mobi - library for unpacking unencrypted mobi files

A fork of KindleUnpack which removes the GUI part and makes it available as a python library via PyPi for easy unpacking of mobi files.

Installation

# Using uv (recommended)
uv add mobi

# Using pip
pip install mobi

Usage

As library

import mobi
import tempfile
import shutil

# Extract the mobi file
tempdir, filepath = mobi.extract("mybook.mobi")

# Use the extracted file
with open(filepath, 'r') as f:
    content = f.read()
    # Process the content...

# Clean up the temporary directory
shutil.rmtree(tempdir)

tempdir is the path where the mobi is unpacked
filepath is the path to either an epub, html or pdf file depending on the mobi type

⚠️ Important: You are responsible for deleting the temporary directory after use to avoid filling up disk space.

From the command line

The installer also creates a console script entrypoint that wraps the original KindleUnpack

$ mobiunpack
KindleUnpack v0.82
   Based on initial mobipocket version Copyright © 2009 Charles M. Hannum <root@ihack.net>
   Extensive Extensions and Improvements Copyright © 2009-2014
       by:  P. Durrant, K. Hendricks, S. Siebert, fandrieu, DiapDealer, nickredding, tkeo.
   This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
   the Free Software Foundation, version 3.

Description:
  Unpacks an unencrypted Kindle/MobiPocket ebook to html and images
  or an unencrypted Kindle/Print Replica ebook to PDF and images
  into the specified output folder.
Usage:
  mobiunpack -r -s -p apnxfile -d -h --epub_version= infile [outdir]
Options:
    -h                 print this help message
    -i                 use HD Images, if present, to overwrite reduced resolution images
    -s                 split combination mobis into mobi7 and mobi8 ebooks
    -p APNXFILE        path to an .apnx file associated with the azw3 input (optional)
    --epub_version=    specify epub version to unpack to: 2, 3, A (for automatic) or
                         F (force to fit to epub2 definitions), default is 2
    -d                 dump headers and other info to output and extra files
    -r                 write raw data to the output folder

[0.4.1] - 2025-09-14

• Fix DeprecationWarning for deprecated datetime.utcnow() by using timezone-aware alternative
• Fix DeprecationWarning for count being passed as positional argument in re.sub()
• Fix DeprecationWarning by using array.array.tobytes() instead of deprecated tostring() method
• Exclude development files from source distribution to reduce package size

[0.4.0] - 2025-08-26

• BREAKING: Drop Python 2 support, modernize codebase
• BREAKING: Bump minimum Python version to 3.9
• Replace deprecated imghdr module with standard-imghdr for Python 3.11+ compatibility
• Update loguru dependency to v0.7+ for Python 3.11 support
• Migrate build system from Poetry to uv/hatchling
• Add Python 3.10 and 3.11 to CI testing
• Add pre-commit hooks for code quality
• Code formatting updates with latest black

[0.3.3] - 2022-03-03

• Add GitHub build workfow
• Updated dependencies
• Rmoved python 3.6 support (EOL)

[0.3.2] - 2021-10-14

• Update dependencies

[0.3.1] - 2020-06-27

• Fix pypi link
• Update dependencies

[0.3.0] - 2020-03-02

• Add support for mobi7 only files
• Add experimental support for mobi print replica files
• Add support for file-like objects

[0.2.0] - 2020-03-02

• Minimal working 'extract' function and 'mobiunpack' console wrapper
• Replace most print calls with logging

[0.1.0] - 2020-03-02

• Empty package registered on pypi

License

GPL-3.0-only

All credits for the hard work go to https://github.com/kevinhendricks/KindleUnpack