Transfer Calibre books to iPhone iPad

Calibre is the free ebook solution. It allows you to do nearly everything and it takes things a step beyond normal e-book software. See this tutorial to convert ePub books for iPhone iPad. When you created, edited, converted books on PC, Mac or Linux computers and would like to send the books to your mobile devices, such as iPhone or iPad, you should try its wireless books transfer solution, the Content Server. It is wireless, fast and no extra app required. In this article, we will use Calibre for Mac to demonstrate how to setup the Content Server on computer so you can connect your iPhone, iPad or other devices to your computer to download ebooks.

Setting up Calibre Content Server

Make sure both computer and iOS device are connected to the same Wi-Fi network. Run Calibre on your computer, click Connect/Share from the top tool bar, select Start Content Server from the drop-down menu. Now you should see a Stop Content server action with an IP address and port number besides it. It is something like, Stop Content server [192.168.1.4, port 8080].

calibre connect content server mac

Connect iPhone iPad to Calibre server on PC/Mac

The Calibre content server on your computer is ready. On your iPhone or iPad, you can use a browse to access Calibre content server and download books from there.

Launch Safari or any other web browser on your iOS device. In the address bar, input the Calibre Content Server address to connect. From above screenshot, you can see Content Server [192.168.1.4, port 8080], so visit http://192.168.1.4:8080 in a web browser on iPhone or iPad to access the Content Server. Note that, the server IP is your computer IP address in your local network.

The first part of the address is always http:// the next part is the IP address of your PC or Mac computer, followed by a colon (:) and finally add the port number to the end.

iphone to connect calibre content server to transfer books

Now you should be able to access the Calibre content server on PC or Mac from your iPhone or iPad. Once your iPhone or iPad is connected to Calibre content server on PC or Mac, you can read the books saved in Calibre libraries, download them for offline reading, copy ebooks to the Books app or other ebooks readers on the iOS devices.

Calibre to iPhone iPad book transfer alternatives

If you have trouble connecting to Calibre server from another device or computer in your local network, double check the Windows Firewall on the current PC as it may prevent the connection to port 8080. You can follow this step-by-step guide to allow network access to Calibre server on port 8080 in Windows Firewall. Alternatively use third-party file transfer solutions. For instance, you can transfer books and other files between computer and mobiles using ShareIt, a free, cross-platform file transfer. Windows has the built-in file transfer over SMB which you also consider. Check out this guide to share files between PC and iPhone, iPad via Windows File Sharing for more details.

2 thoughts on “Transfer Calibre books to iPhone iPad”

  1. Where is “Press Go in the virtual keyboard”? What “virtual” keyboard?
    On which device? Off which menu and submenu?
    Does this still apply after 13.0.3? Mohave?

    1. hello Alan, firstly you need to Start Content Server in Calibre on computer, Calibre will give you the content server IP address; secondly open a web browser on the iPhone or iPad to visit Calibre content server by IP, and download books to your iOS device.

Comments are closed.