Calibre 8.9 Brings Smarter Matching and Clearer Merging to Your Library

For those who put a lot of effort into managing their eBook library, the latest Calibre update (8.9) is here to make your life a little bit easier. It might not be a major overhaul, but it brings some quality-of-life improvements you’ll appreciate the next time you dive into your book collection.

If you’re the type who likes to highlight passages and add annotations, you’ll be happy about one of the new features. Now, when you’re using the annotations browser, the highlight results list includes a color swatch. This small addition makes it easier to see at a glance what kind of highlight you’re looking at, whether it’s a quick note or a key piece of text.

For anyone with a device loaded with eBooks, the “Match books in library” function is getting a little smarter. When you’re trying to sync up a title and it can’t find a match, the app will now remove any extra text in parentheses or after a colon and try again. And for the visual organizers, merging books is now clearer. When you drag and drop to merge, Calibre now shows you the cover of the book you’re merging into.

New features

• Annotations browser: Add a color swatch in the results list to make seeing the type of highlight easier
• Match books in library window: When doing the initial search using the title of the book on the device, if no matches are found remove trailing text in parentheses or after a colon and try again
• When merging books via drag and drop show the cover of the target book
• HTMLZ Output: Add support for embedded fonts
• Plugin installation window: Allow filtering available plugins by category
• Fetch news: Add a sub-menu to the right click menu of the Fetch news button that shows recently downloaded news sources

There are also a handful of bug fixes in this update. Everything from pasting text into the “Edit Book” feature to fixing an error when editing a book’s cover and other metadata on the content server has been addressed.

Bug fixes

• Edit book: When pasting text from the clipboard ensure it is normalized to NFC form
• Content server viewer: Improve the selection dialog for choosing a Text-to-speech voice
• Content server: Fix an error when editing a book’s metadata to change both the cover and another field

Lastly, there’s one new news source and three improved news sources.

New news sources

• Startechery by thekabistro

Improved news sources

• New York Times
• Todoist
• Tagespost

Calibre updates generally come out twice per month, and while each one isn’t huge by itself, the continued support adds up. Last time, it was about improving the eBook viewer and bringing support to the latest Kobo eReaders. This update is all about making the daily grind of managing your eBooks just a little less labor-intensive.

Source: Calibre