v0.8.1 - A bit more than a Hotfix

This is just a bit more than a hotfix, but mainly focused on some polish after more users got their hands on the v0.8 along with the updated Image library. From the community support, v0.8 looks to have gone off really well with only a few users reporting minor data loss. Thanks to everyone joining support and bringing up edge cases that were missed.

I would also like to remind users that you can upvote and comment (or create your own) feature requests on out Github Discussions page.

Added

• Added: Added SortOrderLocked field for upcoming ability to set it in the UI, allowing customization of sort order on Series Detail page. (This is not yet in the UI, just in the DB and code)

Changed

• Changed: Changed how often the 1 version out of date check occurs to be every 4-6 hours instead of 1-2 hours.
• Changed: Allow jumpbar to function on pages as long as there is no custom sort
• Changed: When refusing OPDS download due to lack of role, use 403 Forbid.
• Changed: Don't show any of the internal information on publication status tooltip when the total items is set to 0 (or unset)
• Changed: Updated Comic Vine library when falling back to taking Series name from directory because no Volume tag exists, don't clean specials from the directory name.

Fixed

• Fixed: Fixed a bug where some series detail pages have a ton of extra space
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where series folders with nested specials would get a bad LowestSeriesFolder meaning series scans wouldn't do anything important.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug with default ordering failing when a series has a special
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where the very out of date modal wouldn't have the correct number of version out of date.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where stacked image chapters wouldn't move all the files over to cache
• Fixed: Fixed an oversight where brightness control in manga reader wasn't applying to webtoon reader
• Fixed: Drastically sped up switching between card/list mode on series detail for large series
• Fixed: Fixed Continue -100000 when a series is read on series detail page
• Fixed: When parsing from fallback libraries, use comic parsing only for Comic/Comic Vine library types.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where weblinks remove would not work well. Now it works more like you would assume.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where active tab wouldn't default to volumes on comic libraries when there were no issues or specials.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where progress bar on kavita+ metadata progress wasn't showing red.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where on Chrome bootstrap sliders were blue and not the primary color.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where chapters could duplicate due to some regions using ',' as a decimal separator. Now in Kavita, whenever we stringify any numbers, it will always choose English's way as that is how it was designed.
• Fixed: Fixed a case where non-English locales wouldn't parse floats correctly for x.x chapters.
• Fixed: Fixed an exception being thrown on startup for fresh users

API

• Deprecated series/chapter-metadata API in favor of just including the metadata with all chapter entities.

v0.8.0 - Comic & Collection Overhaul and PDF Settings Finally!

Have you ever thought to yourself that you'd like to switch the foundation of your house from slab to pier and beam? Well, that's essentially what I've done with this release, and not only that, I had to do it without a single picture falling off the walls. This release comprises a whopping 48K lines of code added and 5.5K removed throughout 400 files.

In order for me to achieve my vision of Kavita being the best software out there for reading, sometimes sacrifices have to be made. When I started building Kavita, I had never thought of what it would be today nor the part it would take in my life. It was simply a tool for me to consume and collect Manga since Ubooquity didn't have support for rich metadata. As users came along, so did the scope. Some features were added with limited knowledge, like comics, and that lack of knowledge in the beginning became a problem for heavy comic collectors. In order to build towards my vision of being the best, I had to rewrite large portions of how Kavita functions, work closely with the community, and deliver the best product I could. I want to first and foremost thank @DieselTech, who has been a key component in this. He has been pushing me relentlessly over the past year and has had a major hand in shaping the features, working with hardcore collectors from other servers (Mylar, Komga, and the CBL initiative).

Now, let's get into the meat and potatoes. What is new in this release?

Comic Overhaul

In order to support these hardcore users, Kavita needs to align with the tools already in the space, primarily Mylar and CBL. Mylar serves as the collection tool, aligning with Comic Vine for standards of naming and tagging, while CBL provides a rich repository of reading lists to make navigating comics easier. One of the most important differences between the old 'Comic' library and the new 'Comic Vine' library is that the Volume number is always the year and is used in the generation of the Series title. The new library type is strictly for those who abide by the rules laid out by Comic Vine and CBL. CBL works around these assumptions for linking up issues from many series into one reading list.

But that's not all. Comics are unique; they can have Issue Ω, which should be between Issues 8 and 9, or how about issue 18.HU? These are unique situations that didn't particularly go well with Kavita's number-based system. Through a feat of engineering, Kavita can now support these situations and, not only that, will soon allow the admins to actually change the sort order, a feature which, to my knowledge, no other software supports. This also means that Issue 0 (which can happen in Manga too) is now supported.

From the massive amount of testing, users have reported that this new library meets their needs perfectly. There are other small things, like Annual Series relationships, updates to CBL Import flows, etc., but the major points are above. This feature took 30K lines of code and 3 weeks of development for me to deliver to the testers (plus 2 weeks more of testing).

Collection Overhaul

While we are on the topic of reworking major code, let's talk about collections. When I first coded these, I made a really bad call and tied them with Series (so a series belongs to a collection), but as I started working on new collection-related features, I realized how bad of a call this was. I needed collections to be user-based, like want-to-read or reading lists. While this isn't really needed now, it will be with a future update.

