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Literature
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Manga
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Sourcing Files (for standalone readers)
Nyaa - The best public source for downloading manga
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Official Digital Rips
Search for the English title and add Digital for the best rips. For example - Attack on Titan Digital.
In the rare cases where multiple groups release the same manga, prioritise the newer release as it's likely to have been ripped from a superior source.
If the files are dead on public trackers, you may have luck with DDL links in their descriptions, or alternatively setting up DC++
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Scanlation Rips
Search both the English and Japanese title by adding | in between. For example - Attack on Titan|Shingeki no Kyojin and sort by file size.
Although these are significantly lower quality, not all manga get official digital releases, and downloading as opposed to reading online allows you to utilise the better scaling that standalone readers can provide.
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Reading
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Windows
CDisplayEx (Highest Quality)
Standalone reader that requires you to bring your own manga, provides the highest quality scaling available on PC with Resizing Algorithm set to Lanczos, and the Lanczos slider set to level 2.
For laptops or high resolution displays, you will likely need to disable Windows DPI scaling. Go to
C:\Program Files\CDisplayEx, right clickCDisplayEx.exeand select Properties -> Compatibility -> Change high DPI settingsOffers an "Auto Colors" option which allows you to fix black levels, however requires manual tweaking depending on the source. Should only be enabled when obvious blacks are appearing as grey, at which point you should increase the white level sensitivity slightly until they become black.
Tachidesk (Most Convenient)
- Tachiyomi fork for PC
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Android
Perfect Viewer (Highest Quality)
- Standalone reader that requires you to bring your own manga, provides the highest quality scaling available on Android with Image smooth filter set to Lanczos 3
Tachiyomi (Most Convenient)
- All in one package with sourcing, tracking and a reader. In settings -> reader enable 32 bit color to avoid banding Under Browse, add Mangasee and Mangadex. The former will provide official rips whilst the latter will provide scanlations.
TachiyomiSY/TachiyomiJ2K/TachiyomiAZ/Neko
- Tachiyomi forks with added features.
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iOS
Sidebooks (Highest Quality)
- Standalone reader that requires you to bring your own manga, provides the highest quality scaling available on iOS.
Paperback (Most Convenient)
- Tachiyomi alternative that supports adding sources.
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Browser (Any platform)
MangaDex (Most Convenient Scanlation)
- Most scanlators upload here, which are then taken by aggregator sites. However, not everything is uploaded and official translations are never uploaded here.
Mangasee or Manga4life (Most Convenient Official)
- These sites upload downscaled official rips with the highest quality among online sites. The original rips can be found on nyaa.
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Organization and Manga Servers
Kavita - Free and open source manga, comic, and book server with OPDS support. This means that any reader with OPDS, like Perfect Viewer, can be used to read manga from the server. Has support for CDisplayEX, Tachiyomi, and Paperback. It also has an integrated webreader. DEMO.
Komga - Free and open source manga server with OPDS support. This means that any reader with OPDS, like Perfect Viewer, can be used to read manga from the server. Tachiyomi and Paperback are supported through their respective komga extensions. It also has an integrated webreader.
komf - Komga and Kavita metadata fetcher.
Mango - An open-source manga server and web reader.
FMD2 - Free Manga Downloader 2
Manga Tagger - Tool to rename and write metadata to manga. It scrapes metadata from Anilist and MyAnimeList and has direct integration with FMD2.
HakuNeko - cross-platform downloader for manga and anime from various websites
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Light Novels
Official vs Fan Translations - In general, official translations are more consistent, localized and flow better as a result of having professional translators and editors working on the project. At the same time, some readers may not prefer the excessive localization, editing or censorship in certain novels, which is where fan translations become the better choice. Seven Seas was guilty of doing this with Mushoku Tensei and Classroom of the Elite under the guise of localization - 1, 2, 3. The problems were apparently fixed later in revised releases.
Fan translations can range from better than official to unreadable machine translated garbage. It's best to consult the community of each series to determine what their preferred version is, and go with that. In most cases, going with official is a safe bet.
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Sourcing
Nyaa is the first place you should check for official releases.
Fan TLs can be found from novelupdates or from the reddit/discord communities of the series. Not all communites will allow sharing these, make sure to check their wiki and pins for information.
Novelupdates - provides information about translation groups, their status and progress, links to their sites, as well as lots of other things about the series - genres, categories, tags, ratings, reviews etc.
WebToEpub - An extension to convert Web Novels into EPUB.
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Reading and Organization
Calibre is a complete e-book management solution. It can be used to read, transfer and convert ebooks for all sorts of readers. It can also modify styling and download/edit/create metadata. The calibre content server can be used to host and remotely access your library.