6 apps Reading
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Komga

What Jellyfin is for video, Komga is for comics, manga, BDs, magazines, and eBooks: point it at folders of CBZ, CBR, CBT, PDF, and EPUB files and it becomes a proper library with cover art, embedded metadata import, and per-user reading progress. The responsive web reader handles multiple reading modes - left-to-right for western comics, right-to-left for manga, webtoon scrolling - while collections and read lists organize crossovers and story arcs, with ComicRack .cbl read list import for existing curation. Its openness is the real differentiator: OPDS v1.2 and v2.0 feeds serve virtually every reader app (Panels, Moon+ Reader, Mihon/Tachiyomi, KyBook), with OpenSearch and page-streaming extensions so mobile apps fetch pages on demand instead of whole archives. E-ink support is built in, not bolted on - Kobo devices sync directly against Komga instead of Kobo's servers, with two-way read progress, on-the-fly KEPUB conversion via Kepubify, and optional proxying so official Kobo purchases still work; KOReader sync covers everything else. Multi-user management brings per-library access control, age restrictions, and label restrictions for family setups. Housekeeping tools detect duplicate files and duplicate pages, and a REST API feeds a healthy ecosystem of community scripts. Runs from a single Docker container with embedded SQLite.

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Miniflux

One statically-compiled Go binary over PostgreSQL, no ORM, no framework, static assets embedded in the executable: Miniflux is the minimalist, opinionated feed reader. The opinions are the feature: page layout, fonts, and colors are tuned for reading, and everything else is treated as noise. It consumes Atom, RSS, and JSON Feed formats with OPML import/export, organizes articles with categories and bookmarks, fetches original full-text content for summary-only feeds, and provides Postgres-powered full-text search. Privacy work happens automatically: pixel trackers are stripped, tracking parameters removed from URLs, a media proxy blocks third-party tracking, referrers are never forwarded, and there is zero telemetry. Navigation is keyboard-first - j/k through items, o to open, f to star - with touch gestures on mobile. Podcast, video, and music enclosures are supported, and YouTube videos play inline. Over 25 integrations save articles onward to Wallabag, Readwise Reader, Pinboard, Linkding, Instapaper, Notion, Telegram, Matrix, Ntfy, and more, plus webhooks and a REST API with Go and Python clients; the Google Reader API endpoint supports existing mobile reader apps. Authentication spans local passwords, passkeys (WebAuthn), Google OAuth2, OpenID Connect, and reverse-proxy headers. It is Apache 2.0 licensed, translated into 20 languages, and updates feeds on an internal scheduler.

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Calibre

Serious readers organize, convert, edit, and serve their e-book libraries with Calibre - the definitive open-source e-book manager. This deployment runs the full Calibre desktop application on your server, accessible from any browser, so your library lives in one authoritative place instead of scattered across devices. Its conversion engine is the best in the business, translating between every major format - EPUB, MOBI, AZW3, PDF, DOCX, and dozens more - with fine control over fonts, margins, metadata, and structure detection. Metadata management downloads covers, descriptions, series info, and identifiers from online sources, and every field is editable in bulk. Beyond cataloging, Calibre includes a full e-book editor for EPUB and AZW3 internals, a news engine that fetches newspapers and magazines from the web on schedule and converts them into e-books, book comparison tools, and device syncing that sends the right format to each connected reader. The built-in content server exposes your library over HTTP so phones, tablets, and e-readers can browse and download remotely. A deep plugin ecosystem extends everything - metadata sources, format support, store integrations. For power users, the complete CLI (calibredb, ebook-convert) enables scripted library automation. Your books, your metadata, your server - permanent and DRM-free storage under your control.

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Kavita

Manga, comics, ebooks, and light novels get a streaming-service-style home in Kavita - a fast, cross-platform reading server for the DRM-free collection you share with family and friends. It natively serves CBZ, CBR, CB7, ZIP/RAR/7z archives, raw images, EPUB, and PDF, with hand-crafted web readers per format: webtoon scrolling, single and dual-page spreads with advanced caching for the comic reader, and a book reader with adjustable fonts, spacing, margins, color themes, and column modes. Reading progress tracks per user, so everyone resumes exactly where they stopped on any device. Metadata parses from filenames, ComicInfo.xml, and EPUB fields, feeding index-backed search, smart filters, collections, reading lists with CBL import, and Want to Read queues. Role-based user management covers age restrictions, per-library access, and OIDC authentication. An OPDS feed connects third-party clients - Panels on iOS, Librera on Android, KOReader on e-ink devices - and a comprehensive REST API supports custom integrations. EPUB annotation and highlight support, custom theming, and full localization round it out. Built with .NET and Angular, it handles 50,000+ file libraries without strain; optional Kavita+ adds AniList scrobbling, recommendations, and external metadata.

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Freshrss

Where Miniflux strips reading down, FreshRSS gives you knobs - the feature-rich pole of self-hosted RSS, comfortable with thousands of feeds. It's a multi-user PHP aggregator (host family and friends on one instance, with an anonymous reading mode) with the reading workflow refined over a decade: favorites, custom tags, powerful filter and search queries, three reading views, and statistics that reveal each site's publishing frequency - useful for pruning subscriptions. Two properties make it the standard choice. First, the Google Reader-compatible API (plus a Fever API) syncs with virtually every serious RSS client - Reeder, NetNewsWire, ReadYou, FeedMe, Fluent Reader - so your phone reads from your server. Second, native WebSub support means compatible sources (WordPress, Blogger, Medium, Friendica) push new articles instantly instead of waiting for polling. A 50+ extension ecosystem adds what truncated feeds omit - full-text content fetching, reading-time estimates, trending views, auto-unsubscribe for dead feeds - alongside community themes and custom CSS. OPML import/export keeps subscriptions portable, a CLI handles administration, and article sharing posts to many services. AGPL-licensed, running on SQLite, MySQL, or PostgreSQL. Feedly Pro's feature set, minus Feedly's subscription and its algorithms.

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Upvote RSS

The antidote to doomscrolling: Upvote RSS turns Reddit, Hacker News, Lemmy, Lobsters, PieFed, Mbin, and trending GitHub repositories into calm, filtered RSS feeds. The MIT-licensed PHP app's killer feature is intelligent filtering: beyond simple score thresholds, the "posts per day" filter analyzes a community's recent history and computes the score cutoff that yields your target volume - say, exactly three r/technology posts daily - while a percentage-based threshold mode stays consistent as communities grow. Feeds are rich, not bare links: parsed full-article content via Readability (with optional Readability.js, Mercury, or Browserless for JavaScript-heavy pages), embedded videos and image galleries, top-voted comments with pinned-moderator filtering, scores, reading-time estimates, and optional AI summaries through Ollama, OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, Mistral, DeepSeek, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint - with automatic provider fallback. A web UI builds the feed URL interactively with live preview; paste the result into any RSS reader. Reddit support includes custom domains like old.reddit.com plus NSFW filtering and blurring. Caching via filesystem, Redis, or APCu keeps repeated fetches cheap and avoids re-running paid summarizations.

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