calibre for Mac

5.15.0

5.15.0

See all Versions

Great.

Swiss knife of e-booking!

v5.7.2 is now out.

A useful app, but the interface is terribly ugly and non-Mac-ish. It's desperately in need of a facelift.

Brilliant stuff. Does all sorts of useful things - much more than look after your library, or libraries. And free!

Excellent love it a whole lot

Excellent! I used it as a reader and ePub to PDF converter.

Good program!!

Does not support High Sierra and my computer can't go higher than OS 10.13.6, I will not buy a new Mac just for one app.

Calibre has been a great tool when I wrote a book, years ago, to convert it for online stores. Only issue was that Amazon refused Calibre's mobi format and I had to make some corrections using Sigil (the other indispensable tool in this category!) The interface could be clearer and more Mac like, but it has far more functions than I needed, so I guess, it's not easy to stuff them in. ;-) The choice to make it 10.14 is surprisingly more radical than what even Apple usually does, but indeed you can still use v3.48, available on their website.

Absolutely superb free library program so easy to use... I have been using it for several years and have more than 900 books. It has the facility to translate books into different formats if needed. It has become essential for me that I truly love.

the "problem", neartheredrocks, is that you don't get bug fixes and new features ... moving over to 64-bit was fine - basing it on 10.14 and higher's Finder was not - there are over half of the Mac population that is 10.13 but not higher-compatible - this could have been easily avoided, and was a bad decision

Dropped support for High Sierra, not a smart move. And yes, I did donate!

a bad news: i'm on 10.13.6 :-(

Must Have this app. Use it more than five years.Strngly recomended. Dio not forget to donate.

For those who need something like this Calibre is one of the most amazing free applications available for macOS. The developer has my deepest gratitude. Yes, it's not very pretty - but I could not care less about that in the light of all its features and capabilities. And those who complain that the latest version of Calibre (from 2019) does not work anymore with an older version of macOS (from 2017) have actually no real reason to complain as an older version of Calibre (3.48) that works perfectly fine with older macOS versions is still available for download on the developer's website. It's free - please don't forget that!

still updating for Win 10 , but not 10.13? bad, bad company decision

Was a program of choice but no longer works with my system 10.13.6.

is anyone else having trouble mounting the DMG file and crashing your system? Tried it from the desktop and from within the download folder and when the mounting process gets to "Attaching" my system crashes and reboots.

Hmmm. Support for High Sierra and lower has been dropped. Not a smart move at this time.

MacUpdate Admins - version 3.48.0 is now out

version 3.39.1 is out MacUser Admin!

Calibre is...awesome. But it leaves you wanting something a bit cleaner. It is bloated, hopefully the devs clean it up.

It's a powerful ebook manager and converter. I've been using it since I got my Kindle. It gets better with the updates.

Calibre is nice and all, but it is also a behemoth full of bloat and slow like a snail -- maybe because it's coded in Python?

Me, I love agile apps that doesn't ship everything-AND-the-kitchen-sink, are quick to open and do its thing well without much fanfare.

Do you guys know of any good alternative fully macOS native?

I've been using calibre since version 0.8. In that time the team (and the main developer) have worked tirelessly to improve the product. It's by far the most powerful ebook tool in existence. It's robust and great at converting your old PDB books into ePub format, and the ePub editor is getting better all the time. If you have a lot of ebooks to keep track of, this is the tool you want!

It stopped working unexpectedly on my machine.

This app is nearly perfect. The PDF to epub is somewhat lacking, but for that a dedicated, current version of an OCR app would work better. I've been using this app for the past 4 years and it's only gotten better over time. The developers know what to do with this app to keep the good features and add great features that make the app better. EPUB to MOBI and vice versa conversion is nearly perfect, and the conversion options are optimal. It can handle huge libraries and the organization is excellent. It's really easy to find a book in the pile. The random book selector is a wonderful feature when you can't decide what to read next. I hope this app keeps going for as long as there are ebooks.