So, yet again, I had to plan on how to migrate user data to the new collections without data loss and rework a ton of code. These new collections are user-based, and through a new Role, non-admins can even promote their own collections and share them with the server. While I was in there, I also made bulk promote/demote easier. Another easy 5K lines of code added and just over 1K removed.

Misc

Finally, the large, foundational features are over, and we can talk about some of the smaller things, like finally adding PDF settings a year after adding a PDF reader. Yikes. That's right, I finally got around to it and added PDF settings, along with also adding tap-to-paginate to the PDF reader.

Another area that has been receiving attention is Themes. Kavita saw an influx of new themes recently (and a few bug fixes too). Quite a few users are using these themes, and they look pretty good. Check them out on our Theme Repo. It's really easy to build your own, so if you have an interest, I highly encourage you to give it a go.

Another thing you might have noticed is Kavita+ enhancements. Quite a few small things were updated, but the most important is that Kavita+ will now auto-fetch data when you add new series and slowly work in the background to fetch external metadata. I have more planned around reporting on the data and managing bad matches against Kavita+, especially as I am still planning on basic metadata fetching, but I have found that this drastically improves load times on new series and makes the experience much better.

Lastly, I mentioned this last release, but Diesel has been hard at work on a complete revamp of the wiki. As of v0.8, we have moved over to the new wiki. Older installs wiki links will no longer work. Thanks again to @DieselTech for yet another monumental add to Kavita.

Important

• Important! Once you update to this release there are manually steps needed! You MUST perform a forced library scan on all libraries to migrate properly to the new foundation. Failure to do so may result in data loss.

• This is a massive update, all progress data will be exported on the first run to config/progress_export.csv. The migrations may take up to 10 minutes to migrate. Do not stop midway, you will break your db and need to restore from a backup.

• Kavita+ users: As mentioned last release, you are expected to stay up to date - 2 releases. Old Kavita+ APIs will be shutdown shortly after v0.8. You can update to v0.7.14 as the minimum.

• The default emailer was supposed to be turned off last release. I held it longer to give time. The emailer will be turned off after the v0.8 release.

• This is a MASSIVE update, some data loss can be expected. I spent weeks trying to minimize any data loss and have provided an export. I apologize ahead of time if any occurs. If you are running into issues, do not hesitate to reach out to support on discord.

Added

• Added: Added a new library type aimed at Light Novels. This will use card list layout by default (overriding user preferences) and is eligible for Kavita+ metadata/scrobbling. The regular book library no longer is Kavita+ eligible.
• Added: Added a label on Library settings modal to help admins know which libraries are eligible for Kavita+ scrobbling/metadata pull.
• Added: (Kavita+) Implemented a background prefetch task that will slowly refresh series from Kavita+ (reviews, recs, ratings).
• Added: (Kavita+) Kavita will now prefetch data from Kavita+ on new series. This and the prefetch background task is limited to 50 series per 12 hours. Loading on-demand will still work as normal and is not restricted.
• Added: Chapters now sort by SortOrder. SortOrder is generated from chapter number, but can be overridden (in a future update). This allows for custom sorting for issues that aren't purely numerical. SortOrder will handle cases like 19, 19.HU, 19.BD, 20 without any user intervention.
• Added: You can now have Chapter 0, -1, etc.
• Added: This fully supports chapters with non-numeric issue numbers, like Alpha, 19.HU, etc.
• Added: Added a new library type: Comic Vine which is aimed at users of Mylar or have well tagged libraries following Comic Vine. This library works different and can support multiple folders with the same series parallel to library root.
• Added: New Series Relationship of Annual.
• Added: Imprints are now read from ComicInfo, will display on the UI and can be filtered.
• Added: (Scanner) Added a new LowestFolderPath. This is the lowest path that contains all the series files and is used by ScanFolder/Series to avoid extra work.
• Added: Added support for Locations and Teams, including the filtering for them
• Added: There is a one-time progress export to config/progress_export.csv in case of data loss.
• Added: Added Sort order to be visible on chapter detail drawer.
• Added: (Kavita+) Added Mal Username/ClientId integration into Kavita for upcoming Kavita+ integrations.
• Added: Added the ability to view (your) or all users (if admin) progress for that given chapter via the chapter detail drawer.
• Added: (Kavita+) Added a pie chart to Server Stats that shows how many eligible series have metadata fetched from Kavita+. This pairs well with the background job that fills out your server over time. (This will be expanded upon in a future update)
• Added: (Parser) Added parser support for Thai language volume and chapters (Thanks @gozilla-paradise)
• Added: Finally added PDF Reader Settings
• Added: (PDF Reader) Added tap to paginate to the pdf reader.
• Added: Collections can now be created by non-admins
• Added: Collections can now be promoted by non-admins (given they have the Promote role).
• Added: Added bulk flows for Promotion and Deletion. If you select cards that are not owned by you, nothing will happen to those cards.
• Added: OPDS feeds will now send description information when applicable for underlying volume/chapters.

