this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2025
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Calibre is much much more than an ebook reader. Actually if anything the reader is one of the poorer aspects of it imo. It is a whole ebook and ebook library management and editing software. And reading the stuff about AI that people have been calling for it sounds like people want it to organize their library, do some "smart" operations for hundreds of books and stuff like that. But also just "explain to me what this means" type of stuff.
To me using Calibre as just an ebook reader feels like using Photoshop as just an image viewer
I can see the usecase, I just don't find it useful myself.
I hate that the reader part registers itself as a default program for every file format. I didn't mean to open this txt files with Calibre 😭
Calibre is also kind of a pain to use. I tried to use it once and went back to my syncthing folder of pirated epubs. The idea seems great but it doesn't seem like it would make my life any easier.
It's a massive beast and the UI is messy, ugly and daunting. But nothing else just does all the things it does. It works for my purpose (metadata editing, book jacket, library management, conversions etc). I don't enjoy using it but there's just nothing to replace it for me.
You can avoid the GUI entirely by using the included command-line tools. Haven’t done it myself though