch.

It's incredibly cumbersome to set up for even the most basic, common tasks that everyone wants to do. He's forced to release constant updates because he refuses to separate the news processing code from the main application code (the processing "recipes" should be separately distributed) and worse, there's no auto-updater, so keeping the application up to date is a pain in the ass. The UI is outdated, hostile to users in general, and not low/impaired-vision friendly (six icons in the standard main toolbar all look virtually identical save for very minor differences, and Goval loves different shades of grey, reducing contrast.)

Last but not least: it's almost exclusively developed by one person (a problem by itself for such a large and widely used project) who is infamous for being at best abrasive and at worst an asshole - and not a particularly good programmer. The commit history is an absolute mess to try and navigate because he seems to have "save" and "commit" confused.

Edit: the very link itself is a perfect example of how Goyal seems to have zero awareness or care for others. Why do I have to click to expand text items in release notes? And he says that some plugins are no longer compatible because of the switch to Qt6. Which ones?

He's hardly an asshole if he's giving us a useful, free, open-source piece of software all by himself. If you don't like it, write your own.

Being an asshole doesn't have to be about what you're doing, it can be about how you're doing it. In fact, that's normally how I see it used -- referring to an abrasive person who's difficult to interact with.

(I'm not commenting on the specifics of Goyal at all; I don't know about their situation.)

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