Create local copy of list of books on device?

[DMcCunney]

I use Calibre to manage my eBook library, and the primary eBook viewing device is an Android tablet running Android 4.2 Jellybean.

When adding books to the device, I must connect the tablet to the Windows machine where the primary library is stored, and turn on USB storage on the device. Windows detects the presence of the device, and the tablet internal storage appears as drive E: and the external SD card where the eBooks are stored appears as drive F:

When I click Connect to Folder in Calibre, it connects to the folder on the SD card I specified as the eBook folder, and a Device column appears in the Calibre GUI. After reading the metadata stored on the device, check marks appear in the Device column for books in the library that are on the device.

The problem is, the tablet must be plugged in with USB storage turned in and Calibre connected to the folder for that column and list to appear. It would be really nice if I could see which books were on the device without having to connect it.

Is there a way to get Calibre to create a local copy of the list of books on device, so I can see which books are on device without having to connect it? This ideally could be just another column in Calibre's display with a boolean value as to whether or not the book was also on the device, which would get updated like everything else when books were added to or removed from the device in Calibre.

I believe this sort of thing is device dependent, and depends on the driver Calibre uses.

Thanks in advance.
______
Dennis

[aleyx]

The Reading List plugin can help you there, by automatically populating a custom column with the books on your device.

[theducks]

You can also set a Tag when the device is connected.

ondevice:true
Select all (blue)
Metadata edit (will be bulk mode): Add tag: <tag to add>

[AnotherCat]

For myself also it would be very useful to have an On Device related column that persists after disconnection, but for reasons I don't know it is apparently not able to be implemented.

Since the Reading List plugin came available I have had, over that time, probably a dozen different goes at getting it to work reliably updating a user column for books On Device but in my experience it was unreliable (whether it automatically sync'ed or not), occasionally stopped working altogether, and worst of all once libraries (I have multiple ones) got to around 2,000 books it slowed Calibre down dramatically. It usually seemed to work fine for a while after setting it up, but then, later, the difficulties would arise.

That tried on several different PC's (and both of Win 7 and Win 8) and I have given up on it. Your experience may be better.

As far as I can see, from my own experience, the only reliable way to go is along the lines as theducks has suggested but, of course, being all manual each time one wants to update it, it is not as convenient as something automatic.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

For myself also it would be very useful to have an On Device related column that persists after disconnection, but for reasons I don't know it is apparently not able to be implemented.

Since the Reading List plugin came available I have had, over that time, probably a dozen different goes at getting it to work reliably updating a user column for books On Device but in my experience it was unreliable (whether it automatically sync'ed or not), occasionally stopped working altogether, and worst of all once libraries (I have multiple ones) got to around 2,000 books it slowed Calibre down dramatically. It usually seemed to work fine for a while after setting it up, but then, later, the difficulties would arise.

That tried on several different PC's (and both of Win 7 and Win 8) and I have given up on it. Your experience may be better.

As far as I can see, from my own experience, the only reliable way to go is along the lines as theducks has suggested but, of course, being all manual each time one wants to update it, it is not as convenient as something automatic.

AC you list a single device.
Others device list looks like a Sears catalog

You can always make a Device column (tags of fixed value?) and use the current Ondevice status to set a tag (remove the old tag beforehand)

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by theducks

AC you list a single device.
Others device list looks like a Sears catalog

You can always make a Device column (tags of fixed value?) and use the current Ondevice status to set a tag (remove the old tag beforehand)

I have enough problems deciding what book to read next, let alone then having to decide from a pile of devices which one to read it on .

I am assuming the the "Device Column" way you mention is still the manual one using a ondevice:true search then manually setting the tag in the user column, rather than setting it using the ondevice() function which, as I understand it, does not persist after the device is disconnected so there is no easy way to set a column field using it except by means of a plugin (a few posts in past threads mention this) of which Reading List is the only one.

But if there is a way to do this by automatically populating a user column that persists without manual searches and manual bulk metadata editing, and not using the Reading List plugin, then that would make my day .

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

As far as I can see, from my own experience, the only reliable way to go is along the lines as theducks has suggested but, of course, being all manual each time one wants to update it, it is not as convenient as something automatic.

I can live with a manual update, as long as it's possible. I don't need the On Device list to be totally accurate, and I'm gradually getting almost everything on device anyway. (The exceptions are large PDFs not well suited to display on a 7" tablet screen.)

The approach that occurred to me was to create a user column that would persist when the device was not connected, and use the information in the On Device column to set the appropriate value in the corresponding user column. The question was how that might be done. I'll try theducks suggestion and see what happens.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by theducks

You can also set a Tag when the device is connected.

ondevice:true
Select all (blue)
Metadata edit (will be bulk mode): Add tag: <tag to add>

Thank you. I'll give that a try and see what happens.
______
Dennis

[transmitthis]

I tried messing about with this, and having different android reading apps, even the calibre companion, but to be honest it just made a unholy mess, books stored all over the place, some apps import, some don't, differnt places for everything.

So I ended up with the reading list plugin,
Now anytime I see a book I would like to read, I pop it on the list.

then when I'm close to finishing current book, I fire up calibre reading list, export all the ones I was interested in to a temp folder, and upload them to google play books. (free storage) https://support.google.com/googlepla...17692?hl=en-GB

When I need to read, I just fire up my tablet, and use google play to read my book - even download to device if I need to.

Simple, easy and you know where things are.