Walkthrough · readers

Day to day, from first sign-in to the loop the app is built around

Normal user experience, from signing in, finding something, following it, and being told when it moves. Every screen below is what an ordinary account sees.

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1. Signing in

There is no account to create. Marginalia checks the password against Kavita's own user table, so whatever gets you into Kavita gets you in here on the first try. If your server hands sign-in to an identity provider, a Sign in with … button appears above the password form instead.

Marginalia sign-in page with username and password fields

2. The home page

Signing in lands you on a dashboard rather than a grid of links. The left column is what you are in the middle of — each series with how far along you are — and a What's newfeed covering the last two weeks: new chapters in series you have started or watch, updates on your requests, new posts in your group reads, and achievements you have earned.

Signed-in home page with continue-reading list, a what's new feed, and a side rail showing the next group read deadline, an invitation, reading streak and open requests — The right rail is the next group-read deadline, a pending invitation, today's reading against your goal, and your open requests. Anything with nothing to show stays hidden rather than sitting there as an empty card. Group-read posts in the feed say who posted, never what they said — nothing gets spoiled before you reach that part.

3. Browse

Browse is your whole collection, shelved rather than dumped into one flat grid. Continue reading comes first, then recently added, then a shelf per library. Card sizes vary by shelf on purpose, so the page has a shape instead of being a wall.

Browse page showing shelves of series cards for continue reading, recently added, and per library — The Overview / All series / Tags switch at the top is the entry point to the other two views.

Shelves are for picking something up again. When you would rather just wander, the All series tab drops the shelving and gives you one library at a time.

All series view with a library sidebar listing each configured library and its series count, showing the Manga library sorted by highest rated — Sixty to a page, sorted by rating. Search, a reading-status filter and the sort apply within whichever library you picked, so the four libraries stay separate rather than being tipped into one pile.

4. Tag Browser

The Tags view turns everything Kavita and MangaBaka know about your library into a browsable index — genres, activities, demographics, character archetypes — each with a count of how many series you actually own under it.

Genres and themes page listing tag pills grouped into genres, activities, audience demographics and character archetypes, each with a count — 1,654 tags across this collection. These are counts of what is on the server, not a catalogue of what exists across the entire database.

Picking one drills through to just those series, and tags combine — so you can narrow to the intersection rather than starting over from a single-tag list.

Tag drill-down page listing every series in the library carrying the Comedy tag — Drilling into Comedy. Adding a second tag narrows the same list rather than replacing it.

5. The series page

Everything known about one series in a single view: your progress, the metadata Marginalia matched from MangaBaka, community ratings, credits, and where it sits in the catalogue's popularity ranking.

Series detail page for Attack on Titan with a blurred-cover hero, series data sidebar, synopsis, credits, genres and themes — Chapter and volume counts, publishing status, whether there is an anime, whether it is officially licensed, and its rank in the catalogue — none of which Kavita tracks. The right-hand column is who else on the server is reading it and how far along they are. Open in Kavita is always one click away; Marginalia describes your library, it does not replace the reader.

The Reading this column only lists readers whose profile is public; if yours is private, you still see your own row and nobody else does. Start a group readin the hero is the way into section 10.

Creator names are links. Following one gives you their full bibliography — every credited work in the metadata catalogue, with the ones already sitting on your server marked as such.

Creator bibliography page for Hajime Isayama showing all fifteen credited works, filtered by whether each is in Kavita — Fifteen credited works, one of them on this server. The In Kavita / Not in Kavita filter answers `what else of theirs do I have?` without a search, and anything not on the server has a Request link. Covers here come from MangaBaka rather than your library.

6. Following a series

This is the loop the app is built around. My Series lists everything you have in progress; the Watch toggle on a row is the whole subscription mechanism.

My Series page listing in-progress series with progress bars, watch toggles, catch-up thresholds and publishing alert pills — The amber pills are catch-up thresholds and the blue ones are publishing-status alerts — both set per series from Configure.

Catch-up reminders are the setting worth understanding. Setting a threshold records where you are now and then says nothing. It pings you later, once enough new chapters have landed that your completion has fallen back to that number. It is for series you would rather binge than read one chapter at a time.

Auto-watch saves the bookkeeping: turn it on and any series you start reading is added to the watchlist for you, with new-chapter alerts, publishing-status alerts, or both. Series you already watch, or deliberately un-watched, are left alone.

7. Deciding what reaches you

Notification settings open with a plain-English summary of what you are currently signed up for, so you never have to reverse-engineer it from a column of switches.

Notification settings page with a summary panel, per-event delivery rows, channel routing and snooze controls — Each event routes to a named channel, and each can be snoozed for a few days without clearing the thresholds behind it. New chapters is a scope dropdown, not a toggle — `everything in my libraries` is a firehose on a busy server, and the page says so. Reading sessions sends a summary with the cover each time you put a book down. Messages name the library, so a series that exists in two libraries is never merged into one line.

8. Finding the next thing

Discover works from what you have actually been reading. Each row starts from one of your series and shows what MangaBaka readers of that series also enjoyed — then filters the result down to series already on this server that you have not started. The series that get listed here are refreshed every 24 hours.

Discover page showing rows of recommendations, each seeded from a series the reader recently finished — Personal rows like these are the For you tab; Popular and Highest rated are catalogue-wide views for when you want to browse outside your own habits.

