v0.8.3.2-ls52

LinuxServer Changes:

Rebase to Ubuntu Noble.

kavita Changes:

The UX refresh release has been great, a lot of great feedback has come in, along with a few bugs that got missed during testing. I knew there would be some, especially when the new UX was 50K lines of code difference. I picked up as many as I could that didn't require large periods of time for testing. Unless there is anything major that comes, this should be the last hotfix and I will start work on v0.8.4.

Changed

• Changed: Instead of showing 'Special' on chapter cards that aren't real, show a dash instead
• Changed: Changed how the warning about Email settings and the Test flow worked to be less intrusive
• Changed: (Performance) Small memory improvement when returning reading list items over OPDS
• Changed: Changed 'Edit Series Information' tooltip to 'Edit Information' as it's now generic for other entities
• Changed: Adjusted the logic for displaying chapter information when the chapter belongs to a single volume.

Fixed

• Fixed: Fixed a bug where all chapter cards would always say chapter, instead of issue
• Fixed: Fixed some edge case styling issues on cards
• Fixed: Fixed the wording for the edit tooltip to be more generic since used on other pages, not just series
• Fixed: Fixed Cover Artists still showing instead of Artist in Search
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where task settings weren't saving
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where when highlighting text in a setting item, the setting would close. Now it will only close if you click outside the item and there is no selection.
• Fixed: Fixed an issue where validators would reject payload when password was over 32 characters
• Fixed: Genres/Tags margins on details tab wasn't aligned well with People information
• Fixed: Fixed an issue where Cover Image Size wasn't displaying on the UI
• Fixed: Fixed a bug when changing the bookmark directory would throw an error and not function
• Fixed: Fixed a few issues around smart filter loading for base url reverse proxy setups (aka domain.com/kavita) (Thanks @Fesaa for the issue and helping validate the fixes)

v0.8.3.2-ls51

LinuxServer Changes:

Rebase to Ubuntu Noble.

kavita Changes:

The UX refresh release has been great, a lot of great feedback has come in, along with a few bugs that got missed during testing. I knew there would be some, especially when the new UX was 50K lines of code difference. I picked up as many as I could that didn't require large periods of time for testing. Unless there is anything major that comes, this should be the last hotfix and I will start work on v0.8.4.

Changed

• Changed: Instead of showing 'Special' on chapter cards that aren't real, show a dash instead
• Changed: Changed how the warning about Email settings and the Test flow worked to be less intrusive
• Changed: (Performance) Small memory improvement when returning reading list items over OPDS
• Changed: Changed 'Edit Series Information' tooltip to 'Edit Information' as it's now generic for other entities
• Changed: Adjusted the logic for displaying chapter information when the chapter belongs to a single volume.

Fixed

• Fixed: Fixed a bug where all chapter cards would always say chapter, instead of issue
• Fixed: Fixed some edge case styling issues on cards
• Fixed: Fixed the wording for the edit tooltip to be more generic since used on other pages, not just series
• Fixed: Fixed Cover Artists still showing instead of Artist in Search
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where task settings weren't saving
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where when highlighting text in a setting item, the setting would close. Now it will only close if you click outside the item and there is no selection.
• Fixed: Fixed an issue where validators would reject payload when password was over 32 characters
• Fixed: Genres/Tags margins on details tab wasn't aligned well with People information
• Fixed: Fixed an issue where Cover Image Size wasn't displaying on the UI
• Fixed: Fixed a bug when changing the bookmark directory would throw an error and not function
• Fixed: Fixed a few issues around smart filter loading for base url reverse proxy setups (aka domain.com/kavita) (Thanks @Fesaa for the issue and helping validate the fixes)

v0.8.3-ls50

LinuxServer Changes:

Rebase to Ubuntu Noble.

kavita Changes:

It's finally here, the UX Refresh. Robbie and I have been dreaming and planning this for over a year now and we've grinded for 2 months (with my trip to Norway/Finland between) to bring it to you. The feedback from the nightly testers has been fantastic! Everyone is in love. We have poured over the UX, both on mobile and on desktop, to bring what we think is a consistent and killer experience. We took a lot of inspiration from Plex and if anyone knows, I'm trying to make Kavita the Plex for reading. So let's get into the nitty gritty of what makes this release.

Colorscape

When I browse Plex, I'm always blown away by the accent colors on movie detail pages. Contrast that to Kavita, I felt it was sorely lacking. So I brought it to Kavita and let me tell you, it was no easy feat. Hours wasted on css gradients before realizing the complex system Plex has. Kavita now will show a nice gradient in the background of any page that has a cover (except reading lists and collections, these will likely follow in the future). What's even cooler is the system is able to be turned on/off with a custom theme or even customized by theme creators. This is the feature I'm most proud of with this release.

Individual Pages

This is a big thing for Book and Comic users, the ability to view individual volume/chapter metadata. This not only brings dedicated pages (and the ability to update metadata for individual chapters/books), but also the ability to read a series/chapter/volume from any card. No longer do you need to open the series detail page.

Settings Overhaul

Again taking inspiration from Plex, we updated the settings pages to bring tooltip information front and center and make changes to any field instant (no more pressing save). All settings, from admin to user preferences, are now on one screen. Some flows have been moved to dedicated pages, like CBL Import or MAL Interest Stack import. This should help with bringing visibility to some of the features Kavita has.

Publisher Images

Lastly, we added a new system similar to favicons for publisher images. This new system allows for users to submit or edit publisher images on our kavita repo and these images will be downloaded dynamically and displayed on the detail pages. Some images may not look good. I am counting on the community to add new or edit images to bring the best UX to all users.

All in all, I'm really proud of this release. Next up is an overhaul to the UX surrounding Kavita+ including reworking some of the systems and laying more foundation for future feature releases. I am also working on building out the test cases for the Scanner to allow me to continue working on the elusive Foreign Key constraint issue still plaguing us and working on bringing more optimizations into the Scan Loop to make Kavita faster.

Lastly, I want to make a big thank you to those that contribute on Weblate. This release was massive and many localization strings were changed. The localizers were on top of it and as of this release, we are shipping Kavita in 10 languages with full support.

Added

• Added: Added ability to upload a volume cover for Komf users
• Added: Added a lot of ability to theme the login screen, including the background image.
• Added: Added ColorScapes. ColorScapes is a new dynamic tinting system for Kavita. During cover generation, Kavita will pick primary colors from the image and apply them to the background on pages where the image is a primary element (series detail for now). These are configurable via the theming system. (Light themes do not look good with this system, it should be disabled)
• Added: Added a new actionable for Library to generate colorscapes (which is a soft refresh covers)
• Added: Library Settings and Edit Series Modal now has a tasks tab that shows appropriate tasks that can be done on the library/series along with information about what the task does.
• Added: Added a Volume/Chapter detail page. From any card you can click and open the detail page.
• Added: Added the ability to directly read a card/volume/series/readinglist from the card or open their details page.
• Added: Added the ability to edit chapter metadata directly within Kavita, lock the fields, This includes Sort order which will allow comic users with unique issue numbers to be ordered on the series detail in any order and the readers will respect it.
• Added: Added a new API and UI to allow setting just a volume cover (and locking it). Komf has already updated with support. (Thanks @Snd-R)
• Added: Added the ability to have publisher images (that are managed on Kavita's site, like favicons). There is no extra styling, this is pretty rough but I want to see from users if there is any interest.
• Added: Added a new metadata filter called 'is empty'. This will check against fields like Writers, Tags, Genres, etc to explicitly see if there are no links. (Feature Request)
• Added: .yacreaderlibrary directories will be ignored by the scanner
• Added: Made it so when a new version of Kavita is released, the UI will automatically refresh and bust locale cache since non-admins can't actually run the bust cache task.
• Added: Admins can now trigger Sync Theme job from Tasks page
• Added: Added a link to the CBL Repo from CBL Import for those that are unaware of the project