Great app! I especially like that I can simply use the "ebook-viewer.app", which is a part of the calibre package, to open/view EPUB files where they are, without files being copied to a specialized folder. iBooks automatically saves a copy of a file to the iBooks shelf, and I do not need that, as I manage my documents in DEVONthink.

I have been over the Prefs for this app 4 or 5 times and I can not figure-out how to View Files in their Original Ratio. Not that User Friendly.

A very stable ebook manager. It has some serious shortcomings, though. The filters used for organizing your library are so limited that you are still reduced to scrolling through a long list (if your library is as large as mine - 600+ files). Trying to narrow that down requires adding keywords - like I remember to add those every time (ha!). Plugins are also not updated regularly (with few exceptions). And you also cannot organize all of your ebooks into folders and subfolders (which would help solve the filter problem). However, it is still light years ahead of iBooks and not nearly as restrictive as Kindle. I am a regular user, but I really, really, really hope that an alternative comes out soon.

v 3.9.0 is quarantined by ClamXAV:: calibre.app Html.Exploit.CVE_2017_8749-6338876-0 Downloaded from Developer website: KOVID GOYAL not from MacUpdate Peter

Calibre is working well, I'm satisfied with the order in my libraries the app made. I just had a little problem trying to convert into PDF format but my tech friend helped me with that and everything's working fine so far.

Warning: This is a fake MU virus/SpyWare download link. It is NOT the real download. If you get a file called "calibre installer.dmg" that's just under 1MB in size, you got the MU adware installer, not the real DMG from the author. Your download should be over 80MB. Go to the author's website to get the real file. http://calibre-ebook.com/download

Calibre is a unique program, and it makes keeping my collection of PDFs and EBooks so simple. Conversion is great and the ecceptionally powerful EBook editing really makes light work of very complex changes. Regular improvements and great plugins. And it works brilliantly with Marvin, by far the best EPub app for iOS.

I <3 Calibre. Happy 10th Birthday! Long may you live.

My only complaints: Its icons (Write me, I know a great artist!) and its learning curve.

A fantastic app for managing my ebook library. Don't know where I'd be without it!

[This refers to v.2.50.1]

1. No way to take notes and write annotations in Calibre, so – for my purpose – the ebooks must be converted.
2. After conversion, text in PDFs can neither be searched nor copied. The created PDFs are therefore utterly useless, until they themselves are converted again, this time with an OCR software. I have used OCRKit for this purpose. The whole process is a real pain in the butt.
3. Until now I have also converted the ebooks to Rich Text Files and read and annotated them in Nisus Writer Pro.
4. I have now decided to dump Calibre due to the above mentioned drawbacks. Clearview does an excellent job in converting ebooks to PDFs. The text is searchable and can be copied right away.
5. Clearview has a process bar, so you always see how long a conversion is going to take. In Calibre there is only a rotating wheel, and you never know when it's going to end.
6. I have been unable to find the developer's email address in order to send enhancement requests. The so-called "calibre bug tracker" takes me to a Ubuntu site. I don't have Ubuntu, so I gave up.

Calibre, bless it, is the only app that will let me easily add books to my Barnes & Noble Nook HD- a fine little tablet on many levels but Mac-hostile beyond belief in this day and age. Still no idea how to add photographs and music though. Any ideas people?

Version 2.39.0 is available at the developer's site.

You know, the big advantage of the app - it is free! and it does its work though. A little bit slowly thinking, a little bit buggy… But it does what it says and it is totally free!

Great app! Does really good job for free!

