/ˌbɪb.li.oʊˈkæp.sə/ · noun · self-hosted

Greek
biblíon
βιβλίον
“a book; the written scroll itself”
+
Latin
capsa
cap·sa
“the cylindrical case Romans used to hold & carry their scrolls”
— which gives us —

Bibliocapsa

Literally, a case for your books. A private home that holds your whole library — and never lets anyone else hold it for you.

Self-hosted on your own hardware. Sits gracefully on top of your existing Calibre library, your digital editions and your physical shelves side by side, with the deepest KOReader integration anywhere.

Get it on GitHub Why it's different

No trade-offs

Most tools make you choose a lane.
The capsa refuses to.

Cataloging sites live in someone else's cloud. Reading apps lock you to one device and quietly own your data. Bibliocapsa keeps everything — and everyone — under one roof that you own.

One library for all of it

Digital editions, physical copies, and books you own in both formats — unified, filterable, and searchable together. Read status and “Date Read” span both as a single concept.

Built for a household

An account for every family member, with optional per-member content restrictions. Younger readers only see genres you allow; everyone keeps their own history, ratings, and private shelves.

You own your reading data

Reading positions, time statistics, ratings, and history all live on your server. Nothing is mined, sold, or held hostage behind a login you don't control.

Respects your Calibre setup

Your library is opened read-only by default. Edits are staged and only written back through a deliberate, confirmed sync — so the tool can never quietly corrupt years of curation.

Search inside your books

True full-text search across the actual content of your library — not just titles and authors. Read EPUBs and PDFs right in the browser, with search inside the reader.

Genuinely pleasant to use

A clean, cover-forward interface with six color themes and three typography schemes that follow your account across devices. Not a spreadsheet with a web skin.

★ First-class, all built in

The complete KOReader experience

Most setups force you to cobble together a stack of separate servers and half-maintained plugins. Bibliocapsa is all of it, natively — behind a single account and a single URL.

📚

OPDS catalog

Browse and download your whole library straight onto the device. No cables, no sideloading.

🔄

Position sync (KOSync)

A complete sync server built right in. Resume exactly where you left off, across every device — including in-browser reading — maintained, fast, tied to your account.

📊

Statistics sync (WebDAV)

KOReader's detailed reading stats flow back to your server and power a built-in dashboard: time read, pages turned, per-book sessions, per user.

What's inside the box

Everything you read, finally in one place

A library that looks the part

  • Cover-forward grid with adjustable density, responsive from phone to desktop
  • Browse by series, author, or genre
  • Six color themes & three typography schemes, with theme-aware icons
  • Fast, virtualized scrolling across thousands of titles

Find anything

  • Title/author search and true full-text search inside your books
  • Read EPUBs & PDFs in the browser, with in-reader search
  • Sort by title, author, date added, or date read
  • Filter by format and read status; collapse a series to one cover

Physical books, first-class

  • Add paper books by hand, or import your history from a Goodreads .csv export
  • Auto-generates clean, Calibre-style covers for books with no artwork
  • Track shelf/room location and who you've lent each book to
  • Goodreads import brings in ratings, shelves & reading history

Reading life, tracked & yours

  • Per-user read history recording every time you finish a book
  • Personal star ratings plus optional community ratings
  • A statistics dashboard fed straight from KOReader
  • “Currently Reading,” pulled from KOReader and manual status

Rich metadata, automatically

  • Auto-fill missing descriptions, page counts, publishers & cover art
  • Full support for Calibre custom columns, synced back on your terms
  • Smart, rule-based shelves alongside hand-curated ones
  • In bulk or on demand, from open metadata sources

Private & easy to run

  • Self-hosted with Docker; one bundled reverse proxy, one clean URL
  • Works smoothly behind a tunnel or HTTPS domain
  • Per-account access control, login rate-limiting, sanitized content
  • No telemetry. No cloud dependency. No subscription.

Up in three steps

Pack your own capsa

It runs on your own hardware in Docker. No migration, no duplicate files — Calibre can stay open the whole time.

Point it at Calibre

Copy .env.example to .env and set CALIBRE_LIBRARY_PATH to your library folder.

Bring it up

Run docker compose up -d and the API, web UI, and KOSync server start together.

Open your library

Visit localhost:8090 — the whole app behind one clean URL — and your 7,000+ books are there: covers, series, authors, full-text search.

# your whole library, a few commands later
$ git clone https://github.com/jwapps-app/bibliocapsa
$ cd bibliocapsa && cp .env.example .env
$ docker compose up -d
$ open http://localhost:8090