Changed

• Changed: Passwords can now be up to 256 characters long
• Changed: Changed some headers, spacing, and positioning to make things more uniform across the app.
• Changed: Revamped how settings/preferences work in the app. Following Plex' style, they are all on one page (RBS applies) with a dedicated left nav menu that groups based on functionality. (Sorry localizers, lots of string updates)
• Changed: When navigating away from library/collection/bookmark/etc-detail, instead of just restoring position when interacting with a jumpkey, Kavita will now restore position down to the location of jump point in all cases.
• Changed: Jump keys now show an animation instead of a tooltip to show number of series
• Changed: Filter icon now shows an animation when actively configuring it
• Changed: Moved some screens around to dedicated sections and most of Kavita+ screens are now on a new Scrobbling page
• Changed: Moved the customize modal into a dedicated settings item to make discovery of the feature easier.
• Changed: Lots of small consistency issues and QoL tweaks on different pages to bring a better UX and interaction. A lot of functionality has been moved to drive a consistent experience and discovery of features.
• Changed: Cast and Reviews are in their own tab
• Changed: Tabs on Series Detail now report card count
• Changed: All preferences (except those in account) now just save automatically after interaction
• Changed: Removed library setting 'Include in Recommendations' as Kavita no longer has those flows
• Changed: On mobile view ports, remove the dropdown button and scroll to top. Dropdown button links are now visible in a modal to make clicking much easier.
• Changed: Added a customize button on the Side nav when you move into 'More', so you know you can tweak it if you haven't visited settings yet.
• Changed: Series cards will now show the localized name on hover if present
• Changed: Chapter cards will now show the title on hover if present.
• Changed: Cover Artists is now Artists in the application.
• Changed: After selecting a tab, a refresh of the browser will resume you back on the same tab on series/volume/chapter detail pages.
• Changed: Folder watching is now moved to a separate background thread so it doesn't block startup for users with massive libraries
• Changed: After we update a metadata filter, rescroll to the top as results change
• Changed: Cleaned up some registration error output to look nicer
• Changed: Reorganized edit user modal to better handle users with large amounts of libraries.
• Changed: When mass creating libraries, ensure we enqueue the scans. Also don't restart folder watching if folder watching isn't on.
• Changed: Tweaked some backend code around when we restart library watching and make sure it's always done in a background thread.
• Changed: Sync Themes job now runs daily instead of weekly
• Changed: Lots of small improvements to the UX of theme manager
• Changed: Actionable menu (...) on mobile will now load a modal, rather than the normal desktop view. From testing, the menu was easy to misclick on mobile.

Fixed

• Fixed: Fixed an issue where long passwords would truncate on autofill.
• Fixed: Fixed a side-nav css var that was inappropriately assigned.
• Fixed: Fixed a bug in theme manager where the active pill wouldn't have the correct color for non-dark themes
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where reading list cards wouldn't promote/unpromote from actionables
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where OPDS reading list feeds were missing pagination
• Fixed: Fixed an edge case where busting Kavita+ cache in edit series then hitting close wasn't refreshing screen.
• Fixed: A ton of localization changes across the board (Thank you to the Translators for promptly updating language support to 100%)
• Fixed a bug where busting locale cache wouldn't refresh the new translations
• Fixed: Fixed some logic around disabling scrobbling on the UI side for library type selections
• Fixed: Fixed a bug where pinned smart filters on the side nav would all show an active h...

v0.8.2-ls49

LinuxServer Changes:

Rebase to Ubuntu Noble.

kavita Changes:

A new stable release is here and it is yet again another big one. Initially I set out to focus on 3 items: Scanner, Smart Collections, and CBL v2 (new schema), but here I am delivering 3 massive improvements and a ton of smaller changes. This release includes a bit of everything spread about. Let's get into it.

Built-in Theme Explorer

One thing I wanted since day one of adding theme support into Kavita was the ability for users you just browse a list of themes and download what they want to use. It's not easy when the admin has to add the theme for you and hit scan, dealing with the underlying filesystem. I finally got around to setting up the initial version of this (open to feedback to expand on this system) with v0.8.2. All users will have the ability to browse themes uploaded to the theme repo, preview the images and description, and download and apply theme. This currently does not have any role permission and I didn't hear much from nightly users thinking it's needed. If you feel otherwise, raise a discussion. If you don't want to use a theme on the repo, you can upload your own file via the interface. Existing theme users should delete their themes and re-acquire them. This will allow them to be updated for you automatically (assuming the supported version matches yours).

Smart Collections for Kavita+

This is another one I've wanted for a while and is part of the theme of introducing more synchronization systems into Kavita. Smart Collections allow for you to import any Interest Stacks/Restacks from your MAL account into Kavita. Every 2 days, Kavita will resync with upstream and add any Series that you own to the collection. The collection is otherwise read-only and promotable, so if you want to setup a few best of X and promote them for your server, you can. These features are also not admin-specific. Any user can import their interest stacks into the server (and if they have the promotion role, can promote them). I hope you all enjoy this feature as much as I am. Another level of bringing a top notch experience for my users.

Scanner Changes

I've been working a lot with our users that have larger libraries, ranging from 100k files to 10k series. One of the major problems is that when you have a library of 10k, it's going to take a long time as expected. These users are mainly new users coming from the comic rework and have folder structures Kavita wasn't originally built around. I spent a good chunk of time building optimizations to reduce the amount of processing work Kavita does for these folder layouts (not restrictive to comic libraries) and fixing some bugs around parsing and whatnot that surfaced thanks to the numerous bug reports. If you aren't finding good results after this update, please do reach out.

Misc Changes

A few other big changes come with this release. The first is WAL is now on by default. You can always turn this off manually in the DB, but fresh installs (and existing) will turn WAL on. WAL fixes the common database is locked issue due to Kavita writing too much data too fast. Another big one is double scrollbar on mobile. This was an annoying bug on some mobile browsers on some pages. Robbie took this up and fixed it everywhere to my knowledge. A great QoL enhancement. OPDS has gotten a lot of love in this release thanks to some great reports by @MnsieurJF around reading lists and missing metadata in the feeds. Lastly, the Manga Reader has had some tweaking to how fit to height/width works. It's not easy to put into words, but I find the fitting to be MUCH better.

I have loose plans for what the next release is going to be. The PDF rework will need to come after v0.8.3 to allow people who upgrade into the v0.8.x series not to loose data from the massive changes. I have a lot of holiday coming up as well, so the release may be longer or shorter depending.

Lastly, I want to mention (as I keep forgetting) that @DieselTech has joined the Kavita team a few months ago. His name should be well known as he's very active in most of the reading and comic discords as well as being a core member in the CBL Reading Order group. He's already driven a lot of great changes in Kavita for hardcore comic users and I have no doubt he will continue to be a great resource for me to rely on in the future.

Added

• Added: Kavita+ users can now import their MAL interest stacks/restacks into Kavita as Smart Collections. These collections will synchronize back with MAL to update with new series and summary information every 2 days. Smart Collections work just as normal collections except are non-editable as the MAL stack controls the data. They can be promoted given the user has promotion role. They are not admin-specific.
• Added: Added the ability for any user to download themes from the Theme Repo directly via Kavita. Kavita will keep these themes up to data automatically (unless the reported version from the Repo is greater than the server version).
• Added: Book series can now have specials. In order to be classified as a Special, the SP marker must be in the filename, the calibre:series must be set to the Series name and calibre:series_index must be 0. (Feature Request: 3 upvotes)
• Added: OPDS-PS on PDF files is now possible. Kavita will convert to images.
• Added: Added a create link to create a new smart filter in case it's not clear for first time users exploring the software.
• Added: Added first install version and date to the DB so admin's can look back at it. This data is available in System tab.
• Added: Added new Random sort option to allow a stream like 'Top Unread in X' (Thanks @Fesaa)
• Added: Added the following css variables --event-widget-activity-bg-color, --event-widget-update-bg-color, --event-widget-error-bg-color
• Added: Implemented the ability to click download on any file extension from stats page (formats table) and download a report of all files that are of that extension.
• Added: Added the ability to manually override the width in the manga/webtoon reader when using Width scaling (Thanks @Marsimplodation) (Feature Request: 19 upvotes)
• Added: Added bulk promote/demote/delete for reading lists to align with collections.

