eBook management for Kobo
I have an older kobo (Kobo Libra H20) and have been using Calibre, and basically manually plugging it in and syncing books over to it.
I'm wondering if anyone knows of any good ways of doing wireless sync?
I've looked into KoReader but not sure exactly how involved that would be to set up. I am comfortable setting up something "SelfHosted" as long as I can easily spin it up and spin it down, I don't currently have any computer I leave on 100% of the time.
I've seen previous topics here, and Booklore looked interesting, but when I went to track it down it looks like the website is down (the GitHub is still there though), and apparently lots of controversy surrounding it in some reddit posts...it looks like there is maybe a fork of it (Grimmory), but I'm wondering if anyone here has experience with it or anything similar.
I'd prefer something without a lot of AI/LLM use, but not sure how realistic that is.
I only read eBooks, not manga/visual novels, and I don't listen to audiobooks so I don't necessarily need anything with support for any of those.
I would also be fine paying for something, but preferably only a one-time fee not a subscription.
I primarily read books on my Kobo, but it would be a "nice to have" if I could somehow sync to my iPhone (or Apple books) and iPad, but not required (and I don't need it to sync progress between devices, as I'd pretty much only be reading on one at a time).
Additional "nice to have" would be the ability to add books from any device.
Any suggestions? Just use Calibre content server? Or is there something "better"?
Koreader does take a bit of setup but it’s well worth it in my opinion. And after years of using it I discovered the BookShelf plugin which gives you a Home Screen very similar to the stock kobo screen (nickel).
For wireless book syncing you can have calibre running a server and use PDS (I think?) to browse from your koreader and download the books this way. Very similar to how the kobo store works except with your own books.
I’ve got this site bookmarked for wireless Kobo transfers. I haven’t used it though, so no guarantees. Also this is more of a one-off tool than full wireless sync.
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t vibecoded, because I’ve had it in my bookmarks for quite a while.
I personally use BookFusion for my whole library which gives me cross-device syncing (it’s not self-hostable though).
They don’t have KOReader support yet, so you wouldn’t be able to use it on your Kobo currently, but it’s in the works.Nevermind, it’s live. I’ll try this out once I get home from my trip.Based on Koreader's wiki it looks like all Kobo devices are supported so installing it shouldn't be too bad. There are quite a few guides available and the installation scripts they release make it pretty quick.
As @preposterous mentioned, Calibre has wireless syncing options with OPDS. As for self-hosting Calibre Web, I would recommend checking out a couple different forks that bake in some convenience features. Calibre-Web-Automated and autocaliweb are both well maintained and popular. I'm running autocaliweb because it adds better support for metadata providers that I've found useful.