Calibre, the popular open source e-book management software for Linux, Windows, and macOS, has just been updated. Yes, version 8.6 has just been released, and it’s packed with smart tweaks, a big speed boost, and several bug fixes that improve the experience across platforms.
One of the most noticeable improvements in this release is the dramatically improved performance when restoring a database. According to the changelog, performance has been boosted by an “order of magnitude” which should save users serious time when working with large libraries or backups.
For Kindle users, there’s another smart change: the Welcome Wizard now defaults to AZW3 as the output format instead of MOBI. That’s because MOBI is effectively obsolete, and every Kindle released in the past decade supports AZW3. This update helps keep new users from getting stuck with outdated formats.
Calibre 8.6 also improves the Content Server. There’s now a checkbox in user preferences that prevents users from changing their own passwords through the web interface, which can be helpful for shared or managed setups. Meanwhile, for fans of advanced sorting, a new tweak under Preferences → Tweaks allows you to show sort values for series in the Tag Browser.
Another thoughtful addition: the “Manage Authors” and “Manage Items” dialogs now include new buttons for Search “not in” and Filter “not in”. These allow you to hunt down gaps in your library, which is ideal for users managing large or complex collections.
Several bugs were squashed in this release. One regression that caused terminal windows to flash when adding or converting PDFs on Windows has been fixed. Also on Windows, a workaround was added to avoid permission errors caused by buggy antivirus software interfering with catalog generation.
Other notable fixes include:
- Background image fading in the e-book viewer now works again.
- Sorting by the first letter of series names in non-English languages now functions correctly in the Tag Browser.
- The Edit Metadata dialog’s Next/Previous buttons will now keep working properly even if something reorders the list while you’re using it.
This release also expands Calibre’s built-in news scraping capabilities. New this time is La Presse by user “quatorze.” Several existing sources saw improvements too, including The Economist, Financial Times, PC World, Muy Interesante Mexico, and The Week.
Whether you’re reading on a Kindle, organizing a massive e-book collection, or just tweaking your setup, Calibre 8.6 is absolutely a solid update worth installing.
