Old FAQ posts

[chaley]

Unlike most devices that calibre supports by cable, you control in the Calibre Companion which formats are to be sent along with their priority on the device. This helps if you have multiple devices for which you want to use a different list or different priority.

To set up the extensions, click the menu button on your device (usually three dots), choose "Settings".

Now choose Book formats and folders

Next, scroll through the long list of extensions and check the ones you want calibre to be able to send to your device. Don’t try to order them at this point, it is easier to do in a second pass.

After you have "checked" all the extensions you want to use, it is time to set their priority. This is easiest to do if you close and reopen the dialog, because all the checked extensions will be at the top. So press OK, then reopen the dialog. Now use the arrows to move the selected extensions up and down. The higher an extension, the higher its priority.

You can use this dialog to change the folders where extensions are stored. See the following image of the extensions dialog.

To change the default folder (the one used if no specific folder is chosen for an extension), open the extensions dialog and click where the "1" points. To change the folder for a specific extension, click below the arrows on that extensions line. Number "2" in the dialog image shows where you would click to change the folder for epubs. You will see a dialog that tells you where the files are currently stored. Click the "Change" button if you want to change it.

If, for example, you are changing the storage folder for mobi books to the folder used by Kindle for Android, scroll the list of folders until you see the "kindle" folder. Tap that folder to enter into it, then tap the "Use this folder" line at the top of the list.

In the Kindle for Android case, after having changed the storage folder, selecting K4A as the reader will start K4A at its home screen. It will import the books you have sent to Calibre Companion so you can read them. Please see this post for more information on integrating with Kindle for Android.

Using SD Cards: Important: Starting in Android 4.4 (KitKat), because of a design choice by Google it is difficult for CC to use removable SD cards. See Using an SD card with Android 4.4 (Kitkat) for more information.

If you are using a version of Android less than 4.4 then you can change the folder that CC uses to an arbitrary folder visible on your SD card. To do this, click the "Change folder" button, enter the path that will contain the desired folder into the box, then tap the "Open" button. The screen will show the contents of that folder. You can navigate from there, creating folders as necessary and allowed by Android. For example, if you enter "/mnt" into the box then you will see all the folders inside /mnt. Probably one of the folders will be the SD card. Note: some devices do not allow writing to SD Cards. If your device is one of these, then CC cannot put books onto that card.

[chaley]

Unfortunately, starting with Android 4.4 Google has made using SD cards very difficult. For a variety of reasons such as preventing one app from tampering with another app's data, the SD card has in effect become "read only" for all folders except for one specific folder per app. If you click here to do a google search for kitkat sd card support you'll find lots of posts discussing this change, and explaining the pros and cons of Google's decision.

The result: CC can write books only into on the SD card into a private files folder that gets deleted when you delete the associated app. Consequently a) there is only one folder on the SD card where CC can store your library, and b) that your library will be deleted from your SD card if you ever uninstall CC or cleared CC's data. To repeat: if you use Android 4.4 and put your library on an SD card, your books will be deleted if you uninstall CC. There is absolutely nothing we can do about this.

The name of an app's private folder is set by Android. For CC, that name is Android/data/com.multipie.calibreandroid/files

If you upgraded to KitKat and your library is in a no-longer-writable folder on the SD card, then there are three ways to recover:

1. Assuming you accept the risk of your books being deleted, starting in CC 3.3.5 you can move your books to CC's private folder on the SD card. See the answer How do I change the folder on my device where the books are stored? for how to move your library. Use the "SD Card" button when selecting the folder (button only visible on Android 4.4+).
2. You can move your library to your phone's internal memory. It will then work as before. See the answer How do I change the folder on my device where the books are stored? for how to move your library.
3. You can root your device and remove the restriction. Not something we'd recommend or can support.

Option 1 also works to move your library from internal memory to your SD card, something you should do only if you accept that uninstalling CC or clearing its data will delete your books.

Important note for options 1 and 2: CC will be unable to delete the files from the old folder on the SD card. You must delete them yourself by putting the SD card into a card reader or using one of the few file manager apps that (currently) can manipulate SD cards.

