owlibri is a lightweight, elegant Electron desktop application designed for searching LibGen mirrors, downloading PDF and EPUB books, and organizing your digital library into a local, glassmorphic bookcase. If you need a clean workflow for downloading and reading academic papers, textbooks, and novels, owlibri is built for you.
- Key Features
- Screenshots
- Tech Stack
- How to Install (Releases)
- Local Development Guide
- Update Behavior
- File Storage & Database
- License
- Interactive Glassmorphic Bookcase: Browse and manage your local downloaded library in a modern card grid. Double-click any book card or click "Read" to open the file instantly in your system's default PDF/EPUB viewer.
- Direct LibGen Search & Auto-Detection: Search millions of books, papers, and textbooks. The app dynamically tests and routes requests through the fastest, active, online LibGen mirror.
- Search Filters & Pagination: Filter results by file type (PDF/EPUB) and language, sort by year, and page through search results (25 results per page).
- Cover Art Resolution: Automatically parses book metadata (database IDs and MD5s) to fetch cover previews dynamically, falling back to a custom card layout if not found.
- Advanced Download Manager:
- Optimized download streams for fast, stable transfers.
- Real-time indicators showing progress bar, file size, download speed, and ETA.
- Native download cancellation support (aborts network requests and cleans up partial temporary files from your disk).
- Reopen completed downloads directly from your history log.
- Download History: Keep track of all completed, cancelled, or failed downloads locally, and retry them with ease.
- Customizable Settings:
- Choose between light and dark modes with a simple toggle.
- Customize your default storage directory path (defaults to
Documents/owlibri/bookcase/).
- Runtime: Electron (Desktop environment)
- Build System: Electron Forge with Vite
- Frontend: React 19 & TypeScript
- Styling: Custom Glassmorphic theme using Vanilla CSS
- HTML Parser: Linkedom (highly optimized XML/HTML parsing)
- Go to the Releases page on this repository.
- Download the installer file corresponding to your operating system:
- macOS: Download the
.dmgdisk image and drag the application into yourApplicationsfolder. - Windows: Download the
.exeinstaller and follow the setup wizard. - Linux: Download the
.debor.rpmpackage and install it via your system package manager.
- macOS: Download the
- Open the app, search for your favorite books, and start building your bookcase.
To run or build owlibri from source on your local machine, follow these steps.
Ensure you have the following installed:
- Node.js (version 18 or newer recommended)
- npm (bundled with Node) or another package manager (yarn, pnpm)
-
Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/dendyelo/owlibri.git cd owlibri -
Install dependencies:
npm install
-
Run in Development Mode: Launch the Electron window and hot-reload CSS/JS changes:
npm start
-
To package the app (packages the app into folder structures without creating an installer):
npm run package
-
To compile and build distribution packages (creates
.dmg,.exe,.deb, etc. based on your host OS):npm run make
- Windows: Stable releases check, download, and apply updates automatically from GitHub Releases, then prompt you to restart.
- macOS: Manual updates. Download the newest
.dmgfrom the GitHub Releases page and overwrite the app inApplications. - Linux: Manual updates. Download the latest
.debor.rpmpackage from the Releases page and reinstall.
All book database records and downloaded files are kept strictly local to your machine:
- Default Storage Directory:
Documents/owlibri/bookcase/(can be changed in the application's settings). - Application Settings & Database: Kept inside Electron's standard user-data directory (e.g.
~/Library/Application Support/owlibri/on macOS).
This application is distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more details.