Calibre 9.6: new search features and bug fixes

Calibre 9.6: Bug Fixes, Search Improvements, and New News Sources

March 27, 2026 saw the release of version 9.6 of the open-source Calibre project—a cross-platform e-book manager. Written in Python and C, it supports Windows, macOS, and Linux under the GNU GPL v3 license. Development has been active since the 9.0 release in January 2026. The main updates focus on bug fixes, full-text search improvements, and new news sources.

Calibre handles all major book formats: viewing, conversion, editing, and cataloging. Integration with e-readers, metadata fetching from the web, and newspaper conversion are key features. Version 8.11 added an optional "Ask AI" tab in the viewer: queries to models from Google, OpenRouter, GitHub, or local ones via Ollama on selected text. AI code loads only after setup.

Fixed Bugs and Vulnerabilities

Developers squashed a number of non-critical bugs affecting stability:

• Loss of notes when renaming a custom search column.
• Skipping chapters in the viewer when using the "slower/faster" buttons with the neural TTS backend Piper.
• Annotation sync issues with the server on Android devices in Firefox.
• Hanging on calibre.exe exit on Windows—added forced process termination.
• asciiize parameter not applying to the embedded table of contents in TXT output.

Security vulnerabilities addressed:

• Blocking background images from the internet in the viewer (CVE-2026-33205).
• Restricting resource file reads for TXT input to book content only (CVE-2026-33206).

Additionally optimized:

• Applying changes to book list text fields only on actual differences.
• Updating autocomplete hints when moving the cursor.

New Interface and Search Features

Full-text search has been overhauled:

• Card format for results with book covers.
• Switch back to compact view via the button to the left of the search field.
• Prefix-based autocomplete—finds matches where any word starts with the entered letters.

Book shelves now offer a fixed book height option for groups. In the book editor, the file list supports Ctrl+Left Arrow/Right Arrow to move items to the start/end.

Expanded News Sources

New recipes added for news downloads:

• L'Humanite.
• Telerama.
• Le Parisien.

Improved existing ones:

• BusinessLine.
• Naked Capitalism.
• Le Canard Enchaine.
• Le Monde.
• Courrier International.
• L'Equipe by Kabonix.

This makes it easier to gather and convert content into reading formats.

Key Takeaways

• Fixed bugs in TTS, annotations, and TXT processing, plus two CVEs.
• Full-text search now with card views and prefix autocomplete.
• New features for shelves and file editor.
• Three new and six improved news sources.
• AI integration is optional, with no automatic code loading.

— Editorial Team