If you are running a version of Android less than 4.4, you can still put your library in an arbitrary folder on an SD card, although you might not want to do that if your device is susceptible to being upgraded to KitKat. See the answer How do I change the folder on my device where the books are stored?. Using SD cards is explained at the end of the answer.

The following documents one user's experience with option 1, documenting the steps he followed:

Originally Posted by dfrye

Just a followup to V3.3.5 (Thanks chaley!!) for anyone with existing books on the sdcard. To start the conversion process you need to change the default dir for the books (app menu> Settings > "Book Formats and Folders") Note where the files are currently stored. You will need this info to manually clean up later. Tap on the default folder and get a dialog with a short summary of this thread. Click on the suggested folder name (not the Choose Folder button). The program will copy the existing books to the new folder. Make sure there is enough room on the sdcard for the copied books. It may take a while to copy. Once it is done you will get a error message for each of the books that it was not able to delete the old files. That's OK. At this point Calibre Companion will work normally. The old copy of the books are still on the sdcard. To free up the space you will need to delete the old books using other means. Either use a file manager that knows how to get past KitKat to the delete files on the sdcard or pull the sdcard and plug into a PC.

And another user's experience with adding an SD card to a new tablet:

Originally Posted by kaufman

I just made an interesting discovery that should probably be added the the FAQ. I purchased a new tablet, and moved my SD Card with an existing calibre companion directory of ebooks to it. I deleted all the books with the file manager and tried to copy them again with CC. It didn't work. I needed to uninstall CC, delete the entire CC structure on the SD card and then reinstall CC. It recreated the directory and then everything worked.

[chaley]

You can tell calibre to require a password from the device when the device connects. If you do this, then CC will ask you for that password and remember it. Selecting Delete passwords will force CC to forget all remembered passwords.

[chaley]

Try using the calibre Reading List plugin. To quote its description page, when a device is connected it can "Optionally sync each list to one or more devices, a folder or iTunes" and "Specify whether list sync should add only new items not on device, add all items every time, remove all items that are on the list, or replace all items on the device with the list". Because Calibre Companion acts like a device, all the features of Reading List are available.

[chaley]

Calibre maintains 3 dates in standard metadata: date, pubdate, and last modified. When you send books or metadata to CC, these dates are passed and stored unchanged. The first two, date and pubdate, are shown in book details as "Added to calibre" and "Pub date" respectively. Both of these dates can be added to the Group menu; see this post for details. The last modified date is not displayed, but is used to determine if CC's stored metadata needs to be refreshed. Any custom column dates are also passed to CC, stored unchanged, and displayed in book details. CC does not sort on any dates in custom columns, but they can be added to the Group menu.

In addition to the above, CC maintains two non-calibre dates: metadata last modified (called "Updated" in CC) and date last read (called "Last read" in CC). The first is set to "now" whenever calibre sends metadata to CC for the book in question. The second is set to "now" whenever a reader is launched for a book. CC displays and can sort on both these dates.

[chaley]

CC can ask a reader to open a book format (EPUB, MOBI, etc) only if that reader advertises that it supports that format. For some reason Mantano advertises that it supports EPUB but does not advertise that it supports MOBI. Because of this probable oversight in Mantano, CC cannot open MOBI files using it. At this time the only solution is to use a different reader app for MOBI files such as Moon+, FBReader, or Cool Reader.

[chaley]

Recently Amazon allowed CC to be sold in their Kindle app store. However, some early Kindle devices run a version of Android that is not compatible with CC, and Amazon does not offer it to those devices.

[chaley]

[This answer is valid for CC V4.1 or later. Solution 3 requires calibre 2.32 or later.]

There are three solutions to ensuring that file names for a book are the same on multiple devices regardless of the delivery path. You might want to use one of these solutions if you are using a reading app that is capable of syncing reading positions across devices, such as Moon+.

Solution 1

Check CC's setting "Use book ID as filename" (Settings / File names). This tells CC to use the book's unique ID as the file name no matter how the book gets to the device. Although this works well for syncing (that is why the option was added), it has the problem that the book file names become meaningless; a series of numbers.

