Shelfie - Local Library Manager

Shelfie is a fast, self-hosted web application for managing your personal library of PDFs and EPUBs. Designed with simplicity in mind, Shelfie automatically watches your book folder for new files, generates covers, and provides a clean, responsive web interface to browse and search your collection.

Screenshots

Installation

Pip

Requirements:

• Python 3.11+ Best works with Python 3.12
• pip

The stable releases of shelfie are distributed on PyPI and can be easily installed or upgraded using pip:

pip install shelfie-py
shelfie

Docker

git clone https://github.com/mhmdsamerdev/shelfie.git
cd shelfie/
docker build -t shelfie .
BOOKS_DIR=REPLACE/YOUR/BOOK/PATH docker compose up -d

Pulling image from Docker Hub:

docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -e LIBRARY_PATH=/books -v shelfie_data:/data -v "D:\Your\Books\Folder":/books:ro mhmdsamerdev/shelfie

CLI options

shelfie [--host HOST] [--port PORT] [--reload] [--log-level LEVEL]
  --host       Bind address (default: 127.0.0.1)
  --port       Port number  (default: 8000)
  --reload     Auto-reload on code changes (development)
  --log-level  debug | info | warning | error  (default: info)

Update checks

On startup, Shelfie checks PyPI for a newer shelfie-py release and prints an upgrade hint:

• Pip installs: pip install --upgrade shelfie-py
• Docker installs: docker pull mhmdsamerdev/shelfie

Disable this check by setting SHELFIE_DISABLE_UPDATE_CHECK=1.

All user data is stored under SHELFIE_DATA_DIR (default ~/.shelfie)

🤝 Contributing

Please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.