This software is purpose-driven and will eschew any attempts to make it into something it isn't. You will not find a more feature-complete alternative anywhere, but may find it maddeningly obtuse at times. The UI is not as modern as some of us desire, but yet nobody hates it enough to submit changes — adding to the effort will be the fact that it's not written specifically for OS X but needs to cooperate within the confines of other platforms as well. There is a place for a developer to take my books and my money if they can manage a library half as well as Calibre and it isn't hard to improve on the reading experience of iBooks, but Calibre is able to tread the ground between desktop, mobile device, and ereader without falling on it's face in spite of the interface and performance oddities that come with most any software with similar requirements and toolkits. Most of the complaints I have with Calibre have to do with it being great at accepting annotations and data about books but being completely opposed to letting that data travel with my books later — I use it to fix weird formatting in ebooks, view ebooks, and organize a large library of books, but find myself constantly wishing it could be more than the helper application that facilitates my use of other software that is equally frustrating in terms of capabilities. I don't want to use it, but it's the only card I've got in my hand. It's reliable for me, but not something I take any pleasure in using. I have to say that I didn't know what ODPS was before Calibre and I'm stunned it isn't more widely used — if you have Marvin for iOS it's pretty brilliant but you're still only halfway to where I think most readers want to be — delivery of books is important but *then what*?

Simply the best bibliographic app

An example of pure ugliness. Perhaps even works well.

2.15.0 runs perfectly under Yosemite, but fails to start under Lion (at least on the two independent Lion systems from which I've tried to run 2.15.0). Had to revert to 2.14.0 on my Lion systems. Don't know if it runs on MtnLion and/or Mvrks.

Great. Easy to use. Works well with my Sony Reader.

This is an excellent, flexible, and powerful program. Yes, the interface could use some work, but the ease of organization and conversion, the plugin capabilities, and the ease of finding books all more than make up for that. I'm on a Mac, and I use Calibre to organize, and Clearview as my reader. (Yes, the Calibre reader is underwhelming and I don't use it.)

this app need GUI guy, hope they can find great guy to fix the GUI, its not match with maveric or yosemite

I really feel this app should be installed on SnowLeopard. I have it on Yosemite but I like to look at my Snow Leopard iMacs from time to time. The GUI is outdated but it is OK.

Yep! Inspite of the peasantish look it's a great piece of software. I've just converted a 65 MB azw3 file to epub without any blemishes (though it took more than two hours even on my brand new iMac). And for free! I'm more than happy with it. I will certainly make a good donation to the developers. Great work!

The only issue for me is the program interface. The rest is OK. No glitches.

Still by far the best cross-platform extensible and powerful ebook manager across all major OS platforms. The ebook editor, using HTML / CSS inspector is in itself worth the price of a separate app. I use this to edit styling of epubs to my preferences, ebook conversion and metadata management, at which it excels. And I use it on more than one platform, and in this case the UI is consistent across platforms.

To you folks carping about Calibre, I REALLY wanted to say "then by all means, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!". INSTEAD, I'll say the following: Many people use Calibre for various purposes and are satisfied with the way it works, as well as being grateful to the author for all of the hard work put into this program and for making it cross-platform and FREE. It isn't perfect. NOTHING created by man is perfect, at least in my opinion. Ask the programmers who wrote software for the LEM (Lunar Landing Module) and the Space Shuttle. I personally KNOW how much work it takes to do something like Calibre and how disheartening it can be to see people disrespect your efforts. I'm a retired Sr. Systems programmer (30+ years experience) and I worked on real-time process-control systems, something enormously more complicated than what almost all of the computer users & programmers do. Does that make me SPECIAL? NO. Experienced? YES. In my working life I've done an enormous variety of things with computers and electronics. I believe that I am qualified to hold an informed opinion that could possibly be helpful in a number of subjects. I've EARNED that right. I DON"T APPRECIATE folks in the "cheap seats" - the uninformed and uninvolved - taking pot shots at someone else. Step up, do the work, and THEN you MIGHT be knowledgeable to actually have something helpful to say. Of course, EVERYONE has a right to their own opinion, but if it isn't HELPFUL, keep it to yourself, how about it? Carping is NOT a pretty personality characteristic. If you find fault, talk to the responsible party. If the fault isn't a bug, but is something you would prefer, consider offering to help or offer good old money. You may not get your way, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Please think before opening your mouth for input OR output. How would YOU like people to talk about something you made or did?