Changed

• Changed: On forgot password, even if email isn't setup or user doesn't have email setup, still allow the reset link to log.
• Changed: Reduced memory for adding a set of series to a collection.
• Changed: Scan button no longer exists on themes tab. Now, admin's can upload their custom css files via the UI.
• Changed: Admin's can no longer delete themes and force users with that theme active off.
• Changed: Changed how scaling works in the manga reader to be more inline with the expected behavior. Height will scale to viewport height even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Width will scale to viewport width even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Original will show the image at its intrinsic dimensions, no scaling is applied (Thanks @therobbiedavis)
• Changed: Enable WAL journal mode by default in all Kavita installs. Users can turn it off after the first run if needed.
• Changed: Show a warning on dirty email setting form to inform the user they need to save before testing settings.
• Changed: Ensure users know that Scrobbling providers will always keep the highest number from kavita.
• Changed: On < tablet viewports, reading list page should use order numbers rather than drag and drop, as there isn't enough real estate.
• Changed: Series Detail page will now show people/genre/tags as collapsed even on desktop, but summary will have same code to be expanded up to 1000 characters on desktop.
• Changed: (Scanner) Refactored Scan Loop to avoid doing extra work on lower folders in a folder map path, so that users that group by publisher or another arbitrary folder, can avoid a lot of scanning on lower level folders just because the highest level changed.
• Changed: (Performance) Applied some performance optimizations on Series OPDS route which should help speed up heavier Series.
• Changed: (Performance) Small optimization to image reader to make finding the next/prev page faster.
• Changed: Search will no longer search against Chapter titles and Files by default. Instead, there is a new link in the search window to perform with those included. This should help users with larger libraries find their files faster.
• Changed: (Kavita+) Kavita+ scrobbling will now take AniList/Mal ids from External metadata (which is prefetched from Kavita+ for the external metadata) whenever possible. This can help with matching when there are no weblinks.
• Changed: Updates dependencies which includes a fix for nav items in epub toc that are more loose.
• Changed: Added a few full-wdith characters for normalization: ＊！＋
• Changed: All smart filters page now uses the same design as the flow from Customize modal.
• Changed: Disable the first remove button for weblinks/exclude pattern component as it isn't removable
• Changed: Updated ScanFolder to be more aggressive in finding the underlying series by also checking against a partial match on lowest folder path to find a series. This should result in less work for well structured libraries.
• Changed: (Performance) Cleaned up some extra db calls that aren't needed in the OPDS apis.
• Changed: Reading Lists in both OPDS/UI now have the underlying issue's summary.
• Changed: Smart Filter OPDS feeds are now smart-filters/{id} instead of smart-filter/{id}
• Changed: Updated the cover generation logic to handle webtoons better. The new code will now check if the image scales well or not and if not, use a more attention focused scaling/cropping method. (Thanks @arition for the [initial PR](Kareadita/Kavita#261...

v0.8.2-ls48

LinuxServer Changes:

Rebase to Ubuntu Noble.

kavita Changes:

A new stable release is here and it is yet again another big one. Initially I set out to focus on 3 items: Scanner, Smart Collections, and CBL v2 (new schema), but here I am delivering 3 massive improvements and a ton of smaller changes. This release includes a bit of everything spread about. Let's get into it.

Built-in Theme Explorer

One thing I wanted since day one of adding theme support into Kavita was the ability for users you just browse a list of themes and download what they want to use. It's not easy when the admin has to add the theme for you and hit scan, dealing with the underlying filesystem. I finally got around to setting up the initial version of this (open to feedback to expand on this system) with v0.8.2. All users will have the ability to browse themes uploaded to the theme repo, preview the images and description, and download and apply theme. This currently does not have any role permission and I didn't hear much from nightly users thinking it's needed. If you feel otherwise, raise a discussion. If you don't want to use a theme on the repo, you can upload your own file via the interface. Existing theme users should delete their themes and re-acquire them. This will allow them to be updated for you automatically (assuming the supported version matches yours).

Smart Collections for Kavita+

This is another one I've wanted for a while and is part of the theme of introducing more synchronization systems into Kavita. Smart Collections allow for you to import any Interest Stacks/Restacks from your MAL account into Kavita. Every 2 days, Kavita will resync with upstream and add any Series that you own to the collection. The collection is otherwise read-only and promotable, so if you want to setup a few best of X and promote them for your server, you can. These features are also not admin-specific. Any user can import their interest stacks into the server (and if they have the promotion role, can promote them). I hope you all enjoy this feature as much as I am. Another level of bringing a top notch experience for my users.

Scanner Changes

I've been working a lot with our users that have larger libraries, ranging from 100k files to 10k series. One of the major problems is that when you have a library of 10k, it's going to take a long time as expected. These users are mainly new users coming from the comic rework and have folder structures Kavita wasn't originally built around. I spent a good chunk of time building optimizations to reduce the amount of processing work Kavita does for these folder layouts (not restrictive to comic libraries) and fixing some bugs around parsing and whatnot that surfaced thanks to the numerous bug reports. If you aren't finding good results after this update, please do reach out.

Misc Changes

A few other big changes come with this release. The first is WAL is now on by default. You can always turn this off manually in the DB, but fresh installs (and existing) will turn WAL on. WAL fixes the common database is locked issue due to Kavita writing too much data too fast. Another big one is double scrollbar on mobile. This was an annoying bug on some mobile browsers on some pages. Robbie took this up and fixed it everywhere to my knowledge. A great QoL enhancement. OPDS has gotten a lot of love in this release thanks to some great reports by @MnsieurJF around reading lists and missing metadata in the feeds. Lastly, the Manga Reader has had some tweaking to how fit to height/width works. It's not easy to put into words, but I find the fitting to be MUCH better.

I have loose plans for what the next release is going to be. The PDF rework will need to come after v0.8.3 to allow people who upgrade into the v0.8.x series not to loose data from the massive changes. I have a lot of holiday coming up as well, so the release may be longer or shorter depending.

Lastly, I want to mention (as I keep forgetting) that @DieselTech has joined the Kavita team a few months ago. His name should be well known as he's very active in most of the reading and comic discords as well as being a core member in the CBL Reading Order group. He's already driven a lot of great changes in Kavita for hardcore comic users and I have no doubt he will continue to be a great resource for me to rely on in the future.

Added

• Added: Kavita+ users can now import their MAL interest stacks/restacks into Kavita as Smart Collections. These collections will synchronize back with MAL to update with new series and summary information every 2 days. Smart Collections work just as normal collections except are non-editable as the MAL stack controls the data. They can be promoted given the user has promotion role. They are not admin-specific.
• Added: Added the ability for any user to download themes from the Theme Repo directly via Kavita. Kavita will keep these themes up to data automatically (unless the reported version from the Repo is greater than the server version).
• Added: Book series can now have specials. In order to be classified as a Special, the SP marker must be in the filename, the calibre:series must be set to the Series name and calibre:series_index must be 0. (Feature Request: 3 upvotes)
• Added: OPDS-PS on PDF files is now possible. Kavita will convert to images.
• Added: Added a create link to create a new smart filter in case it's not clear for first time users exploring the software.
• Added: Added first install version and date to the DB so admin's can look back at it. This data is available in System tab.
• Added: Added new Random sort option to allow a stream like 'Top Unread in X' (Thanks @Fesaa)
• Added: Added the following css variables --event-widget-activity-bg-color, --event-widget-update-bg-color, --event-widget-error-bg-color
• Added: Implemented the ability to click download on any file extension from stats page (formats table) and download a report of all files that are of that extension.
• Added: Added the ability to manually override the width in the manga/webtoon reader when using Width scaling (Thanks @Marsimplodation) (Feature Request: 19 upvotes)
• Added: Added bulk promote/demote/delete for reading lists to align with collections.