Changed

• Changed: (Kavita+) Removed Book library from Scrobbling/Metadata pull. Books being in Google Books was far and few in-between. This is a temporary solution until Hardcover support is implemented, which has good Book (and some Comic) support. If you have light novels, change to the LN library type. The scanner works the same.
• Changed: Allow users to send files to their devices without having host name set for Email settings
• Changed: (Theme) sid...

v0.7.14 - iOS Webtoon Fixes, Built-in Email, and a new Wiki!

A small on the surface, large under the hood release for everyone. This release first off fixes the webtoon reader for our iOS users. Many have validated and want to thank the community for helping me test and @Thundernerd for doing some basic POC to help me drive it home. In addition to this, Want to Read had a critical bug in the architecture (that somehow slipped noticed for over a year now) where if one user adds a series to want to read, then another does, it will override the other. And lastly, for Kavita+ users, this is foundational release for the upcoming Basic Metadata feature. All data, like reviews, recommendations, and ratings are now stored in your DB. This leads to very quick response times and sets up the system for future data synchronization.

Another big feature in this release is KavitaEmail is no longer required for those that want to use email (and me hosting an email service for everyone is no more). All email settings are built into the application and this has allowed me to streamline how Kavita works around email. Before, it was a mess of having to call an external system, check if the system was accessible externally, etc. Now, you MUST setup a host name (reverse proxy domain) and the email settings to use any email functionality. Due to this, all the flows got polished and should be much more consistent for users.

Lastly, while it looks so small, it was over 3K lines of code, but volume numbers are now float-based, meaning if a volume is < 1, it will now properly show on book library series detail page. In addition to this, Omnibus (Volume 1-2) is now much better supported and Kavita+ will get Volume 2 when you read an Omnibus vs Volume 1 previously.

That wraps the v0.7.x series of releases. Next release series (v0.8.x) will be focusing mainly on the new Magazine library type, PDF parsing enhancements, and likely the new comic library.

New Wiki

Lastly I want to call out a massive thanks to @DieselTech who has been leading a redesign of our wiki. Safe to say, at least 100 hours have been poured into re-organizing and updating a ton of the content from our old wiki into a brand new system. It looks slick and should be much easier to understand and search against. While we aren't yet ready to roll out, be on the look out next release for the full release. For those that want a sneak peak, you can check it out here.

Old Email Service

As mentioned, this release contains built-in email functionality. The old emailer will remain on for 1 week after this release to give time for people to update. If you are stuck on an old version, please reach out so we can help understand why and get you updated.

Kavita+

Kavita+ is designed to work with the latest - 2 releases. If you are further than that out of date, it may no longer work appropriately. It is important to stay up to date.

Added

• Added: Added limited parsing support for c01-c04. Normally, c01-04 is used.
• Added: Admins can now write custom cron notation for Scans, Backup, and Cleanup tasks. Cleanup cannot be disabled as it is required for Kavita to function smoothly. Ideal to always leave at midnight.
• Added: (Kavita+) New filter for Average Rating. This will allow you to filter on series that have an external average rating. Note: This only applies to series that have metadata pulled down from Kavita+.
• Added: (Kavita+) Kavita will now store Kavita+ external ratings, reviews, and recommendations in your Database. This will increase performance and lays the foundation for the upcoming basic metadata from Kavita+. Data is refreshed ad-hoc after 2 weeks and cached in memory for 48 hours.
• Added: (Kavita+) New button in Edit Series modal that allows the series to be invalidated (or removed from blocklist) and force refresh from Kavita+ on next series detail page view.
• Added: (Kavita+) User's can now see error messages and a different icon on Scrobbling History when a series fails to scrobble.
• Added: (Kavita+) Sort by Average Rating
• Added: Added a new role that makes a user account read only. This means they cannot change anything themselves (Age Restriction, Email, Password, Forgot Password, API Key). This is not intended for users to use, but for the demo instance.
• Added: Added a popup that will tell users that are over 3 releases behind to update.
• Added: New setting in Email settings to let you use Customized Template files. If this is true, Kavita will pick templates from config/templates rather than internal storage. Fallback is available. You then own the onset to stay up to date with email template changes.
• Added: Added back the ability to delete your own review
• Added: Added the ability to delete collection tags via actionables on collection detail page.
• Added: Added buttons that allows users to quickly autofill gmail/outlook email settings
• Added: Added the changelog to the Admin System tab (in case users don't see it in the announcements page).

