Introducing CB&R (Calibre Browse & Read) An E-Ink & Touch-Optimized Calibre-Web Fork

[karlfranz]

Hi everyone,
I wanted to share a passion project I’ve been working on for the past few months. Like many of you, I use the excellent Calibre-Web to share my 40,000+ eBook collection with family and friends. However, I found myself wanting a more streamlined, tablet-friendly experience for my non-tech-savvy relatives, as well as a much more robust built-in reading experience.
What started as a few minor UI tweaks slowly evolved into Calibre Browse & Read (CB&R).

CB&R is a heavily customized fork of Calibre-Web, specifically optimized for iPads, modern Android e-readers, laptop & desktop PCs and E-Ink displays. It strips out legacy theme dependencies, modernizes the UI for touch interfaces, and provides native compatibility with the latest Calibre 9.x desktop database schemas (no more 500 Internal Server Errors!).

Here is a look at what the interface looks like:



Why create another fork?
My main goal was to eliminate the need for users to download books to third-party apps (like MoonReader+) just to get a good reading experience. I wanted a connected, seamless environment where progress is remembered, and navigation is simple.
CB&R uses a custom database routing system (ub.py) to seamlessly integrate expanded reader features directly into the internal memory (app.db). This keeps your main Calibre library database completely untouched and pristine.

Key Browser Features

• Unified OS-Aware Theming: Seamless Light, Dark, and Auto (OS-Aware) modes.
• Dedicated E-Ink Modes: Two specific e-Ink themes (Light and Dark) force a high-contrast grayscale mode, disable all UI animations, and sharpen container borders for crisp screen refreshes.
• Dynamic Smart Shelves: Save Advanced Search results into dynamic shelves that re-run the search every time they are opened.
• Series Stacks & Box Sets: Visually collapse book series into a single stack with a badge counter, and automatically pull anthologies into a dedicated "Box Sets" shelf.
• Side-Scrolling Carousels: "Currently Reading" and "Discover (Random Books)" lists stay pinned to the top of your browse pages for quick access.
• Granular User Tracking: Interactive 5-star ratings, "Wishlist" tagging, and "Mark as Completed" tracking—all with visual overlays on the book covers.

The Upgraded Reader Experience
The built-in ePub and PDF readers have been massively overhauled. Settings are saved per-book and per-user, and instantly sync across devices.

• Persistent Tracking: The reader remembers your exact page position, bookmarks, custom 4-color text highlights, and annotations.
• Scrub Bar Navigation: A visual slider that includes tick marks for your bookmarks and colored dots for your highlights.
• PDF Hardware Pan & Zoom Lock: Maximize your screen real estate by cropping out large white margins. Zoom and pan the PDF exactly where you want it, lock it, and the reader will persistently apply your custom crop to every page you turn.
• Intelligent Theme Inversion: For genuine PDFs with actual text layers, the Dark and Sepia themes will mathematically invert and color-shift the canvas for comfortable nighttime reading without breaking the layout.

Installation
If this sounds like something that would fit your workflow, I would love for you to try it out!

You can check out the full feature list and grab the code over on GitHub:

Link to Calibre-Browse & Read on GitHub

I highly recommend the Docker installation method for the easiest setup. The provided docker-compose.yml seamlessly layers the custom CB&R interface right over the top of the stable linuxserver/calibre-web base image.

I was primarily a hardware and software engineer in another life, so while I focused heavily on UI design and functionality, newer web technologies aren't my primary forté. Consequently, feedback, bug reports, and forks/pull requests from the CSS and Python gurus here are incredibly welcome. Keep in mind that this is my first ever GitHub fork effort, so please be kind.

Thanks for taking a look, and happy reading!

Cheers.