Changed

• Changed: On forgot password, even if email isn't setup or user doesn't have email setup, still allow the reset link to log.
• Changed: Reduced memory for adding a set of series to a collection.
• Changed: Scan button no longer exists on themes tab. Now, admin's can upload their custom css files via the UI.
• Changed: Admin's can no longer delete themes and force users with that theme active off.
• Changed: Changed how scaling works in the manga reader to be more inline with the expected behavior. Height will scale to viewport height even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Width will scale to viewport width even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Original will show the image at its intrinsic dimensions, no scaling is applied (Thanks @therobbiedavis)
• Changed: Enable WAL journal mode by default in all Kavita installs. Users can turn it off after the first run if needed.
• Changed: Show a warning on dirty email setting form to inform the user they need to save before testing settings.
• Changed: Ensure users know that Scrobbling providers will always keep the highest number from kavita.
• Changed: On < tablet viewports, reading list page should use order numbers rather than drag and drop, as there isn't enough real estate.
• Changed: Series Detail page will now show people/genre/tags as collapsed even on desktop, but summary will have same code to be expanded up to 1000 characters on desktop.
• Changed: (Scanner) Refactored Scan Loop to avoid doing extra work on lower folders in a folder map path, so that users that group by publisher or another arbitrary folder, can avoid a lot of scanning on lower level folders just because the highest level changed.
• Changed: (Performance) Applied some performance optimizations on Series OPDS route which should help speed up heavier Series.
• Changed: (Performance) Small optimization to image reader to make finding the next/prev page faster.
• Changed: Search will no longer search against Chapter titles and Files by default. Instead, there is a new link in the search window to perform with those included. This should help users with larger libraries find their files faster.
• Changed: (Kavita+) Kavita+ scrobbling will now take AniList/Mal ids from External metadata (which is prefetched from Kavita+ for the external metadata) whenever possible. This can help with matching when there are no weblinks.
• Changed: Updates dependencies which includes a fix for nav items in epub toc that are more loose.
• Changed: Added a few full-wdith characters for normalization: ＊！＋
• Changed: All smart filters page now uses the same design as the flow from Customize modal.
• Changed: Disable the first remove button for weblinks/exclude pattern component as it isn't removable
• Changed: Updated ScanFolder to be more aggressive in finding the underlying series by also checking against a partial match on lowest folder path to find a series. This should result in less work for well structured libraries.
• Changed: (Performance) Cleaned up some extra db calls that aren't needed in the OPDS apis.
• Changed: Reading Lists in both OPDS/UI now have the underlying issue's summary.
• Changed: Smart Filter OPDS feeds are now smart-filters/{id} instead of smart-filter/{id}
• Changed: Updated the cover generation logic to handle webtoons better. The new code will now check if the image scales well or not and if not, use a more attention focused scaling/cropping method. (Thanks @arition for the [initial PR](Kareadita/Kavita#261...

v0.8.2-ls47

LinuxServer Changes:

Rebase to Ubuntu Noble.

kavita Changes:

A new stable release is here and it is yet again another big one. Initially I set out to focus on 3 items: Scanner, Smart Collections, and CBL v2 (new schema), but here I am delivering 3 massive improvements and a ton of smaller changes. This release includes a bit of everything spread about. Let's get into it.

Built-in Theme Explorer

One thing I wanted since day one of adding theme support into Kavita was the ability for users you just browse a list of themes and download what they want to use. It's not easy when the admin has to add the theme for you and hit scan, dealing with the underlying filesystem. I finally got around to setting up the initial version of this (open to feedback to expand on this system) with v0.8.2. All users will have the ability to browse themes uploaded to the theme repo, preview the images and description, and download and apply theme. This currently does not have any role permission and I didn't hear much from nightly users thinking it's needed. If you feel otherwise, raise a discussion. If you don't want to use a theme on the repo, you can upload your own file via the interface. Existing theme users should delete their themes and re-acquire them. This will allow them to be updated for you automatically (assuming the supported version matches yours).

Smart Collections for Kavita+

This is another one I've wanted for a while and is part of the theme of introducing more synchronization systems into Kavita. Smart Collections allow for you to import any Interest Stacks/Restacks from your MAL account into Kavita. Every 2 days, Kavita will resync with upstream and add any Series that you own to the collection. The collection is otherwise read-only and promotable, so if you want to setup a few best of X and promote them for your server, you can. These features are also not admin-specific. Any user can import their interest stacks into the server (and if they have the promotion role, can promote them). I hope you all enjoy this feature as much as I am. Another level of bringing a top notch experience for my users.

Scanner Changes

I've been working a lot with our users that have larger libraries, ranging from 100k files to 10k series. One of the major problems is that when you have a library of 10k, it's going to take a long time as expected. These users are mainly new users coming from the comic rework and have folder structures Kavita wasn't originally built around. I spent a good chunk of time building optimizations to reduce the amount of processing work Kavita does for these folder layouts (not restrictive to comic libraries) and fixing some bugs around parsing and whatnot that surfaced thanks to the numerous bug reports. If you aren't finding good results after this update, please do reach out.

Misc Changes

A few other big changes come with this release. The first is WAL is now on by default. You can always turn this off manually in the DB, but fresh installs (and existing) will turn WAL on. WAL fixes the common database is locked issue due to Kavita writing too much data too fast. Another big one is double scrollbar on mobile. This was an annoying bug on some mobile browsers on some pages. Robbie took this up and fixed it everywhere to my knowledge. A great QoL enhancement. OPDS has gotten a lot of love in this release thanks to some great reports by @MnsieurJF around reading lists and missing metadata in the feeds. Lastly, the Manga Reader has had some tweaking to how fit to height/width works. It's not easy to put into words, but I find the fitting to be MUCH better.

I have loose plans for what the next release is going to be. The PDF rework will need to come after v0.8.3 to allow people who upgrade into the v0.8.x series not to loose data from the massive changes. I have a lot of holiday coming up as well, so the release may be longer or shorter depending.

Lastly, I want to mention (as I keep forgetting) that @DieselTech has joined the Kavita team a few months ago. His name should be well known as he's very active in most of the reading and comic discords as well as being a core member in the CBL Reading Order group. He's already driven a lot of great changes in Kavita for hardcore comic users and I have no doubt he will continue to be a great resource for me to rely on in the future.

Added

• Added: Kavita+ users can now import their MAL interest stacks/restacks into Kavita as Smart Collections. These collections will synchronize back with MAL to update with new series and summary information every 2 days. Smart Collections work just as normal collections except are non-editable as the MAL stack controls the data. They can be promoted given the user has promotion role. They are not admin-specific.
• Added: Added the ability for any user to download themes from the Theme Repo directly via Kavita. Kavita will keep these themes up to data automatically (unless the reported version from the Repo is greater than the server version).
• Added: Book series can now have specials. In order to be classified as a Special, the SP marker must be in the filename, the calibre:series must be set to the Series name and calibre:series_index must be 0. (Feature Request: 3 upvotes)
• Added: OPDS-PS on PDF files is now possible. Kavita will convert to images.
• Added: Added a create link to create a new smart filter in case it's not clear for first time users exploring the software.
• Added: Added first install version and date to the DB so admin's can look back at it. This data is available in System tab.
• Added: Added new Random sort option to allow a stream like 'Top Unread in X' (Thanks @Fesaa)
• Added: Added the following css variables --event-widget-activity-bg-color, --event-widget-update-bg-color, --event-widget-error-bg-color
• Added: Implemented the ability to click download on any file extension from stats page (formats table) and download a report of all files that are of that extension.
• Added: Added the ability to manually override the width in the manga/webtoon reader when using Width scaling (Thanks @Marsimplodation) (Feature Request: 19 upvotes)
• Added: Added bulk promote/demote/delete for reading lists to align with collections.

