How to turn your Mac into an e-book server with caliber

Turn your MAC into a cloud e-book with a caliber, a surprisingly powerful and completely free tool for building platforms and a web-accessible digital library that can be controlled.

Caliber does not have to win any design awards, but it is one of the most electrical tools for managing digital books. It is also completed free of charge – the breath of fresh air, where everything seems to come with a subscription to the mandate software.

Original built as an e-book converter and file format converter, Caliber makes much more than storage files. It contains a content server that changes your library to a web collection that you can use from anywhere.

This means that with a few minutes of settings you can turn your Mac into your own private cloud electronic book. Here’s how to do it – – and why it could cost your time.

Why might you like to set your own online book library

Most of the main platforms of electronic books, such as Apple Books, Kindle and Kobo, are not exactly “open” platforms. If you gathered books in multiple formats, prefes for locally, or simply want more control over where it reads, these platforms feel very restrictive.

So even if you could transfer your beloved books from the device to the device, it seems to be an underage solution at best. However, creating your own personal library comes with tons of benefits, for example:

  • Easy access to a library from any device, including browsers, tablets, smartphones and more
  • Take full control over your metadata, allowing you to organize your books as you want
  • Permanent backups mean that you can store locally or on an external unit
  • Wide format support that you do not get from traditional interpretations

Laying the foundation for your e -book library

Before you start, you want to have a few things at hand. We suggest the following:

  • Mac – Intel and Silicon are supported
  • Stable Internet connection over which you have control
  • E-books in various formats EPUB, PDF and MOBI
  • Already dowloding caliber
  • IPhone, iPad, or in this regard, almost any smartphone or tablet made over the last 10 years

Optionally, you can make sure that your iPad or iPhone has a compatible app for e-shafts like Marvin, Kybook or even Apple Books.

Now that you have everything at hand, we can start with rough gravel.

First go and install caliber on Mac. At the first start, Caliber asks you where you want to save your library – it will probably be a reserved folder on your Mac computer, but it can also be an external unit.

You will also want to add your electronic books to Caliber. Caliber supports a wide range of formats, for example:

  • Epub
  • Pdf
  • Docx
  • Txt
  • AZW3
  • Mobi
  • … and more!

For a full list of supportive support formats and its export skills, you can see the FAQ Caliber here.

We recommend that you have a dedicated book folder or folder

Adding files to the caliber is easy-you can Eith TAG-and-DROP or caliber to folders (folders) where your books are located.

Useful tip: Before setting up a server, take a little time to convert books using the “Convert Books” tools to formats most supported by your devices. EPUB is safe for the widest compatibility, while many electronic readers, such as Kindle, can use MOBI.

Enabling the caliber content server

Now that you have a caliber installed and correctly converted to your library, it’s time to take it online. You can do it quite easily.

Click the Connect/Share button on the top toolbar. Then click “Start Content Server”.

And that’s it. You send your local, web version of your library. If you want to see it, just go to http: // localhost: 8080 in any browser on the local network.

This setting works well for reading at home, where everything remains on the local network. To access the content server, your device must be connected to the same Wi-Fi as your Mac.

There are ways of race to keep your library available anywhere.

Optional: Instanced library caliber over the Internet

If you want to access the library anywhere, you will have to do a little more work. The process differs from device to device, but (very) basic steps are as follows:

  1. Find out external IP computers; We recommend that you head what is my IP address
  2. Enable port transfer on your router and pass 8080 port to your computer
  3. Ensure that the caliber server is allowed via firewall and antivirus programs

For multiple networks you do not have to have the port 8080 forward. Depending on the router, it is easy to map another incoming port, say 32120 on the 8080 port on the server hardware.

After you are far from home, enter your home IP address followed: 8080. It should look like http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080.

Caliber points out that you can use a service as a No-IP that can help you create an easy-red address to remember your IP address that can change when your service provider, combined power outages. The race, you could always record your caliber address.

If you are interested in more advanced options, we recommend that you look at Caliber guides to look at the integration of Caliber Content into another server.

Access to the server caliber on your iPhone or iPad

Now that you have everything set up, you can access your library from iPad, iPhone or other Mac computers.

The smartphone screen showing a caliber application with a library selection, showing three coch books marked with a
Browsing your own caliber server on iPhone

  1. Open Safari on your device
  2. Tap the book you want to read
  3. Read it in the browser, gold
  4. Use OPEN … Menu to send files to Apple, files or your third -party readers of the selection

Although this is not the highest program that we look at, Caliber is a fantastic choice for anyone who has a very popular collection of electronic books and PDF. It is easy to use and even better: it runs reliably on MacOS with very minimal configuration.

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