My Calibre + Apple Books setup was a mess

Calibre-web is fine for management, but the actual reading experience always felt clunky and disjointed for me. I wanted something that felt native to the reading process without losing my existing library structure.

I built BeePub to act as a read-only frontend. It points directly at my existing Calibre library and stays in sync, meaning Calibre remains the single source of truth for my metadata and files. I've spent a massive amount of time optimizing the rendering engine for CJK and Traditional Chinese, specifically handling vertical text layouts and manga-style EPUBs which usually break in standard viewers.

Technical specs for my workflow:

Sync: Supports OPDS and KOReader progress sync (kosync). This is huge if you actually use e-ink devices.

Mobile: I built a native app using Capacitor; it's currently sitting on TestFlight for iOS.

Compatibility: It's designed to work alongside your current Calibre setup, not replace the backend.

I'm dogfooding this every single day to manage my own reading list. If you want to see how the rendering handles complex layouts, check the demo:

https://demo.beepub.app
(Login: demo / demodemo — note that data resets every 6 hours)

It even has a book gacha built-in for when you can't decide what to read next.