Changed

• Changed: (Kavita+) Changed how Series Detail api works to drastically reduce memory needs
• Changed: (Kavita+) Removed Bust Kavita+ cache button from Admin -> Tasks screen as it's no longer needed.
• Changed: (Kavita+) Series that don't match against Kavita+ will now be stored in a table and not be retried again.
• Changed: (Kavita+) When scrobbling, check if a series is blacklisted or not before trying. When an unknown series comes back, add it to the blacklist (so we don't waste time trying when it will never match)
• Changed: Updated system tab with a link to localization and new feature request site
• Changed: Massive refactor to change how Volume numbers are represented within Kavita to support volumes that are < 1 on the UI. This means 0.5 books will now work going forward.
• Changed: Lots of autocomplete hints added to help password managers and browsers autofill login/registration/passwords.
• Changed: Adjusted OPDS-PS lastReadDate to adhere to ISO 8061 as per the spec and what Panels expects for proper sync.
• Changed: Supressed image requests on the logs as they are quite noisy
• Changed: Hostname setting is in general admin settings as well as email, as it's not 100% tied to email functionality
• Changed: Kavita will now confirm before you delete a device
• Changed: Email is now baked into Kavita. If email is not setup then all flows will now just work. The extra security measures will only work with email being setup (and HostName set). Kavita will no longer try to identify if the server is accessible externally. You will have to set HostName and setup the emailer going forward.
• Changed: Series detail title (series title) now shows a loading indicator showcasing all the important apis that are loading
• Changed: If Kavita+ license check throws an exception, just assume license is invalid and let the scheduled task check again (or the user manually)
• Changed: Changelog now shows if you're on a nightly and which stable it's based off.
• Changed: Split the main email template into base.html and fixed some bad closing tags. This should make customizing email templates easier.
• Changed: Removed the up/down arrow keys on webtoon reader moving full pages. Use up/down for scroll and space for a bit at a time.
• Changed: Updated the Kavita templates to be more modern (in terms of the code) and easier to customize.

Fixed

• Fixed: Fixed UI not being able to render search for non-admin users
• Fixed: Remove from On Deck wasn't refreshing the dashboard
• Fixed: Fixed up the display and logic around when there is a series collision, to help the user understand more
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where the UI filter could send out of date information to the backend which threw an error.
• Fixed: (Kavita+) Fixed a bug where external reviews would show as local
• Fixed: Fixed webtoon reader being unusable on iOS (Thanks @Thundernerd for the help)
• Fixed: Series detail page was making a ton of api calls that weren't needed.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where scrobbling tab could duplicate
• Fixed: Fixed a bunch of warnings about ordering and take with search queries
• Fixed: Want to Read had a critical issue where a user could undo your want to read.
• Fixed: Fixed bulk select of chapters leaving the last one off.
• Fixed: On non-authenticated flows, the nav bar will no longer flash on refresh.
• Fixed: Fixed inability to right click highlighted text in the book reader
• Fixed: Fixed reading activity graphic not taking the full width like it should
• Fixed: Fixed some spacing on the Continue/Read button on reading list page
• Fixed: Fixed an issue where download indicators on cards would should on different series
• Fixed: Don't have validations on the login screen
• Fixed: Support for the 'pageNumber' parameter in OPDS API smart-filter/{Id}. (Thanks @charles7668 )
• Fixed: Fixed and polished a lot of the email flows.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where send to device didn't properly send the correct end event
• Fixed: LSIO dockers weren't properly recognized as Docker, Kavita now checks for LSIO_FIRST_PARTY environment variable
• Fixed: Fixed an issue with // being generated for some invite links (
• Fixed: Fixed an issue where a new library could render as blank in the UI
• Fixed: Fixed an issue when creating a new library, that new library wouldn't be included in folder watching
• Fixed: Fixed a bad encoding of dates for lastReadDate on OPDS-PS streams. Panels has already updated implemenation to help progress sync work more smoothly.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where non Kavita+ users wouldn't see reviews.
• Fixed: Handled a rare case where a cover image wouldn't exist when creating a merged image for a reading list/collection.
• Fixed: Fixed a bad comparison on code that pushes update notification users to admins.
• Fixed: Fixed an issue where continue point for a totally unread series would start on the special and not chapter ...

v0.7.13 - Downloading Improvments

A quick and small update for you all with a focus on Kavita+ and a regression that appeared from NetVips, which is responsible for generating cover images, causing black and white covers.

A word to all Kavita+ users, many of you have user's with AniList tokens that have expired. Your users need to go to User settings > Account and generate a new one to continue scrobbling. Also don't forget to register your discord user id and gain access to the exclusive channels. We have been sharing some of the progress on the big items and I would love more feedback.

We have over 10K active installs on old versions. If you're running Kavita, please update! You're missing out on the good stuff.

Make sure you know that the docker repo has CHANGED.
New repo here: https://hub.docker.com/r/jvmilazz0/kavita - You just need to switch your image to jvmilazz0/kavita:latest

If you are on 0.7.6+ you can update directly to 0.7.13 otherwise you need to update incrementally to prevent data loss (v0.5.6 > v0.7.1.4 > v0.7.3.1 > v0.7.6 > v0.7.13)

Added

• Added: Added the ability to delete a library from side nav menu
• Added: (Kavita+) Kavita now alerts the user on visiting their homepage that their AniList token needs rotating to continue scrobbling

