this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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(I am not affiliated with the project at all, just an end user.)

Announcement: Retirement of Readarr

We would like to announce that the Readarr project has been retired. This difficult decision was made due to a combination of factors: the project's metadata has become unusable, we no longer have the time to remake or repair it, and the community effort to transition to using Open Library as the source has stalled without much progress.

Third-party metadata mirrors exist, but as we're not involved with them at all, we cannot provide support for them. Use of them is entirely at your own risk. The most popular mirror appears to be rreading-glasses.

Without anyone to take over Readarr development, we expect it to wither away, so we still encourage you to seek alternatives to Readarr.

Key Points

  • Effective Immediately: The retirement takes effect immediately. Please stay tuned for any possible further communications.
  • Support Window: We will provide support during a brief transition period to help with troubleshooting non metadata related issues.
  • Alternative Solutions: Users are encouraged to explore and adopt any other possible solutions as alternatives to Readarr.
  • Opportunities for Revival: We are open to someone taking over and revitalizing the project. If you are interested, please get in touch.
  • Gratitude: We extend our deepest gratitude to all the contributors and community members who supported Readarr over the years.

Thank you for being part of the Readarr journey. For any inquiries or assistance during this transition, please contact our team.

Sincerely,
The Servarr Team

The github repo has been archived.

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[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (15 children)

Yeah this sucks but honestly it never really worked well for me, ebooks are horribly underserved in the media world.

[–] lemming741@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Having to run two instances to support audio and text books was the deal breaker for me.

Now I use audiobookshelf, and it's easy enough to find everything I need on mam without an extra search layer.

[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf

Is this what you are talking about? How dues this work for funding audio books? That's my biggest problem

[–] lemming741@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago

Yeah, it does a good enough job of handling the metadata which is why I mentioned it. To find books you need a private tracker.

[–] laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 14 hours ago

yes that is correct. it is a server/client solution so you can track you progress.

zero finding ability. try Lazy Librarian.

remember that audiobooks are relatively rare due to their high production costs. so a lot of books do not have an audio version. Could consider text to speech.

there are some massive torrents that have like thousands of audiobooks in them and you have to go and select which ones to download. I'm not sure how I stumbled on these in the past so if you figure that out let me know.

[–] laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I'm actually using Audiobookshelf as my main server. I just wanted Readarr to get metadata and organize the folders. Do you have any workflow tips for that?

[–] murky0106@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

The best way I found to do this was using audiobookshelfs upload feature and grabbing the meta data before upload. This sorts the folders for you

[–] doodledup@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

But how do you get the audiobooks if you don't use Readarr?

[–] laserjet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Readarr is just a tool that facilitates downloading via bittorrent or usenet. You can just use those the old fashioned way without it.

Edit: The program Lazy Librarian that some people are mentioning also assists with the searching and downloading, if you prefer not to do it by hand.

You can purchase audiobooks too, especially from authors who make them available on DRM-free platforms.

And there's always https://librivox.org/

[–] lemming741@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

No, it's a hot mess. I only get 6 books a month and she is one and done so it's manageable to do it manually

[–] philpo@feddit.org 0 points 22 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 15 hours ago

Just a source. Not a metadata provider.
And trying to find metadata for books is like searching for a music cd from propular artists.
Example: https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/afca53c1-c5b3-3f91-8590-281b0aa12722

They are a beast in itself.
Multiple releases/revisions spread across languages and/or countries.

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