Book support is finally here!

Many users have been holding out to switch from Ubooquity until we had proper book support and that day is finally here. Internal testing users have already switched and loved some of the improvements over Ubooquity. In addition, this update brings even more stability to parsing and how we scan your disk. Some parallelization has been removed to reduce high I/O for the sake of speed (this will help any Pi users).

How books work

Book support is currently limited to epub files only, mobi, pdf and other file formats are planned for a future release. Books will be parsed out based on both title and volume/chapter information. This allows us to have Light Novels mapped to multiple volumes, but other books, like Stephen King will be parsed out to their original title. Kavita does not enforce a strict folder grouping, you are free to keep all your Stephen King books in one folder, Kavita will map them out to separate entries.

Book Reader

Out of the box, the book reader has a few cool functionalities.

• We have font family overrides, line spacing, font size, and margin.
• We have dark mode, which applies a darker color to the whole screen and darkens images in the book. Navigating between pages does not cause the dark mode to be reapplied. It is consistent for the reading session.
• We have tap to paginate which lets you tap on the sides of the screen to paginate, like how the manga reader works
• We have a progress bar and go to page functionality like the manga reader (click the progress bar)
• Table of Contents is visible at any time from the side nav. When you click on any link in the application, it will keep that state in mind. So you can always back out via the "Go Back" button in the action bar. Go Back will scroll you back to where you were.
• Links that are external will open in a new tab.
• Like the manga reader, your book settings can be saved and applied to all books or overridden for the book you are reading.

Future updates

In addition, this update will see a change in how releases are done. Instead of major releases every month or so, I will be splitting up features into minor release (v0.4.1, v0.4.2) with a new feature in each one. This will let me deliver faster and get feedback quicker. Join the discord to be apart of feedback and discussion of new features.

Change log

Added

• Book Support and an awesome Book Reader to go along with it
• Continuous Manga reading! The ability to move forward and back between different chapters/volumes seamlessly without leaving the manga reader. Please note, you will still incur the loading of the next volume when you transition.
• Swiper support to the library page so you can now drag the cards to see more
• Back to top button in the nav bar
• You can now press the "G" button to open the prompt to go to page (otherwise click the progress bar)
• Tap to Paginate (book reader) is now a user setting and can be turned on permanently in User Settings
• (Manga Reader) New Scaling Option: Automatic. This will try to choose the best fit for your device's screen size.
• RefreshMetadata action on series cards/series detail that will force a refresh of all metadata (cover images, summary) for just that series.
• Skip to content for book reader (accessibility)
• Series cards on the home page now show what library they are from and the library can be linked to see all series from said library
• First time readers of books or manga will now have a popup shown and the menu or sidenav will open automatically for them
• Documentation to the wiki explaining how to use the manga reader menu system
• Close button on the manga reader

Changed

• (Manga Reader) When changing the splitting options, the page re-renders instantly now.
• (Windows) Kavita icon is now packed so the EXE now has an icon when running
• Scaling default for Manga is now set to automatic by default. (new users only)
• Behind the scenes accessibility improvements for screen readers
• Search bar is now visible on small screen phone sizes
• Series info modals now show what library the series belongs to (admin only)

Fixed

• In Progress activity stream was not showing properly due to abandoned rows for progress after a series or volume was deleted during scan.
• Recently added was not respecting a user's access to libraries
• Home page, after marking a series as read/unread, the activity streams would show stale data. Data is now refreshed.
• A LOT of book reader bugs during internal testing
• When creating a new account and password validation errors occur, UI wasn't showing them