Changed

• Changed: (Kavita+) Kavita will now clear out existing, non-processed scrobbling events when a Series is put on hold.
• Changed: Lots of dependency updates
• Changed: Downloading a Volume (consisting of multiple chapter archives) or a Full Series will not auto extract and re-zip for you.
• Changed: Enhanced the messaging around events widget for downloading/preparing a download.
• Changed: Min length for a user review is now only 5 characters
• Changed: Downloads will download as cbz
• Changed: Under User settings > Account tab, Email and AniList token will now inform user if the email is not validated or if AniList token needs to be regenerated (as they expire every few months)
• Changed: (Kavita+) Kavita will quit faster during scrobbling events whenever rate limit is hit or token is expired.
• Changed: (Kavita+) Switched Kavita to use a new dedicated API to allow data to load on the screen faster and all at once leading to less page shift.
• Changed: (Kavita+) If a license is still on disk, but the subscription is not active, Kavita will not schedule Kavita+ tasks at all.
• Changed: Streamlined some code around downloading for upcoming enhancements
• Changed: Updated dependencies, including NetVips for some regressions around cover generation.
• Changed: Major improvement to messaging when a series collides with another series in a parallel folder to library root. Explicitly give more information.
• Changed: Localization files now have cache busting to help on new releases not reflecting all keys
• Changed: Removed XFrameOptions and replaced with AllowIFraming as true/false. This will control multiple headers for Organizer
• Changed: Shortened the time in which Kavita will check for an update an inform user. Originally 5-6 hours, now 1-2. We have over 10k users on old installs that haven't updated.

Fixed

• Fixed: On non-authenticated flows, the nav bar will no longer flash on refresh.
• Fixed: Fixed inablity to right click highlighted text in the book reader
• Fixed: Fixed reading activity graphic not taking the full width like it should
• Fixed: Fixed some spacing on the Continue/Read button on reading list page
• Fixed: Fixed an issue where download indicators on cards would should on different series
• Fixed: Don't have validations on the login screen
• Fixed: Fixed More in Genre not using a localized string for title
• Fixed: When a series updates to completed and there was a next estimated chapter card, make sure it gets cleared.
• Fixed: Fixed bookmarks having + in the filename when not needed
• Fixed: Fixed bookmarks not showing the download indicator
• Fixed: Fixed bookmarks not showing page count in card
• Fixed: Fixed a bad localization string for chapter actions from within the card detail drawer
• Fixed: Restore PDF layout menu (Thanks @tjarls)
• Fixed: Fixed an issue where tab could flash on user preferences due to some delay waiting for a license check.
• Fixed: Ensure only admins can see files when searching
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where Edit Series Modal made it look like the language tag was set, but it wasn't

v0.7.12 - Happy New Year

Happy New Year! A new year and a new set of plans for the year. I wanted to get this first release out quickly so I can share my plans as I'm bursting with excitement. The release is pretty small and mainly focused on bugs I found during my holiday. With that out of the way, let's talk about Kavita this year.

Process Change

First off, I will be changing how feature requests are handled. Going forward, Kavita will solely use Github Discussions for feature requests. Normal support will be done still via Issues and Discord and bugs of course via Issues. I tried many different things over the last 3 years. Given the scope of the application, I need something a bit more robust. The current feature site, while is nice, doesn't send alerts to users, leaving me without a means to communicate when I'm actually ready to start a feature. Discord is just too chaotic and we lack visibility. All feature requests over 10 votes have been migrated over to Discussions already. Please go visit and engage so we can drive some of these home.

Next, let's talk about shaping features. Once a feature is on discussions and I agree, I will be taking this feature to my Kavita+ discord users to help shape the feature into the final solution. I usually rely on a few users for advice, but going forward, Kavita+ users (which many would consider power users) will have a strong say in shaping features going forward. Feedback is always welcome from non-Kavita+ users, but I want to utilize power users to drive features going forward. You can go to Kavita+ tab to link your Discord User Id with your Kavita+ license, which will grant you access to the hidden channels.

Lastly, the subreddit will be shutdown this year. I no longer use Reddit and unfortunately have to keep it as the subreddit needs questions answered. I hope you all can respect my decision and can migrate to discord for future discussions/support.

Website/Wiki

The website is drastically out of date and quite bad. Originally I copied it from Lidarr, which I was one of the original developers, and meant to update it to a new look and feel, but never got around to it. This is finally the year to take action. A new design and stack has already been chosen and @therobbiedavis is taking lead on driving the effort.

In addition to the new website, I will be creating a blog. I need a centralized place to post updates that may not be tied to a release (like this post). The new website will host the blog and I will post releases there as well.

The wiki is also in need of some love. It's quite difficult keeping it up to date myself. @DieselTech and @ThePromidius have helped a ton in that regard to updating, but we are in need of a deep redesign of the information and a new technology to allow better searching. We are investigating new software and are planning a complete revamp over this year. If anyone is knowledgeable about Kavita and wants to contribute, please reach out in discord.

The Features

Kavita+

I have a few key features for Kavita+ that I want to test and if successful, deliver to you all. The first up is Metadata. Komf is a great tool that already exists, but some users want something a bit simpler and that is where Kavita+ comes in. When I first started Kavita, I always had the goal of metadata integration but soon I learned how disjointed everything is and it seemed like adding it would become a full time job instead of letting me build out Kavita. As Kavita+ already has metadata from AniList, I see an opportunity to trial metadata integration.

