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RETIRED: Readarr - Sonarr for Ebooks Book Manager and Automation (wiki.servarr.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

(I am not affiliated with the project at all, just an end user.)

Announcement: Retirement of Readarr

We would like to announce that the Readarr project has been retired. This difficult decision was made due to a combination of factors: the project's metadata has become unusable, we no longer have the time to remake or repair it, and the community effort to transition to using Open Library as the source has stalled without much progress.

Third-party metadata mirrors exist, but as we're not involved with them at all, we cannot provide support for them. Use of them is entirely at your own risk. The most popular mirror appears to be rreading-glasses.

Without anyone to take over Readarr development, we expect it to wither away, so we still encourage you to seek alternatives to Readarr.

Key Points

  • Effective Immediately: The retirement takes effect immediately. Please stay tuned for any possible further communications.
  • Support Window: We will provide support during a brief transition period to help with troubleshooting non metadata related issues.
  • Alternative Solutions: Users are encouraged to explore and adopt any other possible solutions as alternatives to Readarr.
  • Opportunities for Revival: We are open to someone taking over and revitalizing the project. If you are interested, please get in touch.
  • Gratitude: We extend our deepest gratitude to all the contributors and community members who supported Readarr over the years.

Thank you for being part of the Readarr journey. For any inquiries or assistance during this transition, please contact our team.

Sincerely,
The Servarr Team

The github repo has been archived.

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[-] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago

I noticed that my Ansible playbook failed to do a docker pull on readarr, I just commented it and was going to investigate further today. This sucks, especially because rreading-glasses did in fact completely solve the issue they're facing. Not sure why they didn't consider migrating to it officially, it's only a config change.

[-] rozlav@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 weeks ago

Readerr have been removed everywhere on rreading-glasses readme, maybe there is something related to law issues ? Also I didn't understand what is rreading-glasses and why you need it

[-] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, it's probably a legal thing, rreading-glasses is just metadata for books, completely legal, but readarr legality is less clear, so maybe they're trying to prevent issues.

Also I didn't understand what is rreading-glasses and why you need it

Say you want to grab a book by Isaac Asimov, you type the name of the book in readarr search bar, readarr contacts a metadata provider to show you cover images, author, date, etc. Then when you select the book readarr uses that metadata to search for downloads and ensure you're getting the correct book and not another random book with the same name.

The problem is that readarr uses a closed source API for it's metadata, and it's constantly offline, which makes it impossible to use readarr. Luckily they allow you to customize the URL for the API, and rreading-glasses is an open source implementation of that API that you can use as a drop in replacement.

[-] laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 weeks ago

I'm hoping someone will have some info about what happened because it seems strange. What does this mean?

Unlike R——'s proprietary service, this is much faster, handles large authors, has full coverage of G——R—— (or Hardcover!)

[-] beerclue@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

I believe R-- stands for Readarr and G--R-- stands for GoodReads.

[-] cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 weeks ago

Any alternative apart from lazylibrarian ?

[-] AustralianSimon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Audiobookshelf and LL are it. Or calibre automation but it sucks.

[-] roofuskit@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

Not right now

[-] cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

Where are the vibe coders when you need them ;)

[-] roofuskit@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Hopefully, slowly but surely destroying a number of for profit businesses.

[-] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

Fixed Lidarr: https://github.com/blampe/hearring-aid

And Radarr: https://github.com/blampe/rreading-glasses

Basically they replace the broken closed source metadata server for both with a working one.

The author is also in talks with Readarr to take over the project.

[-] TunaLobster@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Wait, Lidarr also has broken metadata search?

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago

The metadata proxy that mirrors musicbrainz DB is broken (read: Imploded).
For now artist/album search is broken.
Dunno about metadata-tagging for existing entries

[-] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Yea, it's been broken for weeks. You can't search for new artists at all.

It got sorta fixed a while ago and now I can search for artists, but adding them doesn't work. Their metadata server crapped out months ago and they've been fixing it ever since, should be done soonish. Or not.

[-] Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It didn’t get sorta fixed, the few results that currently show up are just cached results from Cloudflare. The metadata server also didn’t crap out; MusicBrainz made breaking changes to their API.

From the latest updates in the Discord, most of the rebuild work is done. The devs now just need to find the time to get it spun up and working for users - I think one of them is currently in the middle of a move if I read correctly, so it’s just a matter of patience right now.

[-] highduc@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 weeks ago

Sad news :(

[-] Kushan@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Yeah this sucks but honestly it never really worked well for me, ebooks are horribly underserved in the media world.

[-] lemming741@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Having to run two instances to support audio and text books was the deal breaker for me.

Now I use audiobookshelf, and it's easy enough to find everything I need on mam without an extra search layer.

[-] madcaesar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf

Is this what you are talking about? How dues this work for funding audio books? That's my biggest problem

[-] lemming741@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah, it does a good enough job of handling the metadata which is why I mentioned it. To find books you need a private tracker.

[-] laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 week ago

I'm actually using Audiobookshelf as my main server. I just wanted Readarr to get metadata and organize the folders. Do you have any workflow tips for that?

[-] doodledup@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

But how do you get the audiobooks if you don't use Readarr?

[-] laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Readarr is just a tool that facilitates downloading via bittorrent or usenet. You can just use those the old fashioned way without it.

Edit: The program Lazy Librarian that some people are mentioning also assists with the searching and downloading, if you prefer not to do it by hand.

You can purchase audiobooks too, especially from authors who make them available on DRM-free platforms.

And there's always https://librivox.org/

[-] murky0106@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

The best way I found to do this was using audiobookshelfs upload feature and grabbing the meta data before upload. This sorts the folders for you

[-] laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

It's sort of weird to upload because it's already on the hard drive where I want it to go.. Just has to get squeezed back and forth through the pipes of my LAN a few times to go through this process.

[-] murky0106@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah it's not perfect. I normally just download and upload from my phone so works for me but it's not a very automated or neat solution but it does work and uploads don't take to long

[-] philpo@feddit.org -1 points 1 week ago

mam?

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

Just a source. Not a metadata provider.
And trying to find metadata for books is like searching for a music cd from propular artists.
Example: https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/afca53c1-c5b3-3f91-8590-281b0aa12722

They are a beast in itself.
Multiple releases/revisions spread across languages and/or countries.

[-] smeg@infosec.pub 4 points 2 weeks ago

I'm generally pretty happy with LazyLibrarian. I know people get really excited about the *arr stack, but Readarr never worked well for ebooks. It was maybe a little better at finding audiobooks, but LL is getting better at that.

[-] AustralianSimon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah same

[-] laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

I used LL years ago before I got into any of the arrs. I was planning to return to it but ran into some sort of install/dependency issues. Maybe I'll give it another whirl in case they've solved spontaneously.

[-] non_burglar@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

Not that I'm happy about this or anything, I think competition is good.

But I never got readarr to work properly, it seemed to have a workflow that was unintuitive to me, compared to Radarr and Sonarr.

[-] cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

Problem was the underlying metadata which was either outdated or incorrect

[-] gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

I was just getting this set up, this and the music one, because I want to leave Spotify. Hopefully an alternative solution shows up.

[-] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 week ago

Same here.

Did you find a good way to export the Spotify playlist and get that torrented somehow?

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Zotify and similar tools (not those youtube downloaders!)

[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

How would this have compared to Calibre's OPDS function? I've used that for years with no issues.

[-] cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

Not related. Readarr was more like lazylib

this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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