Solution 2
If you use the content server but do not use CC Cloud, check "Use calibre's file name" in CC's settings. This tells CC to ask the content server what file name the wireless device would use. This works well if you are running the content server in calibre's GUI. If you are not then the content server will not be able to get the file name from the wireless device, in which case you must use the first or third option.

Solution 3

If you use CC Cloud and either (or both) of the other two connection types then you must check the box "Use CC template everywhere". This tells CC to ignore the file name provided by the wireless connection (starting with calibre version 2.32) and the content server, instead computing the file name using a simplified form of a calibre template. Once you check the box you should go to book details for some book and select "Edit file name template" on the book details menu. A dialog will open showing you the current template and what file name it generates for the book you chose. See What can I use in a CC file name template? for more information about CC file name templates.


Note: Starting with calibre 0.9.15, sending a book to the device that calibre knows is already on the device will not create a new file. Instead it will overwrite the existing file, preventing having multiple copies of the book on the device. If you don't want this behavior, either delete the existing copy before sending the new one or change an option in calibre to disable the check if the file already exists. To change the option, connect as a wireless device, then in calibre right-click on the device button, choose "Configure this device", and uncheck the option "Replace books with same calibre identifier". Unfortunately, this change does not help if you want to have the same file name across multiple devices, no matter how the file arrived on the device.

[chaley]

CC's sort, group, and search functions are very capable, but it might not be obvious how to use all it can do.

First, what do we mean by "grouping"? These are functions to show you books and metadata (data about books) in an organized way. For example, you can easily find all the authors of books on your device. Same for series, tags, and publishers. Tap the "Group" menu on the top and select the view you want.

You can sort a list of books no matter how you got there. For example, assume you are looking at a list of books with some tag "Books I like" that you are seeing because you use the Group function. You can sort that list by series, author, or any other choice on the Sort menu.

However, what do you do if you want something a bit more complicated, such as to see a list of authors of books tagged with "Books I like"? This is where Search come in. Searching in CC produces a list of books that match the search criteria. You can then use grouping and sorting on that list. By default, CC uses calibre's search syntax. Continuing the example, searching for tags:"=Books I like" will find all books with that tag. To see the authors of these books, group by Author. To see the series of these books, group by Series.

CC also provides a "simple search" that does not allow the extended calibre search syntax. Instead you enter words into the search box and check the "simple search" box. CC will search in titles (title_sort in base CC, titles in the cloud connection), authors, series, and tags.

For single-item searches, CC provides a shortcut that avoids the tedious typing. For example, to search for a tag, first group by Tags and then navigate to that tag. Using the same example of "Books I like", when I first group by Tags I will see a list of first letters (unless you turned that off in Settings). Tap "B" and you will see tags beginning with B, which will include "Books I like". If you long-tap on "Books I like", a dialog will open asking you if you want to search for that tag, and if so do you want all books with the tag or all books without the tag. Make the choice you want, press OK, and the search is done. You can now group, sort, etc.

Note that when you search for a book with some tag, you may see other tags in the group list. This happens if the selected books have more than one tag.

Long press works on any item displayed while grouping, including the first letters. You can long-tap on the first letter to all items that begin with that letter.

You can undo a long-tap search (or a search you entered) by tapping on the list header, the one saying that a search is active and how many books were found.

Several fields can be searched using greater than, less than, etc. Examples:

• rating:>=3 will find all books with rating greater than or equal to 3
• pubdate:<2000 will find books published before the year 2000.
• date:<=2000-04 will find books with calibre's date field less than or equal to April 2000.

The permitted operators are < (less than), = (equal to), > (greater than), <= (less than or equal to), and >= (greater than or equal to). You can search for not equal to using "not ratiing:=2"

Another sorting tip: sorting by something then sorting by that something again will invert the sort. This lets you sort descending and ascending.

[chaley]

You can group by these columns by adding their lookup names to the list of custom columns that are to be added to the group menu. The lookup names are pubdate (publication date) and date (calibre's "Date" column, usually the date you added the book to calibre). See How do I add my custom columns to the Group menu? for instructions on how to do this.