At the end of 2023, Robbie mentioned to me Hardcover, a potential integration point for Kavita+ that has similar features as AniList -- reviews, ratings, scrobblings, and metadata for books (and some limited comics). After speaking with their development team, this seems feasible to build out. I will be doing a deep dive later this year to bring these features into Kavita+. This also means if metadata support is built out, it will benefit from Hardcover.

Lastly, as mentioned above, Kavita+ users will become critical to shaping and expanding on community ideas once accepted. Link your discord user id via Kavita and you will be granted access into the hidden channels to participate in defining the scope of an idea and provide feedback post implementation before it ships to stable users.

PDF

PDF as many of you know has always been Kavita's weakest point. PDFs have no tools existing for metadata, have the worst and most inconsistent naming patterns out there and overall have just not been a good fit within Kavita. I want to change that this year. First off I want to polish the reader. I've been using a reader that doesn't have many hooks nor does it have the ability to save the reading preferences. I had originally opened an issue for information on how people use Kavita, but the comments were underwhelming. I will be looking to my Kavita+ users to help shape this feature and deliver a good experience.

Many users also collect magazines and I think it's high time a separate library type with different parsing is built out. Like I did with the image library last year, I will be adding a new library type explicitly for Magazines with a limited set of metadata and some UI differences. PDF parsing overall will be updated to be more robust and work better overall.

Comics

Comics are quite complicated and work differently than I had thought when users asked me many years to add comic support. This year I will be trialing a new library type that mimics ComicVine's format, which is the standard for Mylar and comics in general. As is the theme, my Kavita+ users, including @DieselTech will be helping me drive the end solution.

Kobo Sync

The last major feature is Kobo sync. I bought a Kobo and am excited to reverse engineer the protocol to allow native sync with Kavita, much like calibre-web has. Originally this was planned as a Kavita+ feature, but after looking more into it, Kavita can service it without problem.

There are more items on my list as well, but let's leave a bit to surprise. I'm sure everyone can tell these are huge items with that will take tons of time. I'm really excited for this year and what I can achieve.

Remember to use the new Docker Central Repo!

Added

• Added: (Kavita+) Added the ability to view the provider of a recommendation on the card itself and in the preview drawer.
• Added: (Kavita+) Added the ability to reset your Kavita+ license key without having to reach out to me.
• Added: (Kavita+) Added the ability to add your Discord UserId during Kavita+ license registration which will grant access to hidden channels for feature curtailing.

Changed

• Changed: When opening up an external series review, show the source of the review.
• Changed: Streamlined the design slightly for a user's personal review
• Changed: There is now inline form validation on the User Review Modal
• Changed: Removed the tagline from user/external reviews.
• Changed: (Scanner) When a series has a single special and a total count of 1 or less, assume it's completed
• Changed: Lots of love around the messaging when interacting with users that do not use real emails.
• Changed: Enhanced the messaging around users without valid emails interacting with change email flow.
• Changed: Validation messaging added on change username flow, including showing the valid characters.
• Changed: Don't log apikey in logs
• Changed: Updated the donate link to point to a wiki explaining the donation options and that Kavita+ is the only way to remove the donate button.

Fixed

• Fixed: Fixed a bug where user reviews wouldn't be rendered on the UI if they didn't have a tagline, even though it's optional.
• Fixed: Ensure my own review orders in front of other local user reviews
• Fixed: When a user resets the API key, tell connected clients to refresh their account details
• Fixed: Moved bulk operations bar back to the top of the page where it belongs on series detail
• Fixed: When using back on side nav after having a filter applied, clear the filter.
• Fixed: Cleaned up the error handling around Kavita+ registering of a license.
• Fixed: Fix the issue of an extra space appearing after the end of the series detail page. (Thanks @charles7668 )
• Fixed: Fixed a bug with email link generation when using a base url, where too many characters could be trimmed (Thanks @charles7668 )
• Fixed: Change username wouldn't update the correct field which was used in login flow
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where when filtering was disabled (reading list page), the jumpbar also got disabled.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where library watching was trying to be turned on before we had saved the new value from server settings.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where the check email button success message was missing a space before the version number.
• Fixed: Fixed a delay in the UI after a bookmark is created/deleted (Thanks @charles7668 )
• Fixed: Fixed webtoon mode not allowing bookmarking (Thanks @charles7668 )
• Fixed: Fixed a config issue where not all of Weblate's language codes would show up

Removed

• Removed: (Kavita+) Removed the ability to scrobble reviews as the conditions are strict and doesn't make much sense to do it from Kavita.

v0.7.11.2 - Hotfix 2

Unfortunately a few more bugs surfaced after the last hotfix, one being a problem with extracting weblink id's for Kavita+ matching along with an annoying bug with side nav being wiped out for fresh install admins. This is the last release for the year.

Remember to use the new Docker Central Repo! Updates are not going to the old one.

Changed

• Changed: Backups now show the version of Kavita in the filename
• Changed: Moved some cleanup tasks within another task to ensure everything is processed at the same time.
• Changed: Changed the readme to point to the correct type of projects.
• Changed: (Kavita+) When sending requests to Kavita+, MangaDex Ids will be sent as well to prepare for a potential enhancement next year.