Changed

• Changed: On forgot password, even if email isn't setup or user doesn't have email setup, still allow the reset link to log.
• Changed: Reduced memory for adding a set of series to a collection.
• Changed: Scan button no longer exists on themes tab. Now, admin's can upload their custom css files via the UI.
• Changed: Admin's can no longer delete themes and force users with that theme active off.
• Changed: Changed how scaling works in the manga reader to be more inline with the expected behavior. Height will scale to viewport height even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Width will scale to viewport width even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Original will show the image at its intrinsic dimensions, no scaling is applied (Thanks @therobbiedavis)
• Changed: Enable WAL journal mode by default in all Kavita installs. Users can turn it off after the first run if needed.
• Changed: Show a warning on dirty email setting form to inform the user they need to save before testing settings.
• Changed: Ensure users know that Scrobbling providers will always keep the highest number from kavita.
• Changed: On < tablet viewports, reading list page should use order numbers rather than drag and drop, as there isn't enough real estate.
• Changed: Series Detail page will now show people/genre/tags as collapsed even on desktop, but summary will have same code to be expanded up to 1000 characters on desktop.
• Changed: (Scanner) Refactored Scan Loop to avoid doing extra work on lower folders in a folder map path, so that users that group by publisher or another arbitrary folder, can avoid a lot of scanning on lower level folders just because the highest level changed.
• Changed: (Performance) Applied some performance optimizations on Series OPDS route which should help speed up heavier Series.
• Changed: (Performance) Small optimization to image reader to make finding the next/prev page faster.
• Changed: Search will no longer search against Chapter titles and Files by default. Instead, there is a new link in the search window to perform with those included. This should help users with larger libraries find their files faster.
• Changed: (Kavita+) Kavita+ scrobbling will now take AniList/Mal ids from External metadata (which is prefetched from Kavita+ for the external metadata) whenever possible. This can help with matching when there are no weblinks.
• Changed: Updates dependencies which includes a fix for nav items in epub toc that are more loose.
• Changed: Added a few full-wdith characters for normalization: ＊！＋
• Changed: All smart filters page now uses the same design as the flow from Customize modal.
• Changed: Disable the first remove button for weblinks/exclude pattern component as it isn't removable
• Changed: Updated ScanFolder to be more aggressive in finding the underlying series by also checking against a partial match on lowest folder path to find a series. This should result in less work for well structured libraries.
• Changed: (Performance) Cleaned up some extra db calls that aren't needed in the OPDS apis.
• Changed: Reading Lists in both OPDS/UI now have the underlying issue's summary.
• Changed: Smart Filter OPDS feeds are now smart-filters/{id} instead of smart-filter/{id}
• Changed: Updated the cover generation logic to handle webtoons better. The new code will now check if the image scales well or not and if not, use a more attention focused scaling/cropping method. (Thanks @arition for the [initial PR](Kareadita/Kavita#261...

v0.8.2-ls46

LinuxServer Changes:

Rebase to Ubuntu Noble.

kavita Changes:

A new stable release is here and it is yet again another big one. Initially I set out to focus on 3 items: Scanner, Smart Collections, and CBL v2 (new schema), but here I am delivering 3 massive improvements and a ton of smaller changes. This release includes a bit of everything spread about. Let's get into it.

Built-in Theme Explorer

One thing I wanted since day one of adding theme support into Kavita was the ability for users you just browse a list of themes and download what they want to use. It's not easy when the admin has to add the theme for you and hit scan, dealing with the underlying filesystem. I finally got around to setting up the initial version of this (open to feedback to expand on this system) with v0.8.2. All users will have the ability to browse themes uploaded to the theme repo, preview the images and description, and download and apply theme. This currently does not have any role permission and I didn't hear much from nightly users thinking it's needed. If you feel otherwise, raise a discussion. If you don't want to use a theme on the repo, you can upload your own file via the interface. Existing theme users should delete their themes and re-acquire them. This will allow them to be updated for you automatically (assuming the supported version matches yours).

Smart Collections for Kavita+

This is another one I've wanted for a while and is part of the theme of introducing more synchronization systems into Kavita. Smart Collections allow for you to import any Interest Stacks/Restacks from your MAL account into Kavita. Every 2 days, Kavita will resync with upstream and add any Series that you own to the collection. The collection is otherwise read-only and promotable, so if you want to setup a few best of X and promote them for your server, you can. These features are also not admin-specific. Any user can import their interest stacks into the server (and if they have the promotion role, can promote them). I hope you all enjoy this feature as much as I am. Another level of bringing a top notch experience for my users.

Scanner Changes

I've been working a lot with our users that have larger libraries, ranging from 100k files to 10k series. One of the major problems is that when you have a library of 10k, it's going to take a long time as expected. These users are mainly new users coming from the comic rework and have folder structures Kavita wasn't originally built around. I spent a good chunk of time building optimizations to reduce the amount of processing work Kavita does for these folder layouts (not restrictive to comic libraries) and fixing some bugs around parsing and whatnot that surfaced thanks to the numerous bug reports. If you aren't finding good results after this update, please do reach out.

Misc Changes

A few other big changes come with this release. The first is WAL is now on by default. You can always turn this off manually in the DB, but fresh installs (and existing) will turn WAL on. WAL fixes the common database is locked issue due to Kavita writing too much data too fast. Another big one is double scrollbar on mobile. This was an annoying bug on some mobile browsers on some pages. Robbie took this up and fixed it everywhere to my knowledge. A great QoL enhancement. OPDS has gotten a lot of love in this release thanks to some great reports by @MnsieurJF around reading lists and missing metadata in the feeds. Lastly, the Manga Reader has had some tweaking to how fit to height/width works. It's not easy to put into words, but I find the fitting to be MUCH better.

I have loose plans for what the next release is going to be. The PDF rework will need to come after v0.8.3 to allow people who upgrade into the v0.8.x series not to loose data from the massive changes. I have a lot of holiday coming up as well, so the release may be longer or shorter depending.

Lastly, I want to mention (as I keep forgetting) that @DieselTech has joined the Kavita team a few months ago. His name should be well known as he's very active in most of the reading and comic discords as well as being a core member in the CBL Reading Order group. He's already driven a lot of great changes in Kavita for hardcore comic users and I have no doubt he will continue to be a great resource for me to rely on in the future.

Added

• Added: Kavita+ users can now import their MAL interest stacks/restacks into Kavita as Smart Collections. These collections will synchronize back with MAL to update with new series and summary information every 2 days. Smart Collections work just as normal collections except are non-editable as the MAL stack controls the data. They can be promoted given the user has promotion role. They are not admin-specific.
• Added: Added the ability for any user to download themes from the Theme Repo directly via Kavita. Kavita will keep these themes up to data automatically (unless the reported version from the Repo is greater than the server version).
• Added: Book series can now have specials. In order to be classified as a Special, the SP marker must be in the filename, the calibre:series must be set to the Series name and calibre:series_index must be 0. (Feature Request: 3 upvotes)
• Added: OPDS-PS on PDF files is now possible. Kavita will convert to images.
• Added: Added a create link to create a new smart filter in case it's not clear for first time users exploring the software.
• Added: Added first install version and date to the DB so admin's can look back at it. This data is available in System tab.
• Added: Added new Random sort option to allow a stream like 'Top Unread in X' (Thanks @Fesaa)
• Added: Added the following css variables --event-widget-activity-bg-color, --event-widget-update-bg-color, --event-widget-error-bg-color
• Added: Implemented the ability to click download on any file extension from stats page (formats table) and download a report of all files that are of that extension.
• Added: Added the ability to manually override the width in the manga/webtoon reader when using Width scaling (Thanks @Marsimplodation) (Feature Request: 19 upvotes)
• Added: Added bulk promote/demote/delete for reading lists to align with collections.

Changed

• Changed: On forgot password, even if email isn't setup or user doesn't have email setup, still allow the reset link to log.
• Changed: Reduced memory for adding a set of series to a collection.
• Changed: Scan button no longer exists on themes tab. Now, admin's can upload their custom css files via the UI.
• Changed: Admin's can no longer delete themes and force users with that theme active off.
• Changed: Changed how scaling works in the manga reader to be more inline with the expected behavior. Height will scale to viewport height even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Width will scale to viewport width even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Original will show the image at its intrinsic dimensions, no scaling is applied (Thanks @therobbiedavis)
• Changed: Enable WAL journal mode by default in all Kavita installs. Users can turn it off after the first run if needed.
• Changed: Show a warning on dirty email setting form to inform the user they need to save before testing settings.
• Changed: Ensure users know that Scrobbling providers will always keep the highest number from kavita.
• Changed: On < tablet viewports, reading list page should use order numbers rather than drag and drop, as there isn't enough real estate.
• Changed: Series Detail page will now show people/genre/tags as collapsed even on desktop, but summary will have same code to be expanded up to 1000 characters on desktop.
• Changed: (Scanner) Refactored Scan Loop to avoid doing extra work on lower folders in a folder map path, so that users that group by publisher or another arbitrary folder, can avoid a lot of scanning on lower level folders just because the highest level changed.
• Changed: (Performance) Applied some performance optimizations on Series OPDS route which should help speed up heavier Series.
• Changed: (Performance) Small optimization to image reader to make finding the next/prev page faster.
• Changed: Search will no longer search against Chapter titles and Files by default. Instead, there is a new link in the search window to perform with those included. This should help users with larger libraries find their files faster.
• Changed: (Kavita+) Kavita+ scrobbling will now take AniList/Mal ids from External metadata (which is prefetched from Kavita+ for the external metadata) whenever possible. This can help with matching when there are no weblinks.
• Changed: Updates dependencies which includes a fix for nav items in epub toc that are more loose.
• Changed: Added a few full-wdith characters for normalization: ＊！＋
• Changed: All smart filters page now uses the same design as the flow from Customize modal.
• Changed: Disable the first remove button for weblinks/exclude pattern component as it isn't removable
• Changed: Updated ScanFolder to be more aggressive in finding the underlying series by also checking against a partial match on lowest folder path to find a series. This should result in less work for well structured libraries.
• Changed: (Performance) Cleaned up some extra db calls that aren't needed in the OPDS apis.
• Changed: Reading Lists in both OPDS/UI now have the underlying issue's summary.
• Changed: Smart Filter OPDS feeds are now smart-filters/{id} instead of smart-filter/{id}
• Changed: Updated the cover generation logic to handle webtoons better. The new code will now check if the image scales well or not and if not, use a more attention focused scaling/cropping method. (Thanks @arition for the [initial PR](Kareadita/Kavita#261...