Once you have added the lookup names you wish to use, you will see them in the Group menu. Lets assume that you entered both date and pubdate. Tapping on date will give you groups based on year and month: yyyy-mm. Tapping on a year-month will give you all the books with that date. Tapping on pubdate gives you groups based only on year.

[chaley]

News: as of early May 2103, the Nook HD and HD+ devices can purchase apps (and other stuff) from the Google Play store. This change makes it possible to obtain CC for these devices.

Some Nook devices run a version of Android that is too old to support CC. The device must be running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) or later.

[chaley]

There are two main reasons why this might happen.

1) The content server is not "serving" the library you want. This can happen if you start the content server from the command line and the library used is the default one for the effective user. Fix the problem by using the --with-library command line argument to specify the correct library.

2) You have specified a "url prefix" either in calibre's preferences "Sharing over the net" or on the content server command line. If you specify a url prefix then CC's automatic connection to the content server will not work properly. You must enter the correct full URL into CC's Content Server Connection settings. For example, if your content server is on your home LAN, has the IP address 192.168.0.10, is using port 8080, and has URL prefix "/calibre"; then you would enter the URL "http://192.168.0.10:8080/calibre" into the IP box and check the box "The IP address contains a complete URL".

[chaley]

Sometimes books that CC finds when doing a wireless connect using its "scan on connect" option are are not in the calibre library or not correctly matched against books in calibre's library.

Case 1: CC found books that are not in calibre's library.

This might happen if you used some wireless service to purchase a book that was delivered directly to your device, in which case calibre doesn't know about the book. You can add the book to calibre's library while you are connected as a wireless device. Click on calibre's "Device" icon on the tool bar, find the book (it won't have "In Library" checked), right-click on the book and select "Add books to library". To avoid various problems with future book matching, it is best to switch to the library view and immediately send the book back to the device. This will tell CC the unique identifier that calibre gave the book to that CC and calibre can keep in sync.

Case 2: CC found books that are in calibre's library, but calibre does not mark the book as "On Device".

Book matching can fail even when the book is already in the calibre library. This can happen when the information inside the book (the "metadata") does not match the information in calibre. The most common cases involve titles being changed to contain series information and author names being changed from "Firstname LastName" to "Lastname, Firstname" or vice versa.

Starting with calibre 0.9.29, you can manually tell calibre that a book on the device (CC) is the same as a book in the library, forcing a match. The steps are:

1) Connect to calibre as a wireless device. Wait for metadata syncing to finish.
2) Click on the Device icon in calibre to see the books on the device.
3) Find books where the In Library column is empty. Sorting by In Library makes that easier to do.
4) If a book is really in the library, right-click on the book and select "Match book to library". A dialog box opens in which you can search for the correct book in the library.
5) Find the book you want using search, then press OK. A "sync" icon will appear next to the book in the device view
6) Repeat steps 4 and 5 as often as necessary.
7) When finished, send the updated metadata to CC by clicking on the down arrow on the Device button and choosing "Update cached metadata on device".

Note that you can use "Update cached metadata on device" at other times, such as after you have updated metadata or covers for books in your library.

[chaley]

In cover view, the covers are displayed inside a fixed-size box with invisible borders. When you choose "square" the box is as wide as it is high. When you choose "portrait" the box is two thirds as wide as it is high. These boxes will be laid out on the shelf side by side across the screen, filling the row as much as possible.

How the cover is displayed inside the box depends on the "stretch to fit" option you choose. See the FAQ answer What does "stretch to fit" mean in cover view?

[chaley]

Covers in cover view are displayed in a fixed size box as described in the FAQ answer What is the difference between "portrait" and "square" in cover view?. The "stretch to fit" setting controls whether the cover will completely fill the box or whether its "aspect ratio" (its original proportions) will be respected.

If you choose "stretch to fit" the cover will be stretched and distorted enough to completely fill its container. Sometimes this makes the covers look odd, especially if you are using square boxes. If you choose "preserve aspect ratio" then the cover will be displayed so that its largest dimension matches the box. The smaller dimension will not be grown, so the image will not fill the box. This option can make the covers vary in height or width.

Which display someone likes is highly personal and can depend on the covers in that person's library. Try them all.