Calibre developer Kovid Goyal has announced the release of Calibre 8.5, a stable update for the open-source, cross-platform e-book manager software. This latest version arrives a month and a half after the previous release, Calibre 8.4, and it introduces significant enhancements, particularly to the Kobo driver.
Among the key updates, users can now change how their Kobo e-book readers display series numbers, utilizing a template for customization. This release also brings support for the latest Tolino firmware.
A notable feature in Calibre 8.5 is the addition of a new button in the Manage Data Files dialog, allowing users to cancel ongoing operations when managing multiple e-books—enhancing user experience and efficiency. The interface has seen improvements too, as scrollbars in light mode now match the style of those in dark mode, improving accessibility.
Other enhancements include improved highlight grouping for recurring chapter names in the E-book Viewer, the option to send random English text instead of UUIDs for subject/body in emails to Amazon and Pocketbook, and a fix that prevents Windows 11 from launching a conhost.exe process for each Calibre worker process.
The update includes refreshed news sources as well, featuring publications like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and more. For further details on the changes incorporated in this release, users can refer to the release notes.
You can download Calibre 8.5 now from the official website, where ready-to-use binaries for 64-bit and AArch64 (ARM64) Linux systems are available, along with installers for macOS and Windows. Additionally, Calibre can be installed on various GNU/Linux distributions via Flatpak from Flathub.