v0.8.2-ls45

LinuxServer Changes:

Rebase to Ubuntu Noble.

kavita Changes:

A new stable release is here and it is yet again another big one. Initially I set out to focus on 3 items: Scanner, Smart Collections, and CBL v2 (new schema), but here I am delivering 3 massive improvements and a ton of smaller changes. This release includes a bit of everything spread about. Let's get into it.

Built-in Theme Explorer

One thing I wanted since day one of adding theme support into Kavita was the ability for users you just browse a list of themes and download what they want to use. It's not easy when the admin has to add the theme for you and hit scan, dealing with the underlying filesystem. I finally got around to setting up the initial version of this (open to feedback to expand on this system) with v0.8.2. All users will have the ability to browse themes uploaded to the theme repo, preview the images and description, and download and apply theme. This currently does not have any role permission and I didn't hear much from nightly users thinking it's needed. If you feel otherwise, raise a discussion. If you don't want to use a theme on the repo, you can upload your own file via the interface. Existing theme users should delete their themes and re-acquire them. This will allow them to be updated for you automatically (assuming the supported version matches yours).

Smart Collections for Kavita+

This is another one I've wanted for a while and is part of the theme of introducing more synchronization systems into Kavita. Smart Collections allow for you to import any Interest Stacks/Restacks from your MAL account into Kavita. Every 2 days, Kavita will resync with upstream and add any Series that you own to the collection. The collection is otherwise read-only and promotable, so if you want to setup a few best of X and promote them for your server, you can. These features are also not admin-specific. Any user can import their interest stacks into the server (and if they have the promotion role, can promote them). I hope you all enjoy this feature as much as I am. Another level of bringing a top notch experience for my users.

Scanner Changes

I've been working a lot with our users that have larger libraries, ranging from 100k files to 10k series. One of the major problems is that when you have a library of 10k, it's going to take a long time as expected. These users are mainly new users coming from the comic rework and have folder structures Kavita wasn't originally built around. I spent a good chunk of time building optimizations to reduce the amount of processing work Kavita does for these folder layouts (not restrictive to comic libraries) and fixing some bugs around parsing and whatnot that surfaced thanks to the numerous bug reports. If you aren't finding good results after this update, please do reach out.

Misc Changes

A few other big changes come with this release. The first is WAL is now on by default. You can always turn this off manually in the DB, but fresh installs (and existing) will turn WAL on. WAL fixes the common database is locked issue due to Kavita writing too much data too fast. Another big one is double scrollbar on mobile. This was an annoying bug on some mobile browsers on some pages. Robbie took this up and fixed it everywhere to my knowledge. A great QoL enhancement. OPDS has gotten a lot of love in this release thanks to some great reports by @MnsieurJF around reading lists and missing metadata in the feeds. Lastly, the Manga Reader has had some tweaking to how fit to height/width works. It's not easy to put into words, but I find the fitting to be MUCH better.

I have loose plans for what the next release is going to be. The PDF rework will need to come after v0.8.3 to allow people who upgrade into the v0.8.x series not to loose data from the massive changes. I have a lot of holiday coming up as well, so the release may be longer or shorter depending.

Lastly, I want to mention (as I keep forgetting) that @DieselTech has joined the Kavita team a few months ago. His name should be well known as he's very active in most of the reading and comic discords as well as being a core member in the CBL Reading Order group. He's already driven a lot of great changes in Kavita for hardcore comic users and I have no doubt he will continue to be a great resource for me to rely on in the future.

Added

• Added: Kavita+ users can now import their MAL interest stacks/restacks into Kavita as Smart Collections. These collections will synchronize back with MAL to update with new series and summary information every 2 days. Smart Collections work just as normal collections except are non-editable as the MAL stack controls the data. They can be promoted given the user has promotion role. They are not admin-specific.
• Added: Added the ability for any user to download themes from the Theme Repo directly via Kavita. Kavita will keep these themes up to data automatically (unless the reported version from the Repo is greater than the server version).
• Added: Book series can now have specials. In order to be classified as a Special, the SP marker must be in the filename, the calibre:series must be set to the Series name and calibre:series_index must be 0. (Feature Request: 3 upvotes)
• Added: OPDS-PS on PDF files is now possible. Kavita will convert to images.
• Added: Added a create link to create a new smart filter in case it's not clear for first time users exploring the software.
• Added: Added first install version and date to the DB so admin's can look back at it. This data is available in System tab.
• Added: Added new Random sort option to allow a stream like 'Top Unread in X' (Thanks @Fesaa)
• Added: Added the following css variables --event-widget-activity-bg-color, --event-widget-update-bg-color, --event-widget-error-bg-color
• Added: Implemented the ability to click download on any file extension from stats page (formats table) and download a report of all files that are of that extension.
• Added: Added the ability to manually override the width in the manga/webtoon reader when using Width scaling (Thanks @Marsimplodation) (Feature Request: 19 upvotes)
• Added: Added bulk promote/demote/delete for reading lists to align with collections.

Changed

• Changed: On forgot password, even if email isn't setup or user doesn't have email setup, still allow the reset link to log.
• Changed: Reduced memory for adding a set of series to a collection.
• Changed: Scan button no longer exists on themes tab. Now, admin's can upload their custom css files via the UI.
• Changed: Admin's can no longer delete themes and force users with that theme active off.
• Changed: Changed how scaling works in the manga reader to be more inline with the expected behavior. Height will scale to viewport height even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Width will scale to viewport width even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Original will show the image at its intrinsic dimensions, no scaling is applied (Thanks @therobbiedavis)
• Changed: Enable WAL journal mode by default in all Kavita installs. Users can turn it off after the first run if needed.
• Changed: Show a warning on dirty email setting form to inform the user they need to save before testing settings.
• Changed: Ensure users know that Scrobbling providers will always keep the highest number from kavita.
• Changed: On < tablet viewports, reading list page should use order numbers rather than drag and drop, as there isn't enough real estate.
• Changed: Series Detail page will now show people/genre/tags as collapsed even on desktop, but summary will have same code to be expanded up to 1000 characters on desktop.
• Changed: (Scanner) Refactored Scan Loop to avoid doing extra work on lower folders in a folder map path, so that users that group by publisher or another arbitrary folder, can avoid a lot of scanning on lower level folders just because the highest level changed.
• Changed: (Performance) Applied some performance optimizations on Series OPDS route which should help speed up heavier Series.
• Changed: (Performance) Small optimization to image reader to make finding the next/prev page faster.
• Changed: Search will no longer search against Chapter titles and Files by default. Instead, there is a new link in the search window to perform with those included. This should help users with larger libraries find their files faster.
• Changed: (Kavita+) Kavita+ scrobbling will now take AniList/Mal ids from External metadata (which is prefetched from Kavita+ for the external metadata) whenever possible. This can help with matching when there are no weblinks.
• Changed: Updates dependencies which includes a fix for nav items in epub toc that are more loose.
• Changed: Added a few full-wdith characters for normalization: ＊！＋
• Changed: All smart filters page now uses the same design as the flow from Customize modal.
• Changed: Disable the first remove button for weblinks/exclude pattern component as it isn't removable
• Changed: Updated ScanFolder to be more aggressive in finding the underlying series by also checking against a partial match on lowest folder path to find a series. This should result in less work for well structured libraries.
• Changed: (Performance) Cleaned up some extra db calls that aren't needed in the OPDS apis.
• Changed: Reading Lists in both OPDS/UI now have the underlying issue's summary.
• Changed: Smart Filter OPDS feeds are now smart-filters/{id} instead of smart-filter/{id}
• Changed: Updated the cover generation logic to handle webtoons better. The new code will now check if the image scales well or not and if not, use a more attention focused scaling/cropping method. (Thanks @arition for the [initial PR](Kareadita/Kavita#261...

v0.8.2-ls44

LinuxServer Changes:

Rebase to Ubuntu Noble.

kavita Changes:

A new stable release is here and it is yet again another big one. Initially I set out to focus on 3 items: Scanner, Smart Collections, and CBL v2 (new schema), but here I am delivering 3 massive improvements and a ton of smaller changes. This release includes a bit of everything spread about. Let's get into it.

