• 📁 Doesn’t move files; only watches a “library folder”
  • You can set up Minerva so that it checks and imports your library each time it starts
• 📖 Smart importing of eBook files
  • Books are marked as “New” when they are first imported
  • Re-importing the same book will mark it as “Updated” in your library if it has changed
  • Based off of path within library folder combined with a hash of the file
• 🏷 Book tagging using customizable tags (name, text color, background color)
• 📚 Normal lists: You add, remove, and reorder the books in the list
• 💡Smart lists: Minerva populates the list based on the results of a query, and automatically keeps it up-to-date as your library grows and changes
• ⭐️ Book ratings
• 🔎 Power search system
  • Construct queries that run the gamut from basic to complex
  • Search based on title, author, description, chapter count, tags, rating, etc.
    (Pretty much anything Minerva knows about your books can be used as a parameter)
  • Sort the search results based on any of those same options
  • Save power searches as Smart lists

Minerva sports a dark, Material Design theme, and is supported on devices running at least Android Lollipop (5.0+). [Click here for the changelog.][CHANGELOG]

This was done on purpose; while it would be nice to have a seamless experience, there are already a number of superb reading apps on the Play Store, and I chose to focus my efforts on making the best library management app rather than trying to re-invent the wheel.

What I quickly discovered was that the apps which offered the best reading experience all suffered from a common flaw: Their library management features. All of them were either too simplistic and futile, too heavy-handed and inflexible, too overcomplicated and kludgy, or some combination of the three.

I felt that this represented a clear gap in functionality, and I tossed around the idea of creating an app to bridge that gap for a while. What finally forced my hand was—fittingly—my preferred reading app; I opened it one day, and it started the usual scan of my library folder... and then proceeded in re-importing all of my books and destroying the paltry amount of organization I had put into place.

A little over six months and 650 commits later, I felt Minerva was ready for a 1.0.0 release.

(If it isn’t blatantly obvious, the latter was the real deciding factor; I’d have named it “Athena” otherwise 😉)

• [epublib][epublib] is the library Minerva uses to read ePub files. The original library was created by Paul Siegmann, but Minerva actually uses [my own fork of epublib][My epublib] (which was actually forked from a different fork of the original, though that one is no longer accessible for me to link to).
• [Realm][Realm] is an incredible third-party database library which Minerva uses instead of Android’s built-in SQLite database.
• Again, there are many others I haven’t mentioned here. I encourage you to look at [the app’s build.gradle file][build.gradle] or the “About” screen in the app if you’re interested.

During the development of Minerva, I actually ended up making two Android libraries which are just as integral to Minerva as the two listed above. I highly encourage you to go and look at their repositories if they sound interesting or helpful. Since I did create them with Minerva in mind, I’ll provide a bit of information about them here as well.

These things together present opportunity for some really powerful features. While I created Ruqus specifically with Minerva in mind, I figured that the concept was pretty neat, and one that was definitely worth sharing with other developers.

If Ruqus sounds interesting or useful to you, I encourage you to at least look its README, and then check it out and tell me what you think if you feel so inclined.

Ruqus is one of my favorite projects I’ve done so far due to the challenges it presented me with, so I’m quite proud of it. However, I’ll be the first to admit that there is definitely room for improvement.

realm-recyclerview-lite is actually the result of what I originally intended to be simple fork-and-PR effort to add a single feature to Thorben Primke’s [realm-recyclerview][RRV] library.

I will continue to give him credit for the original, but the reality of the matter is that the two libraries have diverged drastically; at this point, almost none of the code from realm-recyclerview actually remains in realm-recyclerview-lite.

Feel free to check the realm-recyclerview-lite repo for further details about this if you wish to, I certainly don’t want it to cause any confusion.

There’s a ton of investigation and learning—and frustration—that would have to occur on my part to implement a reader in Minerva. Even after all that, it’d still likely be “just good enough” to satisfy me as the developer. I’m not saying that I’m opposed to doing that work, just that the front-loading and effort required to even begin to design such a feature requires a lot of time which I simply don’t have right now.

So, while I do actually have an open issue, [#23][Reader Issue], for making Minerva an eBook reader, I feel no pressing need to do so. Even if I do implement reading functionality at some point, it won’t be as feature-rich as some reader apps are; I just don’t care about many of the extra features those apps have.

TL;DR: I would love for Minerva to be a reading app too! But at the end of the day it’s still a hobby project; it makes me no money, it’s targeted primarily at me, and I don’t have enough time available to me to give this the effort it requires. Perhaps one day, but I promise nothing.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at