Hey Mr. Kovid Goyal, or whomever is maintaining this software. You have a great software but instead of releasing a new version every other day, could you spend some time and standardize you GUI, fix the menu items so they look like a regular Mac software? ex: Preferences should all be located under the Calibre/Preferences menu, not in a separate menu bar item, this will save some real estate on that menu bar... Add Books should be under a File menu Edit Metadata should be Edit and so on. Then the main window and other windows could use a refresh , but this can come later... You want to get customers satisfaction up and received congratulations and be appraised by the Mac user community , fix this and you'll see this all. Thanks

I agree with some people who say this app is overrated. I'm pretty sure people give it 4 or 5 stars out of thankfulness for being almost the only one of its kind and free. Yes, I am thankful for it as well. Thank you! But the GUI really is ugly, cumbersome, and the app not in the least "mac-like". In fact it's so unintuitive, it almost takes away the joy from making an eBook.

FireMuffin, If it is so "terrible" because you continue to download (and use) it ?

This software is slow, buggy, intrusive, with an appallingly bad interface, and just one of the most awful high-rated apps I have ever used. It converts very poorly...one may get close to the results one wishes for, but only after many frustrating trial-and-error attempts. (And the Windows version is just as bad and probably a bit worse.) For the life of me, I will never understand these high ratings for this software. They've fooled me into installing and trying it three times, hoping the updated releases are genuinely better, but they never are. Never again, and this time I'm leaving a genuine rating regardless of all the hype. One of the most bloated, buggy, and worst designed applications I've ever seen.

I like it for it's ability to easily handle and update metadata.

Why not add CBZ or Comic Book format? http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/35397/ehon

Upgraded to 2.0 from 1.31 (Windows x32 and OS X). Two third party file plugins that worked in 1.31 (and all previous 1.x before that) no longer work in 2.0 (again, both Windows and OS X). Was wondering if anyone else was experiencing any issues with plugins? It is possible these plugins stopped working somewhere between 1.31 and 2.0, I don't know, I didn't bother to update after 1.31 as all was working fine for what I wanted. I did confirm that returning back to 1.31, the plugins worked again. plugins: ineptepub_v01.7_plugin ineptpdf_v01.4_plugin

The thing that impresses me most about v. 2.0 of this already fine program is the much greater speed with which it launches and executes. Obviously the developer has made some important under-the-hood improvements above and beyond what he presents in his list of changes. It makes Calibre MUCH more pleasant to work with.

Great software

Does anyone know if it's possible to keep the real page numbers in Kindle books? I can run a book through Calibre, then open it in Kindle for Mac and the page numbers are gone.

Amazing features but can be very slow and laggy

calibre, version 1.41.0 it does not initiate ERRO: try to eliminate file: /var/folders/sn/13mhwvl51hd5w8w8v5p47yhw0000gn/T/gabinetedecriacaopropagandagabinetedecriacaopropaganda-calibre-gui.socket But doesn't exist. Any suggestion?

This software is simply the best available, amazingly powerful for both management, conversion and optimising any kind of electronic books. The EPUB/MOBI editor is really powerful (with a wonderful implementation of web debug tools to live-inspect styling), you can fix and optimise EPUBs changing fonts and layout **so** easily... And the sync between this and the great iOS reader Marvin is really solid. Very much worth a donation!

It's awesome!!! Five stars just out of gratefulness to the developer for his incredibly nice work. For all the things it can do, at a price that can't be beat, great app. Try it out.

The best of all such apps. Does everything I could ever want, and then some. I don’t mind the constant updates, and not one of them has failed to work as advertised upon first downloading it — considering the frequency and speed of new feature introduction, that’s quite a stellar record. My only complaint is that it’s a bit ugly.

Don't know what I'd do without this indispensable software.

This app gets better and better. Thanks DEV for the updates.