Built-in Theme Explorer

One thing I wanted since day one of adding theme support into Kavita was the ability for users you just browse a list of themes and download what they want to use. It's not easy when the admin has to add the theme for you and hit scan, dealing with the underlying filesystem. I finally got around to setting up the initial version of this (open to feedback to expand on this system) with v0.8.2. All users will have the ability to browse themes uploaded to the theme repo, preview the images and description, and download and apply theme. This currently does not have any role permission and I didn't hear much from nightly users thinking it's needed. If you feel otherwise, raise a discussion. If you don't want to use a theme on the repo, you can upload your own file via the interface. Existing theme users should delete their themes and re-acquire them. This will allow them to be updated for you automatically (assuming the supported version matches yours).

Smart Collections for Kavita+

This is another one I've wanted for a while and is part of the theme of introducing more synchronization systems into Kavita. Smart Collections allow for you to import any Interest Stacks/Restacks from your MAL account into Kavita. Every 2 days, Kavita will resync with upstream and add any Series that you own to the collection. The collection is otherwise read-only and promotable, so if you want to setup a few best of X and promote them for your server, you can. These features are also not admin-specific. Any user can import their interest stacks into the server (and if they have the promotion role, can promote them). I hope you all enjoy this feature as much as I am. Another level of bringing a top notch experience for my users.

Scanner Changes

I've been working a lot with our users that have larger libraries, ranging from 100k files to 10k series. One of the major problems is that when you have a library of 10k, it's going to take a long time as expected. These users are mainly new users coming from the comic rework and have folder structures Kavita wasn't originally built around. I spent a good chunk of time building optimizations to reduce the amount of processing work Kavita does for these folder layouts (not restrictive to comic libraries) and fixing some bugs around parsing and whatnot that surfaced thanks to the numerous bug reports. If you aren't finding good results after this update, please do reach out.

Misc Changes

A few other big changes come with this release. The first is WAL is now on by default. You can always turn this off manually in the DB, but fresh installs (and existing) will turn WAL on. WAL fixes the common database is locked issue due to Kavita writing too much data too fast. Another big one is double scrollbar on mobile. This was an annoying bug on some mobile browsers on some pages. Robbie took this up and fixed it everywhere to my knowledge. A great QoL enhancement. OPDS has gotten a lot of love in this release thanks to some great reports by @MnsieurJF around reading lists and missing metadata in the feeds. Lastly, the Manga Reader has had some tweaking to how fit to height/width works. It's not easy to put into words, but I find the fitting to be MUCH better.

I have loose plans for what the next release is going to be. The PDF rework will need to come after v0.8.3 to allow people who upgrade into the v0.8.x series not to loose data from the massive changes. I have a lot of holiday coming up as well, so the release may be longer or shorter depending.

Lastly, I want to mention (as I keep forgetting) that @DieselTech has joined the Kavita team a few months ago. His name should be well known as he's very active in most of the reading and comic discords as well as being a core member in the CBL Reading Order group. He's already driven a lot of great changes in Kavita for hardcore comic users and I have no doubt he will continue to be a great resource for me to rely on in the future.

Added

• Added: Kavita+ users can now import their MAL interest stacks/restacks into Kavita as Smart Collections. These collections will synchronize back with MAL to update with new series and summary information every 2 days. Smart Collections work just as normal collections except are non-editable as the MAL stack controls the data. They can be promoted given the user has promotion role. They are not admin-specific.
• Added: Added the ability for any user to download themes from the Theme Repo directly via Kavita. Kavita will keep these themes up to data automatically (unless the reported version from the Repo is greater than the server version).
• Added: Book series can now have specials. In order to be classified as a Special, the SP marker must be in the filename, the calibre:series must be set to the Series name and calibre:series_index must be 0. (Feature Request: 3 upvotes)
• Added: OPDS-PS on PDF files is now possible. Kavita will convert to images.
• Added: Added a create link to create a new smart filter in case it's not clear for first time users exploring the software.
• Added: Added first install version and date to the DB so admin's can look back at it. This data is available in System tab.
• Added: Added new Random sort option to allow a stream like 'Top Unread in X' (Thanks @Fesaa)
• Added: Added the following css variables --event-widget-activity-bg-color, --event-widget-update-bg-color, --event-widget-error-bg-color
• Added: Implemented the ability to click download on any file extension from stats page (formats table) and download a report of all files that are of that extension.
• Added: Added the ability to manually override the width in the manga/webtoon reader when using Width scaling (Thanks @Marsimplodation) (Feature Request: 19 upvotes)
• Added: Added bulk promote/demote/delete for reading lists to align with collections.

Changed

• Changed: On forgot password, even if email isn't setup or user doesn't have email setup, still allow the reset link to log.
• Changed: Reduced memory for adding a set of series to a collection.
• Changed: Scan button no longer exists on themes tab. Now, admin's can upload their custom css files via the UI.
• Changed: Admin's can no longer delete themes and force users with that theme active off.
• Changed: Changed how scaling works in the manga reader to be more inline with the expected behavior. Height will scale to viewport height even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Width will scale to viewport width even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Original will show the image at its intrinsic dimensions, no scaling is applied (Thanks @therobbiedavis)
• Changed: Enable WAL journal mode by default in all Kavita installs. Users can turn it off after the first run if needed.
• Changed: Show a warning on dirty email setting form to inform the user they need to save before testing settings.
• Changed: Ensure users know that Scrobbling providers will always keep the highest number from kavita.
• Changed: On < tablet viewports, reading list page should use order numbers rather than drag and drop, as there isn't enough real estate.
• Changed: Series Detail page will now show people/genre/tags as collapsed even on desktop, but summary will have same code to be expanded up to 1000 characters on desktop.
• Changed: (Scanner) Refactored Scan Loop to avoid doing extra work on lower folders in a folder map path, so that users that group by publisher or another arbitrary folder, can avoid a lot of scanning on lower level folders just because the highest level changed.
• Changed: (Performance) Applied some performance optimizations on Series OPDS route which should help speed up heavier Series.
• Changed: (Performance) Small optimization to image reader to make finding the next/prev page faster.
• Changed: Search will no longer search against Chapter titles and Files by default. Instead, there is a new link in the search window to perform with those included. This should help users with larger libraries find their files faster.
• Changed: (Kavita+) Kavita+ scrobbling will now take AniList/Mal ids from External metadata (which is prefetched from Kavita+ for the external metadata) whenever possible. This can help with matching when there are no weblinks.
• Changed: Updates dependencies which includes a fix for nav items in epub toc that are more loose.
• Changed: Added a few full-wdith characters for normalization: ＊！＋
• Changed: All smart filters page now uses the same design as the flow from Customize modal.
• Changed: Disable the first remove button for weblinks/exclude pattern component as it isn't removable
• Changed: Updated ScanFolder to be more aggressive in finding the underlying series by also checking against a partial match on lowest folder path to find a series. This should result in less work for well structured libraries.
• Changed: (Performance) Cleaned up some extra db calls that aren't needed in the OPDS apis.
• Changed: Reading Lists in both OPDS/UI now have the underlying issue's summary.
• Changed: Smart Filter OPDS feeds are now smart-filters/{id} instead of smart-filter/{id}
• Changed: Updated the cover generation logic to handle webtoons better. The new code will now check if the image scales well or not and if not, use a more attention focused scaling/cropping method. (Thanks @arition for the [initial PR](Kareadita/Kavita#261...

v0.8.2-ls43

LinuxServer Changes:

Rebase to Ubuntu Noble.

kavita Changes:

A new stable release is here and it is yet again another big one. Initially I set out to focus on 3 items: Scanner, Smart Collections, and CBL v2 (new schema), but here I am delivering 3 massive improvements and a ton of smaller changes. This release includes a bit of everything spread about. Let's get into it.

