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by INeedMoreRam 1236 days ago
I've been using Calibre on all my devices for years and have hundreds of books annotated.

Why would I switch to Foliate?

4 comments

Calibre is an e-book management and viewer and editor app with numerous features. Foliate is a minimal (design-wise) viewer with an elementary library. If Calibre works for you then you shouldn't because they aren't really comparable.
For me personally:

- Foliate looks better and is easier to read than Calibre

- Foliate opens the file o ask it to open and that's it, while Calibre starts to browse to all my folders and index every pdf and Epub file accessible from my laptop!

Are you also able to access/browse your Calibre library on your phone? And what about your annotations?

Currently i'm resisting not using annotations, because while i manager books on my laptop, i read them on a e-ink android tablet(Onyx air). I would want my annotations to sync two ways if possible.

Not OP, I haven't used Foliate either.

Calibre UI is unappealing and too complex. Sometimes you just need a library of books without the clutter. Foliate looks simpler to use, but for some reason it doesn't allow bulk imports.

>doesn't allow bulk imports

Can drag-and-drop multiple epubs to library view and will be added (but directories raise an error). Can search 'epub' on file manager instead if files are spread in subdirectories.

There is calibre-web[1] which some might prefer.

[1] https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web