Calibre, the widely used open-source e-book management software, has released version 9.5, the fifth maintenance update in the 9.x series, with a key feature being the option to create a custom column that displays reading progress.
Reading progress data is sourced from Calibre’s built-in e-book viewer, enabling users to track their progress within the library interface. To add this column, go to Preferences, select “Add your own columns,” click the plus button, and choose “Read progress.”
The e-book viewer has also been improved. Users can now display page numbers from a paper book page list, when available, while still viewing the last page number in the book. A reset button has been added to the reading statistics panel, allowing users to quickly clear accumulated reading data.
Moreover, the annotations browser now includes filtering by highlight style, making it easier to locate specific highlights, especially in large collections with extensive notes. Plus, the “Edit Book” feature now includes a tool to remove unused images from e-books, similar to the existing tool for unused CSS.
Calibre 9.5 also includes several bug fixes and stability improvements. These include ensuring icons overridden from the configuration directory switch correctly between dark and light variants when the interface theme changes, and restoring focus to the editor after displaying a search count popup.
The update resolves an issue where downloading news periodicals in KFX format did not fall back to MOBI format when needed. The book list behavior has also been corrected so that Ctrl+Shift+Arrow now properly moves the selected book.
Several e-book format issues were addressed, including a fix for KEPUB markup removal when empty Kobo spans are present. Calibre 9.5 also adds a new news source, Truthout by PaulB223, and improves support for the Naked Capitalism source.
For more details and the full list of new features in Calibre 9.5, see the changelog. The update is already available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
