The popular open-source e-book management tool, Calibre, has just released version 8.16, featuring notable expansion of its AI capabilities and targeted fixes across metadata handling, catalog generation, and PDF processing.
The update introduces new ways for readers to interact with their libraries, including the option to ask AI questions about any selected book. This feature is available directly from the “View” menu and is designed to surface context about works already in the user’s collection.
The release also adds an AI-powered “Similar books” option, enabling users to request recommendations based on titles they already own. Alongside these cloud-based features, Calibre 8.16 introduces LM Studio as a new backend, enabling readers to run various AI models locally without relying on external services.
On the technical side, Calibre now uses a named local timezone to improve the display of historical dates, closing a long-standing ticket. The update resolves several issues that affected recent releases, including a regression in the new PDF input engine that prevented proper HTML markup escaping.
Additional corrections address the Amazon Italy store plugin, format-specific options when generating catalogs through calibredb, and the handling of language fields in BiBTeX output.
Lastly, metadata retrieval from Amazon Japan also sees fixes for incorrect series indexing, while a regression that removed the case-change menu from the comments editor has been corrected.
Check out the changelog for more details and the complete list of novelties in the Calibre 8.16 open-source e-book management tool. The update is already live for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
