Only this paragraph is required reading, the rest is me explaining at length till you puke cause I do that, sorry. So I’m looking for a self-hosted Ebook server that I can simply load the built-in web reader on any web browser, and have it remember my progress on each different browser.
Reason: I often pull up books and other study materials (gear manuals, etc) on my large TV in a browser, as it is a comfortable reading experience that does not require me to use my diabetic hands with their pins and needle fingers. But one uses one’s phone when out and about, of course. Better than doomscrolling.
If I have read ahead on one device and don’t have it handy, it becomes instant hell to try to figure out where I got to without overshooting, and you end up just skimming all the pages and it’s torture, so I end up, you guessed it, doomscrolling.
I currently have Calibre Web Automated installed and it does not appear to do this, though it does have a plugin that will track you on certain Reader Devices that I do not own and whose phone app equivalents I find not good cause it’s fake e-paper on an LCD, which is just awful. I’m sure that real e-paper is awesome, but fake e-paper is just as dystopian as you might imagine.
This functionality seems like a fairly easy get, once you’ve gone to the trouble of implementing the rest of the server and doing it on those other devices, but so far I cannot find an extant project that does it. It’s very strange to me, cause of all the things that one can choose between an app or a webui, the app really cannot offer you anything that a web page cannot, in terms of your page-by-page experience. You want the text at a readable size filling the page completely, with an index swipable, that’s it.
This is my one attempt to get help finding an existing solution before I start looking at the various projects and figuring out which one I can maybe add it to. I want this ability and I don’t want another goddam device, have a server and tailscale and that’s all any User needs.
It might not be the best for ebooks, but I use audiobookshelf. It supports read status for ebooks too.
For ebook hosting with reading progress, I have had good luck with Kavita. It has a web reader that syncs across devices and lets you set up separate user accounts with individual progress tracking.
One thing to watch: metadata sources. Some servers scrape Goodreads or LibraryThing automatically, which can cause version drift if your library grows large. I personally prefer manual metadata entry or importing from Calibre — keeps everything consistent.
Also happy to share a simple metadata sync script if anyone wants it.
Audiobookshelf is probably what you’re after.
It supports both e-books and audiobooks. It has a web interface and a native Android app. It saves your reading/audiobook progress in your account so you will always be in the same spot no matter which way you access it. It also allows you to make multiple accounts if you have multiple users.
Docker/Podman containers available and it’s possible to run the server on Windows, if you’re into that kind of thing.
Here’s the docs: https://www.audiobookshelf.org/docs
Web UI:
Browsing a Library:
spoiler
Browsing e-book info:
spoiler
Reader and chapter selection:
spoiler
And, I’m going to guess that you like statistics:
spoiler
e: Put the images in spoilers to save the reader’s scrolling strength e2: oops header tag is double #, not single x.x
KOReader is not “fake epaper”, it’s an app designed to be used on ereaders which means it’s UI is high contrast. FWIW I agree it’s not ideal for an OLED phone screen, but it’s definitely not fake epaper (more like the opposite) and makes me think you might be accidentally using something else?
(Also KOReader is not for “certain” devices, it’s FOSS and installs on basically any ereader, including Kindle, Kobo and anything running android like Boox).
What CWA does is it integrates a KOreader sync server (can also be ran independently). In future updates CWA’s web reader will sync with this progress, but for now it only shows up in the UI like this:
THAT ALL SAID, if you are only using the WebUI and don’t want to wait for CWA to update their web reader, Komga is a simple app (originally designed for Manga but will work fine with books) that has a web reader that will also remember your progress (and fwiw there is a KOReader plugin in case you want to sync that progress with an epaper device in the future).
Kavita has a built-in web reader with progress tracking across devices. You set up separate user accounts per device and it syncs your reading position. Good for this use case since it works in any browser on your TV.
There is also Calibre-Web with Opensearch support, though progress tracking is more basic.
The Kavita built in reader would allow you to set up a different account for each device and therefore have separate progress.
Komga does that, but I’m not sure how robust the eBook support is
just found this buddy, take a look. I’m setting it up on my server right now
I’ve been looking for a new book server and discovered Booklore/Grimmory as well. Here is the history I can find on it as some of what people are saying is not 100% correct.
-
It was not vibe-coded. The original project predates genAI, so that wouldn’t have been since. I think some of the newer code might be, but the core seems unchanged.
-
The security issue mentioned is an API authentication bypass whereby book files were exposed if the endpoint was reachable (CVE-2025-62614). This has an 8.7 rating on severity, but realistically the end result is your books could be copied.
-
Licensing. This is the real skullduggery in my opinion. The maintainer had plans to switch from AGPL-3.0 to BSL. That might not be legal and it cuts out any contributors and sets the project up for monetization.
My concern with Grimmory is that it is too embedded with the flaws of Booklore. In testing it was really sluggish on mobile. I still need to do more testing, but aside from being graphically nice, it didn’t feel that stable. I was hoping to move away from Calibre-Web due to auto-importing not being supported, but in the end, I’ll likely just write something to support this on my end.
-
Booklore just went through some drama and is being replaced by grimmory which is a fork. I’ve been using booklore for a while and really like it although there are definitely rough edges. Just upgraded to grimmory last night.
Booklore was discovered to be vibe-coded and riddled with security issues. The dev shut down the project when discovered. Best avoided for now.
