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Librum

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Cross-platform Qt e-book reader and personal library manager

5.3k stars 189 forks last commit first released GPL-3.0

Likely dormant

No commits since 1 Jul 2024. Expect to maintain it yourself or pick an alternative.

Librum is a native, cross-platform e-book reader and personal library manager that lets users organize, read and sync books across devices. It provides an integrated bookstore, highlighting and annotation tools, and optional AI-assisted lookups and summaries for text within books.

Key Features

  • Modern native reader with text search, highlighting and bookmarking.
  • Supports major formats: PDF, EPUB, CBZ, FB2, MOBI, XPS, TIFF and image collections.
  • Personalized online library with collections, tags, metadata editing and cross-device sync.
  • Free in-app bookstore (claimed ~70,000 books) and reading statistics.
  • AI integration for explanations/summaries and quick lookups (limited free usage per account).
  • Customizable interface, keyboard shortcuts and theme support.
  • Build tooling: CMake-based build with Qt (Qt 6.5 recommended) and platform-specific instructions for Linux, Windows and macOS.

Use Cases

  • Personal library management and daily reading across desktop platforms (Windows, Linux, macOS).
  • Syncing reading progress, highlights and metadata between devices via Librum’s cloud (or self-hosting with Librum-Server).
  • Power users and packagers building from source, integrating into distributions or deploying as Flatpak for Linux.

Limitations and Considerations

  • Some features are marked "Coming Soon" in the project (mobile clients, TTS, advanced note-taking and some personalized stats).
  • Community reports have noted occasional platform-specific issues (e.g., Flatpak/permission and image library mismatches causing crashes in older distributions); users should test distribution builds and check issues before wide deployment.

Librum is a GPL-licensed open-source project intended for users who prefer a native, Qt-based reading experience with optional cloud sync and self-hosting paths. It’s suitable for both casual readers and power users who want to compile, package or self-host their library server.

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