Built-in Theme Explorer

One thing I wanted since day one of adding theme support into Kavita was the ability for users you just browse a list of themes and download what they want to use. It's not easy when the admin has to add the theme for you and hit scan, dealing with the underlying filesystem. I finally got around to setting up the initial version of this (open to feedback to expand on this system) with v0.8.2. All users will have the ability to browse themes uploaded to the theme repo, preview the images and description, and download and apply theme. This currently does not have any role permission and I didn't hear much from nightly users thinking it's needed. If you feel otherwise, raise a discussion. If you don't want to use a theme on the repo, you can upload your own file via the interface. Existing theme users should delete their themes and re-acquire them. This will allow them to be updated for you automatically (assuming the supported version matches yours).

Smart Collections for Kavita+

This is another one I've wanted for a while and is part of the theme of introducing more synchronization systems into Kavita. Smart Collections allow for you to import any Interest Stacks/Restacks from your MAL account into Kavita. Every 2 days, Kavita will resync with upstream and add any Series that you own to the collection. The collection is otherwise read-only and promotable, so if you want to setup a few best of X and promote them for your server, you can. These features are also not admin-specific. Any user can import their interest stacks into the server (and if they have the promotion role, can promote them). I hope you all enjoy this feature as much as I am. Another level of bringing a top notch experience for my users.

Scanner Changes

I've been working a lot with our users that have larger libraries, ranging from 100k files to 10k series. One of the major problems is that when you have a library of 10k, it's going to take a long time as expected. These users are mainly new users coming from the comic rework and have folder structures Kavita wasn't originally built around. I spent a good chunk of time building optimizations to reduce the amount of processing work Kavita does for these folder layouts (not restrictive to comic libraries) and fixing some bugs around parsing and whatnot that surfaced thanks to the numerous bug reports. If you aren't finding good results after this update, please do reach out.

Misc Changes

A few other big changes come with this release. The first is WAL is now on by default. You can always turn this off manually in the DB, but fresh installs (and existing) will turn WAL on. WAL fixes the common database is locked issue due to Kavita writing too much data too fast. Another big one is double scrollbar on mobile. This was an annoying bug on some mobile browsers on some pages. Robbie took this up and fixed it everywhere to my knowledge. A great QoL enhancement. OPDS has gotten a lot of love in this release thanks to some great reports by @MnsieurJF around reading lists and missing metadata in the feeds. Lastly, the Manga Reader has had some tweaking to how fit to height/width works. It's not easy to put into words, but I find the fitting to be MUCH better.

I have loose plans for what the next release is going to be. The PDF rework will need to come after v0.8.3 to allow people who upgrade into the v0.8.x series not to loose data from the massive changes. I have a lot of holiday coming up as well, so the release may be longer or shorter depending.

Lastly, I want to mention (as I keep forgetting) that @DieselTech has joined the Kavita team a few months ago. His name should be well known as he's very active in most of the reading and comic discords as well as being a core member in the CBL Reading Order group. He's already driven a lot of great changes in Kavita for hardcore comic users and I have no doubt he will continue to be a great resource for me to rely on in the future.

Added

• Added: Kavita+ users can now import their MAL interest stacks/restacks into Kavita as Smart Collections. These collections will synchronize back with MAL to update with new series and summary information every 2 days. Smart Collections work just as normal collections except are non-editable as the MAL stack controls the data. They can be promoted given the user has promotion role. They are not admin-specific.
• Added: Added the ability for any user to download themes from the Theme Repo directly via Kavita. Kavita will keep these themes up to data automatically (unless the reported version from the Repo is greater than the server version).
• Added: Book series can now have specials. In order to be classified as a Special, the SP marker must be in the filename, the calibre:series must be set to the Series name and calibre:series_index must be 0. (Feature Request: 3 upvotes)
• Added: OPDS-PS on PDF files is now possible. Kavita will convert to images.
• Added: Added a create link to create a new smart filter in case it's not clear for first time users exploring the software.
• Added: Added first install version and date to the DB so admin's can look back at it. This data is available in System tab.
• Added: Added new Random sort option to allow a stream like 'Top Unread in X' (Thanks @Fesaa)
• Added: Added the following css variables --event-widget-activity-bg-color, --event-widget-update-bg-color, --event-widget-error-bg-color
• Added: Implemented the ability to click download on any file extension from stats page (formats table) and download a report of all files that are of that extension.
• Added: Added the ability to manually override the width in the manga/webtoon reader when using Width scaling (Thanks @Marsimplodation) (Feature Request: 19 upvotes)
• Added: Added bulk promote/demote/delete for reading lists to align with collections.

Changed

• Changed: On forgot password, even if email isn't setup or user doesn't have email setup, still allow the reset link to log.
• Changed: Reduced memory for adding a set of series to a collection.
• Changed: Scan button no longer exists on themes tab. Now, admin's can upload their custom css files via the UI.
• Changed: Admin's can no longer delete themes and force users with that theme active off.
• Changed: Changed how scaling works in the manga reader to be more inline with the expected behavior. Height will scale to viewport height even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Width will scale to viewport width even if it is beyond the image's original dimensions. Original will show the image at its intrinsic dimensions, no scaling is applied (Thanks @therobbiedavis)
• Changed: Enable WAL journal mode by default in all Kavita installs. Users can turn it off after the first run if needed.
• Changed: Show a warning on dirty email setting form to inform the user they need to save before testing settings.
• Changed: Ensure users know that Scrobbling providers will always keep the highest number from kavita.
• Changed: On < tablet viewports, reading list page should use order numbers rather than drag and drop, as there isn't enough real estate.
• Changed: Series Detail page will now show people/genre/tags as collapsed even on desktop, but summary will have same code to be expanded up to 1000 characters on desktop.
• Changed: (Scanner) Refactored Scan Loop to avoid doing extra work on lower folders in a folder map path, so that users that group by publisher or another arbitrary folder, can avoid a lot of scanning on lower level folders just because the highest level changed.
• Changed: (Performance) Applied some performance optimizations on Series OPDS route which should help speed up heavier Series.
• Changed: (Performance) Small optimization to image reader to make finding the next/prev page faster.
• Changed: Search will no longer search against Chapter titles and Files by default. Instead, there is a new link in the search window to perform with those included. This should help users with larger libraries find their files faster.
• Changed: (Kavita+) Kavita+ scrobbling will now take AniList/Mal ids from External metadata (which is prefetched from Kavita+ for the external metadata) whenever possible. This can help with matching when there are no weblinks.
• Changed: Updates dependencies which includes a fix for nav items in epub toc that are more loose.
• Changed: Added a few full-wdith characters for normalization: ＊！＋
• Changed: All smart filters page now uses the same design as the flow from Customize modal.
• Changed: Disable the first remove button for weblinks/exclude pattern component as it isn't removable
• Changed: Updated ScanFolder to be more aggressive in finding the underlying series by also checking against a partial match on lowest folder path to find a series. This should result in less work for well structured libraries.
• Changed: (Performance) Cleaned up some extra db calls that aren't needed in the OPDS apis.
• Changed: Reading Lists in both OPDS/UI now have the underlying issue's summary.
• Changed: Smart Filter OPDS feeds are now smart-filters/{id} instead of smart-filter/{id}
• Changed: Updated the cover generation logic to handle webtoons better. The new code will now check if the image scales well or not and if not, use a more attention focused scaling/cropping method. (Thanks @arition for the [initial PR](Kareadita/Kavita#261...