Why wouldn't you buy a Kindle? Many friends of me like epub. I convert everything to mobi and that's it! :-D Quick, easy, and free. Thanks for this great app.

I'm very thankful for this. It's awesome. I just wanted to mention that the updates drive me crazy. It doesn't have an internal update mechanism, updates are released almost every other day, they are almost 90mb and the server it downloads from is soooooo slow all the time. I'd like to keep calibre updated, but it drives me crazy. I would love to pay some money for this any time if it would help with development. Thanks

Used this a long time ago in Windows. It was an overwhelming response. Though the learning curve was long and tiring, I always loved how it was free and all the things we could do with it. The new version has a spruced up look and its better than ever.

This is incredible and free software. It is is so good that it really makes you greedy. Should I ask for it to auto update or I am too greedy? :)

Long time user on windows, happy to use it on Mac!

What a gorgeous set of tools. And - it's still free. Big thanks to the developer.

This is a nice eBook tool if you are a book and eBook worm like me. It helps to sort out catalogue and can also be edited. The 1.17.0 version works especially good with Mavericks and I gotta admit that the developers did a very good job and the updates are also impressive. After months of using the app, I only got one complain to make, that is when it comes to my local network, it slowed everything down and I think this is something the app team should be working on, sometimes it does bothering me. But still, it’s a good one.

You can't beat Calibre for features, but JerryFisher1625 is right. The GUI is really dated, and it prevents any real organization of the library other than by tags (cumbersome). Adding the ability to create subfolders (or additional libraries) based upon custom criteria would be great. Using tags is a pain, I constantly feel I need to tweak the tags for different books, just to keep certain ones from popping up in certain virtual libraries. Even viewing the books, files, etc. via a GUI like Delicious Library or Bento would be a plus. But you cannot beat the value, it is what iBooks should have been.

Calibre is what iBooks for Mac should have used for a starting point. The developer of Calibre is to be commended for essentially creating the Swiss Army Tool of eBooks and now documents as well. Kudos to all the hard work! I think the only quibble I have is that Calibre looks rather dated. Deep inside where it counts, it is sleek and fast. It can handle anything I throw at it, but I can't help but wince slightly at its appearance. Please, please, please let shallow folks like myself have our cake and eat it too -- please update the look of Calibre or give idiots like myself simple options to skin it. It is incredible software and with the way Apple has managed to drop the ball everywhere with iBooks for Mac, I think Calibre has a very long, bright future.

Another great version! It works great on Mavericks!

Each version improves upon the other. Avery useful app.

Current Version works perfectly under Mavericks [OS X 10.9], maintaining its wondrously comprehensive 6 star functionality.

Does not launch using OS X 10.9 DP8. Please fix before the OS is released.

Now that Calibre has gotten to v.1.. versioning is flying Google Chrome-like.. Calibre..v29 sooner than you think :0)

Calibre just blows the doors off anything else I've come across. It is truly a library management application, with bulk conversions, meta data refresh, etc., etc., etc.

Calibre is a rather hefty gem, weighing in at about 250 MB, worth every byte! This has to be one of the most remarkably capable and important free programs in the Mac hemisphere. Highly recommended to one and all who enjoy reading, cataloguing, editing and creating eBooks! Don't virtually touch an eBook without it. Incredibly grateful thanks to the remarkable developer of Calibre and his dedicated work on this terrific software project. (^_^) Happy Birthday Calibre!

Well, at last the developer ‘jumped’ at v. 1 after a long time of second dot small updates every week or twice a week. A small jem of software.

Version 1.0 at last - welcome! And kudos to the developer for this superb programme.

Okay, okay. I get the point. Calibre does handle PDF's and is exactly what I need, it's already proving a great help to me in my work. I have only one substantial criticism: I double-click on an entry and up comes the item in question in Preview (presumably something similar happens for various other formats). But suppose that for some reason I'd prefer to use Adobe Reader or Skim instead? As nearly as I can tell by digging around in this rather complicated program, there's no way the user can specify his own choice of default programs for this purpose.

