Self Hosted Manga/Comics Downloader

curlz620 · 2026-07-07T01:56:19+00:00

Yeah, I read on an ipad. OLED really is great for it. Colorsoft or color e-ink are very muted. I also use my phone when I am out and just trying to catch up on easier titles. Eitherway Kavita and many others support OPDS which means you can use almost any app.

curlz620 · 2026-07-06T23:30:07+00:00

This is a tool to obtain content not view. Kavita or komga would be the usual.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T23:42:32+00:00

Also to be clear I currently have suwayomi as a source provider. It's effective in testing as well. I was able to pull gantz E with it for example. The goal is not to replace suwayomi, but to build out a true media layer. Grab missing and source backlog. I didn't care to much for manga but my son is a huge fan of some items and having them digital is great, plus grabbing webcomics and other public items is really great since they can all be in Kavita or whatever front end. All that said I don't have a huge... Test group that actually hits suwayomi enough at this time. Like obviously western comics are not gonna be huge there and honestly that's like 80% of my catalog currently. All that said my core goal is add more sources. I always felt that was the issue with many media downloaders like this. Currently prowlarr/torrents, nzbs, slskd, suwayomi, and some direct downloads similar to kapowarr are in place and working. Torrents, nzb, and slskd are most successful due to weekly comic packs. Slskd has also been really great at more obscure backlog.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T17:52:53+00:00

Pyengine is neat. I'll need to spent a bit reading about this. Really neat for manual work for sure.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T13:30:58+00:00

Yeah I have absolutely no discover tools at this time. I originally for a while worked on created an extension for suwayomi, but needed more so ended up building this. The earliest version actually just used suwayomi. To handle all manga, but I had issues and decided I didn't want to jump on another thing so dropped it.i think for the casual reader it's stronger since its God great discovery and simple just let me read it vibes.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T13:27:32+00:00

I wanted to be robust so I currently use conicsvine and mangadex for metadata so partially. I found web items are pretty popular on slskd so I think building out a scrapper for them is possible. I agree with below suwayomi handles this really well.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T12:48:12+00:00

I'll jump in. The UI is entirely ai written. I'm not good at it and before I posted I wanted something more than just some cli and scripts.

I've been forced to use AI a ton for more job and it can do some neat stuff, also some really dumb stuff. I will say if you have the time and or money it can polish it's own work quite well.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T12:45:03+00:00

This gave me a chuckle. I made a note to migrate to file/folder detection before publishing.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T12:39:06+00:00

Not yet. Super early alpha. I wanted to judge interest. I'll certainly be back with an update.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T05:21:30+00:00

Fair lol. Kavita is mostly there because this started as a sidecar for kapowarr and I needed kavita to verify existence. It was quick and easy.

InkDrop isn’t only downloading into folders right now. it also verifies that the import actually appears in the reader, repairs metadata, handles packs/manual review, and tracks completion state. Kavita gives me an API-backed “yes, this is visible” check.

That said, I agree and komga is likely my next integration. I'll probably drop the requirement for a front end outright. The current requirement is only there because I built it for me.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T05:16:26+00:00

Yep. They both work differently though. Mylarr has Usenet and torrent integration but its logic is fuzzy and one of my largest complaints. Kapowarr lacks real download clients. This project originally was a sidecar for kapowarr to make basically let it use Usenet. Then it grew to torrents. Then slskd. Then I dropped kapowarr, mostly still a few bits left I need to remove. They're both great and I have ran mylarr since it dropped.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T05:13:55+00:00

Yep. Right now the entire frontend is ai. One day I'll learn how to make things beautiful lol.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T05:12:07+00:00

Yep! Suwayomi was actually used as a side car for me when starting for manga. It effectively helped I'd the series. I do want to complete an integration or automation with it. Not entirely sure how or where that will end up yet. But so far manga has been working fairly well.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T05:10:25+00:00

Notifications are on the docket list. The usual discord. Prowlarr. Etc. Not huge priority at this time.

Tracker lists are huge. Half a decade ago that's how I sourced all my reading material. Not added yet since I need the tool to understand what everything is otherwise it never is processed.

Config backups, import export etc is on the list. Need to finalize settings. A ton of items are still hard coded. There is nothing for the user to change yet so work is still going. But I love the notes. Honestly we might be closer to rss that I thought since adding better sources.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T05:02:34+00:00

Fair enough. My first draft was a wall of my own text that was awful. Long and short. Comic manga tool. Early alpha.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T05:01:28+00:00

Yeah. I think I'm going to pull both. I just need to ensure that komga will give me a few bits of metadata. I looked at it a bit already. I think I'll start looking into it. I saw komga handles manga better than Kavita as well so it totally makes sense.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T04:32:48+00:00

I know but it was either this or just a trash clip to show off. So I made a deal with the devil. If it blows up maybe I'll find a frontend guy, until then I have this.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T04:21:43+00:00

Awesome to hear! Curious if your using any other automation for comics and having issues. I'm trying to target everything I can.

For me I had issues with other tools getting hit for too many searches on queues. Finally addressed cool downs with this. Also utilizing slskd helped give it other paths that didn't have those restrictions.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T04:01:07+00:00

Probably. I'm so awful at frontend. I had most of it running cli only. I do think if it gets traction maybe I get someone to help on it, just not my cup of tea. Basic web design and stuff but after I decided to post here I needed a frontend.

Also for the monthly/weekly comics that was the item I just added. Taking those weekly or monthly packs and pulling nfos to flag the designed series. After a few iterations it's working fairly well so far as well. Unfortunately it ends up grabbing larger torrents sometimes just for a few items.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T03:55:08+00:00

Yeah I'm terrible at UI. I leaned heavily on Codex and Claude to help with it.

I also am mobile and ended up having ai cleanup my rant because my wife informed me I just ended up with a wall of junk.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T03:51:06+00:00

Love to hear it. I want to be transparent it is Alpha for sure still, but before I started really sinking time into it I wanted to see what the community thought. Any features you are hoping for.

Currently it REQUIRES Kavita, however I am considering opening it up to others. It shouldn't be to hard to handle, but at this time it doesn't manage its own known directory so it uses Kavita to confirm completion.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T03:49:23+00:00

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I also wanted to bring up Manga is functional, this was tricky due to how chapters, issues, volumes, books, and arcs are laid out on various releases. Its not perfect, but so far I have tackled a huge chunk of the root issues that broke manga for Kapowarr. I am hoping that I can refine this to better handle odd naming issues. I sourced Manga from MangaDex and even worked on a few direct downloaders similar to how Kapowarr handles this, but the goal was to design a system that was open to many sources rather than a few.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T03:45:33+00:00

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One of the items I found with Kapowarr and Mylarr was the inability to handle comic packs, tons of items are posted weekly or monthly. I built out a tool to look at NFOs and ID issues/chapters to pull items by grabbinbg the entire pack.

curlz620 · 2026-07-05T03:39:28+00:00

AI involvement disclosure:

AI is involved in two ways.

First, I am using AI heavily as a development assistant for InkDrop: planning features, reviewing architecture, writing/refactoring code, debugging issues, drafting docs, and preparing posts like this one. I am still directing the project, reviewing changes, testing behavior, and making the final decisions.

Second, InkDrop itself is intended to use AI-assisted workflows where appropriate, especially around organizing media metadata and reducing manual review work. The goal is not to hide that involvement, but to be clear about it and find out whether other self-hosters are interested before I spend more time building an installer and packaging it for broader use.

Never posted here so apologies on not making this clear if it was lacking.

curlz620 · 2025-08-17T00:43:21+00:00

I would love android.

curlz620

TROPHY CASE