Fixed

• Fixed: Fixed unneeded slowness in the image api as some debug code got left in there
• Fixed: Fixed invalid date showing on tasks screen
• Fixed: Fixed a long standing parser bug where series would parse as Love Hina Vol. 30 Chapter 22 when the file was Love Hina Vol. 30 Chapter 22 - Vol 30 Omakes
• Fixed: (Kavita+) Fixed a bug where Kavita+ wasn't being sent the ids from Weblinks
• Fixed: Fixed a loader showing on the webtoon reader when it shouldn't have
• Fixed: Fixed a critical issue where fresh installs that invite a user have their own admin account's side nav and dashboard streams wiped out
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where Smart filters would always evaluate to descending sort
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where some progress bars wouldn't report series progress correctly

Known Issue

• Some users on iOS are reporting issues with the webtoon reader. I spent a week working with one user but unfortunately unable to reproduce. I will look into buying an iOS device next year.

v0.7.11.1 - Hotfix

An unfortunate bug slipped in last minute with the release which would cause LastModified fields to be updated at night when a cleanup task ran to cap progress to 100% (in cases where a user reads 10 pages, swaps the file for one with only 8 pages).

This hotfix will fix that skewing, however, it is likely the task has already ran. You can restore your DB backup from prior to updating (Dec 3rd).

I'm sorry about the data loss.

Fixed

• Fixed: Fixed a critical bug where the cleanup task would break ordering of progress events. This would cause your On Deck to skew.

v0.7.11 - 3 Years of Development

Warning: There is a bug identified that causes minor data skewing. An update will be published soon (before 8th) with the hotfix. If you have updated, copy one of your backups from config/backups for the day of the update and restore the DB.

12/5 - Assets have been swapped

With this release, I've hit 3 years of developing Kavita. Originally starting out after using Ubooquity and feeling limited by the lack of metadata and other solutions not aligning with my sense of UX, I started this project as a personal project to not only have a simple reader and organizer like Plex, but also learn .NET. Fast forward to now and Kavita has grown to be a name brand product and my vision has drastically expanded from a simple self project to becoming the Plex of the reading world. After 3 years of building this project solo (with some help from a few users here and there), I would think it would be nearly complete, yet I find myself with more work than ever as the ideas keep flowing.

Before we jump into this release, let's take a look back at some of the major features I've released this year:

• User and Server Stats (160 hours)
• Double Page reader (100 hours)
• CBL & Reading List Improvements (40 hours)
• Vertical Reading support in Epub reader
• Base URL Support
• WebP and AVIF support
• Kavita+ (and the review overhaul that went along with it) (600+ hours)
• Dynamic covers for collections and reading lists (3 hours)
• Personal Bookmarks in the Epub reader (12 hours)
• Full app localization (80 hours)
• A complete filtering overhaul with deep customization on how you filter (300 hours)
• Smart Filters and customization of your side nav and Dashboard with those streams (300 hours)

This year has been huge in terms of delivering features to the users and also the transformation the underlying codebase has undergone to support these features. Overall, I've delivered 141 new features, 301 changes, and 277 fixes. It has been a tremendous year indeed and much appreciation needs to go to @DieselTech and @scare376 who are basically the only nightly testers to test releases before it hits stable and provide a ton of support in the discord.

I'm looking forward to next year where I will finally get to work on some much needed features, like a complete PDF overhaul, kobo sync support, the start of the mobile app, and some really cool Kavita+ ideas that I've been discussing in the discord (join if you want to give your opinion).

With that said, this last release I had to take a step back and focus on the polish. There were a few performance issues and styling issues that were starting to nag me and after delivering such a huge update, I needed something a bit easier to relax with. This release is focused on polishing the application and I think this first pass brings a lot of nice smoothing to the edges in the app. I have more planned that I will sprinkle in next year.

First up is the .kavitaignore, which is a file you can place within any directory and apply glob syntax patterns which will exclude files and folders. While this is really powerful, it is an advanced feature that many don't use and requires updating your filesystem. I took a hard look, opened an issue and collected feedback from a few users and decided, let's bubble up this feature to the UI. .kavitaignore will be removed next year in the v0.8.x series of releases and instead, admins can now use the File Type switches and the Exclude Patterns in the Library Settings modal. I believe this will lead to higher adoption.

Next is a minor feature that has huge feel--image loading. I overhauled the image loading code to be much smoother. Images fade in and the lazy loading is much more performant. You should immediately notice the difference. Along with this image loading, a lot of the readers got bugfixes and attention to close out some of the bugs that were reported.

Lastly, let's talk about Smart Filters. As we all know, I had to do a few hotfixes due to some code around the smart filters and unfortunately, there were still more bugs in the system. This release should have all the bugs worked out. The testers and I really ensured it's working well. I wrote a migration to try and reduce data loss, but you might find some filters are broken. This is the cost of writing over 10K lines of new code around one feature and only 2 users helping with testing (Seriously, we need help, please join our nightly testing channel and help out).

Aside from the encoding issues, I realized that not all Smart filters need to be binded to the side nav or dashboard. I ended up building quite a few utility filters to identify series that have missing metadata, series that I started reading but forgot about, etc. With this release, in the user settings dropdown (top right of screen), you can now view all your Smart Filters and load them quickly.