By now there are about a jillion programs that do essentially this same thing of managing e-books. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands (at least) books are available from souirces like Google Books and The Internet Archive in downloadable PDF format. For professional reasons, I've accumulated several hundred of these on my hard disk. But, except for iTunes, which is not very good at sorting my items by category, I don't know of a single program that could help me ride herd on my ever-growing library. Seems to me that, rather than investing time and energy in reinventing the wheel, some developer might more profitably develop a program for managing books in PDF format.

calibre is truly using for managing and backing up a Kindle library… but without standard syncing between the Kindle and the library the app is cumbersome to use. I'd also wish for a simple 'quality check' that can be configured and initiated with one click (the plethora of choices in the respective menu are overwhelming at the moment).

Not the greatest looking app on the planet, but nothing else compares, so it is easily overlooked. :] 5 stars.

A solid eBook reader and organizer. New things are always being tweaked and bugs ferreted out, but the basic functionality (the mainstream 5% of features I use) has always remained solid. If you don't like the regular updates, then don't update. The application works great even if you last updated it a month or a year ago.

One of the developers of HandBrake, another fantastic free, open source software program, posted a wonderful essay on his view of what open source software is and isn't, mainly in response to those who go to extreme to voice their disappointment or opposing point of view because HandBrake doesn't implement a feature they want or meet their needs. The full text is here https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/IsIsnt Here is a brief summary from that essay It's referring to HandBrake, but I think people can see that I'm making a point it applies to Calibre, and it's the best essay I've read that sums up the whole concept of open source. ------------------- As the number of new feature requests for HandBrake has risen dramatically in the past few weeks, I consider it prudent to remind end-users of what open source is - and isn't. Open source is: A means to encourage software innovation among diverse groups of programmers A policy of open inspection and analysis of source code, both to educate and provide a means for constructive criticism A means by which programmers can "scratch their itch" for mental stimulation while at the same time solving computing problems that are frequently applicable even to non-technical users Free, both intellectually and in terms of cost Open source is not: A way to get commercial-quality support at no charge A free-for-all forum to ask for pie-in-the-sky software features and expect them to be implemented as requested and with no delay An invitation to harass and otherwise frustrate a small and dedicated development staff because they didn't do what you wanted Open source software is exactly what it sounds like: It's software written by a (usually small) group of highly-dedicated people that solved particular problems they themselves had and thought others might find useful as well. Like most things that are free, it comes with no warranty: If it does what you want, that's great - that's exactly why it was offered to you. If not, you have the freedom of choice to either modify it to suit your desires or find another software package that more closely meets your needs. As I stated in another thread (and alluded to again here), the features you find in any open source software package are there because at least one programmer needed them and implemented them to meet their needs (more forward-thinking programmers often at least attempt to make them flexible enough to work for others with similar needs as well). I am aware of no open source software either currently or previously available that catered to the needs, whims, or desires of end-users. That isn't what it's about. If you want the freedom to tell someone what you want and expect them to do it, that's called commercial software, where you make your intentions known with your purchasing decisions and vote with your wallet. That is not open source.

Great tool for me, gets even beter every time. Keeps me and my e books organized.

To the few complainers — cool your jets! This is excellent and free software! Go make something better but stop whining. Whining just makes you sooooo small. And why would anyone want to give a gift to a whiner? Give thanks and you'll inspire the programmer.

When comes out non-looking a win 3.1. designed version?

It does it all! It stores your books effectively and accurately.It is an accurate and effective New Reader encompassinf many RSS subjects of interest.It deserves our support and encouragement!

For all the things it can do, at a price that can't be beat, great software. I appreciate the developer's efforts to maintain weekly updates. There have been several books I wanted that were only available on Barnes and Noble for the Nook. Calibre, combined with the DRM removal scripts, allowed me to transfer the legally purchased books from BandN to my iPad, allowing me consume the content on MY choice of device, not BandN.