manga-dl

Need a tool to fetch those manga you love quickly, you hate advertisements and don't like to read online. Don't worry, manga-dl gets you covered. manga-dl will get your favorite manga from Kissmanga straight into your computer, and you can read them on whatever device you have as long as it's EPUB or PDF compatible.

Simply put, with a single command manga-dl downloads your manga and automatically bundles it into a portable EPUB/PDF file that you can read whenever you want without the internet.

Here is how the downloaded manga look like when you import them into Lithium app. This is just for the demo, any app that supports reading EPUB/PDF file works just fine

Before using this script, read TERMS OF USING.

Features

• youtube-dl-like command line interface.
• Chapter-mark book bundling.
• Multithreading image downloading.
• EPUB and PDF support.
• Dockerized execution.
• New chapters resuming.
• Other sites support i.e. MangaRawr, Nettruyen.
• Compressed PDF bundling.

Setup

manga-dl is a command line tool written in Java, so of course you need Java to run it. Grab one here. You also need Docker to download manga (technically it's for extracting manga frames urls, the actual download is handled by your host machine).

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/giahuy2201/manga-dl.git

2. Navigate to the project folder

cd manga-dl

3. Build the project using ./gradlew

./gradlew clean jar

You now have successfully built your manga-dl-2.1.jar.

I'm not sure if this works for your OS, but try executing make install in the project directory to install manga-dl in your PATH. If it succeeds you can then run manga-dl as a cli tool like youtube-dl. You can remove manga-dl using this command rm /usr/local/bin/manga-dl

Usage

Before continue, make sure you have started Docker daemon. If you are on mac or windows, just open up your Docker Desktop. You can now start executing your command by prompting it with java -jar build/libs/manga-dl-2.1.jar. Here is the help message.

Usage: manga-dl [-hlv] [-f=<format>] [URL] [COMMAND]
      [URL]               Link to manga.
  -f, --format=<format>   Output format of manga (i.e. epub, pdf).
  -h, --help              Show this help message.
  -l, --log               Save log file.
  -v, --verbose           Enable console log.
Commands:
  download  Only download image files (.png).
  bundle    Pack image files (.png) into an EPUB file
Supported sites: Kissmanga, MangaRawr, Nettruyen

Note: add option -t= followed by number of threads (no space) that your computer can handle optimally to adjust downloading performance. By default, this option is set to 10 which works perfectly on my setup.

Examples

Download and pack manga

java -jar build/libs/manga-dl-2.1.jar https://kissmanga.org/manga/bv917658

Download and save image files

java -jar build/libs/manga-dl-2.1.jar download https://kissmanga.org/manga/bv917658

Bundle images files into an EPUB file

java -jar build/libs/manga-dl-2.1.jar bundle 'Tensura Nikki Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken'

Bundle images files into an PDF file

java -jar build/libs/manga-dl-2.1.jar bundle -f=pdf 'Tensura Nikki Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken'

manga-dl first downloads and stores your manga frames int a folder under the manga's title in .png format. It then collects all the frames and bundle them into an EPUB file. In addition, it saves your manga's metadata as well as all the frames' urls in manga.xml located at the manga directory for later bundling options. The EPUB file of your manga is generated right at the project folder, the manga folder can be deleted safely afterward.

Issues

• You may encounter OutOfMemory error when bundling large PDF file. This is because PDFBox which is the library manga-dl uses to bundle PDF file saves loaded images as objects in memory instead of references. To address this issue, you can add -Xmx followed by the amount of RAM for the program (i.e. -Xmx4g, -Xmx6g,-Xmx8g, etc.) if you run the .jar file. In case you had used make install to install manga-dl, you can increase the memory for the program by replacing -Xmx4g with a higher one and run make install again.

How it works

manga-dl uses Selenium in a Docker container to control Chrome browser to access your manga url and collect all the manga's frames. The manga frames' urls as well as other metadata about the manga is saved. After that manga-dl downloader goes through all the frames' urls and retrieve them. Finally, manga-dl bundler kicks in and create an EPUB file.

Disclaimer

Manga piracy is an act of stealing which is illegal, using manga-dl for non-personal purposes is discouraged. manga-dl is made for the sole purpose of education, its creator will NOT be responsible for any consequences.