One last thing I want to call out for those that read all the changes. I did a ton of polishing on the Publication Status code for a series to make it smarter than before. Books with just one book or series that are just a single special will mark as Completed. Kavita will fallback much better for Series that have a total Count in how it matches against Volumes or Chapters. These will need a force scan to pickup, but I think overall, leads to a much better experience.

Added

• Added: You can now see your total progress in the series from within the manga/image reader.
• Added: Added a Smart Filters page so you can see all your filters and click to load them. The new page is accessed from your user settings (top right dropdown on nav). The smart filter will show red if the filter was not able to be migrated and needs to be recreated by you.
• Added: New Library Type for Image. This is a placeholder while I gather feedback to avoid a bug in non-image types. If you are a primary user of loose leaf image series, please try this out with a test library. This library type may be removed in the future without a data migration. This is exclusively here to gather feedback after solutioning Loose leaf image issues from the open discussion.
• Added: Epub's marc role of creator now maps to writer
• Added: Library Settings now has File types setting which allows you to turn on/off different types of file types from the scanner.
• Added: Library Settings now has an exclude patterns control which allows you to ignore folders or file patterns.
• Added: Added the ability to search for bookmarked series and open up the bookmark reader directly (this is image based bookmarks)
• Added: Added a nightly task (cleanup task) that will ensure all user's progress on a chapter is at max the chapter's pages, in the case it was replaced with one that has less pages.

Changed

• Changed: All filtering encode/decode code is now purely in the backend. There is no noticeable differences when interacting with the filter. This will avoid a lot of headache with the filtering system.
• Changed: All Series page will now render out the title of the smart filter if it's set instead of All Series.
• Changed: Manage users page in admin dashboard has a new look and feel
• Changed: Added a fade in and changed the way Kavita lazy loads images for a much better experience (large improvement on all series page as well)
• Changed: Icon buttons will now longer show an active state when focused
• Changed: Replaced the underlying library for Reading Day breakdown chart
• Changed: On Desktop, by default all series metadata will show (for series metadata). I'm looking for feedback from users.
• Changed: Series detail metadata (summary and tags) will now be expanded to a limit by default on desktop. I'm looking for feedback from users.
• Changed: Metadata filter now animates as it expands/collapses
• Changed: Optimized dashboard page to allow better stream loading so there is less jank
• Changed: Migrated to using a lighter way of loading lazy loaded modules
• Changed: Updated some logs so we can avoid a potential log injection
• Changed: Improved the webtoon reader to better find where you are after quickly scrolling.
• Changed: Next estimated chapter will not show the time anymore
• Changed: Card titles are now center aligned by default
• Changed: On cards, don't show the progress bar unless there is at least one page read
• Changed: Cover chooser no longer has an apply button. Upon adding or selecting a cover, it will instantly take effect.
• Changed: Made the jump bar transition instant which feels much better with the new image loading.
• Changed: Updated Angular to v17
• Changed: Next estimated chapter now looks much better
• Changed: Changed how loose-leaf images are parsed within Kavita to work much better and fallback to more natural grouping. They will now grab the series name from the folder name, use any in-between folders for extracting volume/chapter numbers and if none found, treat the image as a special. (Thank you to users that commented on the discussion issue)
• Changed: Next Estimated Chapter title is now shorthand and localized, in case your locale doesn't use ~ or it doesn't go before the date
• Changed: User settings tabs now defer load, meaning a probably very slight speed increase on slower networks
• Changed: Spruced up the Image Parser to handle more volume and chapter parsing from filenames when it's needed.
• Changed: .kavitaignore files have been deprecated and will log a warning to the logs whenever one is found. They will currently still function but be removed in the v0.8 release.
• Changed: On smaller viewports, modals will open in fullscreen.
• Changed: Next Chapter is now Upcoming to better indicate what the feature does
• Changed: epub reader now has a ...

v0.7.10.2 - Hotfix 2

Sorry for the second hotfix. The first one didn't take.

Fixed

• Fixed: Seriously fixed the invite user flow this time
• Fixed: Fixed a lack of an error being presented to the UI when inviting a user failed

v0.7.10.1 - Hotfix

Unfortunately in the last release, the fix that I made to smart filters did not take and part of the encoder/decoder broke. This hotfix fixes it, however, you will likely have to manually fix every filter. I really apologize for this, but the underlying issue escaped over a month of testing and the fix was minor but impacting.

In other news, I worked with Dani this weekend from the Panels team and built a few APIs for them to hook in and report progress to Kavita via the API. This new Panels should be coming in the coming week.

Added

• Added: Added APIs for Panels to synchronize progress. This means as of this version, OPDS-PS with Panels explicitly will not automatically track progress.

Changed

• Changed: Added a saveProgress flag as optional on page streaming links for other apps if they want to suppress the progress saving feature.

Fixed

• Fixed: Fixed: Fixed a bug from v0.7.10 that caused smart filters to fail to load/save due to encoding issues.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where side nav wasn't properly using the correct name for rendering