Discover's Highest rated tab with rating bands 70–74 through 90+, each chip showing how many series it holds, and an order control — Highest rated is split into bands — 70–74 up to 90+ — each holding only its own series, with a count on the chip. Order by rating, by publication year, or a daily shuffle that holds still while you page through it.

What leaves your server: the recommendation lookups are made by the server against MangaBaka and carry manga IDs only — never your account or your reading. Covers and titles on this page come from your own library, so your browser never talks to MangaBaka at all. An admin can switch the whole hub off.

9. Asking for what is missing

Requests is how you ask the admin for a series the server does not have. You pick the exact edition and the library it should land in — never a bare title, because "Solo Leveling" is a manhwa and a light novel, and those are different requests.

Requests page with a title search, the reader's own requests with waiting and accepted badges, and a list of what other readers are asking for with Me too buttons — Three of five open requests used. The admin's note travels with an accepted request, and `Me too` on someone else's adds you to it rather than filing a duplicate.

You do not have to come back and check. When the series turns up in the library you asked for — however it got there — everyone who asked for it gets told.

10. Reading together

Group reads are a few readers, one series (or a Kavita reading list), and a shared schedule. Start one from a series page or from here; clubs can be public, or private behind an invite or a join code.

Group reads page with a series search to start a group read, a join-code box, a pending invitation, and the reader's own running group read

There is no check-in button. Progress is read straight from Kavita, so the board is always current — and it only shows percentages, never which chapter somebody is on.

Group read board for Attack on Titan with five readers' progress bars for the current stretch and overall, and a five-milestone schedule on the right — Two volumes a week for five weeks. Each reader's bar is their progress through the current stretch, with the whole read underneath. Reminders go to the group's own Discord channel when a stretch opens, two days before it is due, and when everyone has finished.

Every stretch has its own discussion: general thoughts, questions members ask, a one-line quick take with a rating, and highlights or bookmarked pages you made in Kavita, attached straight from your own account.

Discussion page for volumes 1–2 with quick-take ratings, a shared-pages section, general thoughts with a threaded reply, and a member's question with answers — Falling behind never locks you out. A reader who has not finished the stretch gets a short note that the thread may spoil it and a one-click way in anyway; the posts are held back by the server, not just blurred. Finish the read on schedule and there is a Book Club achievement in it.

11. What you have already read

Reading history is week by week, paginated backwards, counting chapters and pages per series. It makes "how much did I actually read last month" a question with an answer.

Reading history page broken into weekly sections with per-series chapter and page counts — 18,886 pages across 538 chapters in this four-week window. The tiles on the right are your goals: 2 h 11 min read today against a 30-minute daily goal, and 63 of 150 books finished this year.

Both goals are set under notification settings. Time is measured from Kavita's own reading sessions, so it counts reading rather than marking things read, in your own time zone — and you can ask for a nudge at a set time of day if you are still short. A book is a volume you finish; in book and light novel libraries, each finished file counts.

Bookmarks is the gallery of pages you saved while reading — grouped by series, each reopening at full size, each able to carry a Markdown note.

Bookmark gallery grouped by series, each saved page shown as a thumbnail with share and note buttons — Thirty-seven saved pages across eleven series. Any one can be published on a public share link, up to a per-user cap the admin sets — 4 of 10 used here.

12. Achievements

Close to 400 tiers across the profile set, in tiered families rather than one-shot badges. Each card shows the tier you are on, the next threshold, and how far along you are — so a card is a progress bar, not a lottery ticket.

An unlock that came from a particular series names it, here and in the Discord announcement. Some achievements stay invisible until you have already earned them.

If more than one person reads off the server, there is a shared set everyone contributes to.

Server achievements page showing goals the whole install contributes to — The same engine, aggregated across the install — a reason to care that you are all reading off the same box.

13. Year in Review

Each December you get a look back at your reading year — books and chapters finished, pages, time spent, new series started, and what you read most. It opens on 22 December in your own time zone; earlier years are always available from your profile settings, and are rebuilt from your Kavita history if you were reading before Marginalia was installed.

Year in Review page for 2026 with by-the-numbers tiles for books finished, chapters, pages, hours, series read and new series started, and a ranked list of what was read most — Shown here as the admin preview — readers see the current year from 22 December. The year is frozen into Marginalia's own database when it ends, because Kavita only keeps your latest position, not the history behind it.

14. Two settings worth knowing about

Safe Mode is for reading somewhere other people can see your screen. You pick a content ceiling and optionally whole libraries to hide, and it applies across browsing, Discover, My Series, history and bookmarks.

Content and safety settings page with a safe mode toggle, three content ceiling options and a per-library hide list — It changes only what you see, never what you are allowed to reach — and it has an on/off switch in the account menu so you can flip it without coming back here. Opening a hidden series directly shows a cover screen.

The profile page holds the rest: your public profile, the Discord ID that lets notifications @-mention you, the timezone your streaks and time-of-day feats are judged in, and links to your past Years in Review.

Public profiles are opt-in — nothing about you is reachable on a link until you turn it on. The timezone was detected at first sign-in; this is where you correct it.

Dark mode

Not a filter laid over the light theme — the palette is remapped, and it is the same set of design tokens either way. Toggled from the navbar, remembered per browser, with no flash of the wrong theme on load.