Install libmobi with Homebrew, apt

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• mobidrm
• mobimeta
• mobitool

Project history

The project README describes Libmobi as a C library for Mobipocket/Kindle MOBI ebook documents, with command-line tools that also serve as examples for the library API. Its feature list covers PalmDOC, PRC, MOBI, newer KF8/AZW/AZW3, AZW4, metadata editing, encrypted documents, dictionary markup reconstruction, and output that can be fed back to kindlegen.

The release history shows a practical, parser-maintenance project: early releases added metadata extraction and mobimeta, while later releases focused heavily on corrupted-input handling, fuzzing-reported overreads, null dereferences, portability, and build fixes.

Adoption history

Libmobi is niche because MOBI is an older Kindle-era format, but it is useful in ebook tooling and preservation workflows where existing collections contain .mobi, .azw, or .azw3 files. The README names projects using it, including KyBook 2 Reader, @Voice Aloud Reader, and the QLMobi Quick Look plugin.

Homebrew, Debian, and Ubuntu package libmobi, making its command-line tools mobidrm, mobimeta, and mobitool available without building from source.

How it is used

Developers include mobi.h and link with -lmobi to load MOBI files into library structures and parse raw content into HTML, CSS, fonts, and media resources. Command-line users use mobitool and related tools for inspection and metadata work.

The package is most useful for archival conversion, ebook metadata cleanup, Kindle-file debugging, and applications that still need to understand MOBI-family files even as EPUB dominates newer publishing workflows.

Why package nerds care

Libmobi is significant as an ebook-format archaeology package: it wraps a historically important commercial reading format in inspectable C code and command-line utilities.

Its fuzzing-heavy maintenance story is also notable. Ebook parsers process complex, often third-party-generated files, so the small package has a security and robustness role out of proportion to its install counts.

Timeline

• 2010s: Libmobi is developed publicly as a C library for Mobipocket and Kindle file formats.
• 2021: Libmobi 0.7 and 0.8 fix corrupt-data crashes and CVE-assigned out-of-buffer reads.
• 2022: Libmobi 0.11 fixes multiple fuzzing-discovered buffer overreads and null pointer dereferences.
• 2024: Libmobi 0.12 fixes build issues with newer libxml, MSVC debug builds, clang warnings, and corrupt-input undefined behavior.

Related projects

• Mobipocket and Kindle formats are the document families Libmobi targets.
• kindlegen is relevant because Libmobi can reconstruct source structure that can be fed back to it.
• QLMobi is a related Quick Look plugin that uses Libmobi for MOBI preview support.

Sources

• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/libmobi
• https://github.com/bfabiszewski/QLMobi
• https://github.com/bfabiszewski/libmobi
• https://github.com/bfabiszewski/libmobi/releases
• https://www.fabiszewski.net/libmobi/