What it is
calibre is the official source code repository for the calibre e-book manager, an open-source application written in Python and released under GPL-3.0. It lives in the content and publishing ecosystem as a desktop tool for books, and it is cross-platform, running on Linux, Windows and macOS. The project has been hosted on GitHub for roughly thirteen years, carries about 25,900 stars and 2,683 forks, and its home on the web is calibre-ebook.com, where an About page and a screenshots page document it further.
The concrete problem it solves is fragmentation across e-book formats, devices and metadata sources. Instead of juggling separate utilities, a user gets one application that can view, convert, edit and catalog e-books in all of the major e-book formats. It can talk to e-book reader devices, go out to the internet and fetch metadata for books, and download newspapers and convert them into e-books for convenient reading. Topics attached to the repository confirm the scope: calibre, ebook, ebook-formats, ebook-manager, ebook-reader, ebooks, epub, epub-generation, kindle and python.
Key capabilities
- Views, converts, edits and catalogs e-books in all of the major e-book formats.
- Communicates with e-book reader devices.
- Fetches metadata for books from the internet.
- Downloads newspapers and converts them into e-books for convenient reading.
- Runs cross platform on Linux, Windows and macOS.
- Generates EPUB output, per the epub and epub-generation topics.
- Handles Kindle-oriented workflows, per the kindle topic.
Who uses it and how
- Readers maintain a cataloged library of e-books across mixed formats instead of relying on per-format readers.
- Owners of e-book reader devices transfer books to and from those devices through the application.
- Users convert titles between formats so a book readable on one device works on another.
- Users enrich existing libraries by pulling metadata for their books from the internet.
- Users who follow periodicals download newspapers and read them as converted e-books.
Getting started
calibre is available through the package repositories of several distributions, as tracked by the project's packaging status badge, and source can be obtained from the tarball of the current release; prebuilt binaries and installers for the supported platforms are produced using the documented build instructions. Setup guidance lives in the user manual, and development environment setup is documented separately.
When to use it — and when not to
calibre suits anyone who needs format conversion, cataloging and device transfer in a single cross-platform tool rather than several narrow utilities. A prospective contributor should note a structural quirk: bug
project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline
calibre
calibre is an e-book manager. It can view, convert, edit and catalog e-books
in all of the major e-book formats. It can also talk to e-book reader
devices. It can go out to the internet and fetch metadata for your books.
It can download newspapers and convert them into e-books for convenient
reading. It is cross platform, running on Linux, Windows and macOS.
For more information, see the calibre About page.
Screenshots
Screenshots page
Usage
See the User Manual.
Development
Setting up a development environment for calibre.
A tarball of the source code for the
current calibre release.
Bugs
Bug reports and feature requests should be made in the calibre bug tracker at Launchpad.
GitHub is only used for code hosting and pull requests.
Support calibre
calibre is a result of the efforts of many volunteers from all over the world.
If you find it useful, please consider contributing to support its development.
Donate to support calibre development.
Building calibre binaries
See Build instructions for instructions on how to build the
calibre binaries and installers for all the platforms calibre supports.
calibre package versions in various repositories
