What comes over

• books with all their file formats and covers;
• title, authors, series and number in it, publisher, language, publication date, rating, description, tags;
• shelves — from Calibre’s multi-value text columns;
• read marks and read dates — from your own Calibre columns, if you keep them;
• highlights and notes made in Calibre’s built-in viewer.

Beresta does not change the Calibre library itself: the Calibre database is opened read-only, the files are copied.

How to move it

Import from Calibre is on the Mac only. On iPhone and iPad the library arrives afterwards through sync between devices.

1. File → Import from Calibre… (or ⇧⌘I, or the Import button on the toolbar).
2. In the “Import from Calibre” window press “Choose Library Folder…” and point to your Calibre library folder — the one that contains metadata.db. Unless you moved it yourself, it is usually “Calibre Library” in your home folder.
3. Beresta shows how many books it found and two switches: “Copy book files” and “Import highlights and notes”. Both are on.
4. If the library has custom columns, a “Custom columns found” list appears. Beresta suggests a role for each: “Read flag”, “Read date”, “Collection” (becomes a shelf), “Tag”. Check the suggestion and correct it if needed. A column marked “Not recognized — won’t be imported” stays in Calibre.
5. Press “Start Import”. The app goes through the steps: reading the library, metadata, files, covers, highlights. You can stop at any moment; the books already moved stay.

At the end comes a summary in words: how many books were added and updated, how many files and covers copied, how many highlights moved. If some files were not found, they are listed by name, and errors can be copied or saved as a log.

You can keep both apps

The import can be repeated. Books changed in Calibre get updated; new ones are added; a book already in Beresta as the same file does not get a second card. Fields you edited by hand in Beresta are left alone — the app remembers them as yours. Books you removed from Beresta do not come back.

So you can keep Calibre for what it is good at and pull its changes over now and then.

On iPhone and iPad there is also the catalog

If you run the Calibre content server at home, add it to Beresta as an OPDS catalog: Calibre’s address ends with /opds. Browsing the catalog adds nothing to your library, and a book you take from it becomes your own copy.

Where Calibre is stronger, and will stay so

• Converting between formats, sending a book to a Kindle, the EPUB editor, plugins.
• Details and covers from many sources for many books at once; Beresta asks two directories, one book at a time.
• A full Linux version: Beresta has only a beta there so far.
• Calibre is free.

Beresta opens EPUB, PDF, FB2, TXT and MOBI; not DJVU or CBZ.

What you get instead

A reader and a library in one app. A highlight is a thing of its own: your thought next to the quote, colours, tags, search, coming back to it at intervals — and it travels to your notes in Obsidian by itself. Sync between devices through a folder of your choice, encrypted for network storage. The database format is openly documented: your library stays a plain SQLite file next to plain book files. More on the home page.

Beresta is on the App Store, one purchase for Mac, iPhone and iPad. It needs macOS 26 or iOS 26.

Get it on the App Store

Updated 20261023.