exhentai-manga-manager, a tagged local manga library with its own reader

A library built from a folder on disk

The project describes itself as tag based management and reading of manga downloaded from ExHentai, and the feature list starts with the flow that makes sense for that. You point it at a folder and it builds a manga library from what is there, it extracts a cover image from the manga file itself, and it then fetches the tags for those files from ExHentai in bulk so the library is tagged without manual work. Once the tags are in, the tool becomes a library manager, with tag editing, and search that combines tags, the manga name, the file path and time. The last two features close the loop, with the ability to associate an external image browser and a built-in one. The platform requirement is stated in the badge, Windows 10, and the project ships its documentation in Chinese, English and Japanese, with a wiki page of usage instructions and a separate FAQ page, and a Discord server for discussion.

The feature list reads as a library manager's checklist

The additional features section is where the project's real scope shows, and it is a long one. There is export and import of library metadata, an optional portable version that needs no installation, and a favourites list for manga. Sorting is offered by upload time, by the time the file was added and by rating. It shows the comments from ExHentai, renders content thumbnails, and remembers a reading position with page selection. The archive handling is broader than the name suggests, with support for already extracted manga folders and for zip, rar and 7z archives, plus management of multi chapter collections. You can hide specific manga from the library, and tags can be translated into Chinese. There are optional colour themes, tag analysis, custom covers, and a view that shows the library folder structure so you can browse by folder. A whole ExHentai metadata database backup can be imported, and the built-in reader supports single page, double page and scroll style browsing, along with tag frequency analysis and browsing over the local network. The companion userscripts are for copying metadata from a gallery page and for highlighting your local files on the site.

Electron, Vue and Vite in one package

The package.json describes a Vite and Electron application with the Vue side doing the interface. The scripts are the usual set for that stack, with dev running Vite, build running vite build, preview serving the built output, and start launching the packaged app through Electron with a chcp 65001 for console encoding on Windows.

npm run dev
npm run build
npm run start

Packaging is done with electron-builder. The pack script builds an unpacked directory, while the dist script runs auto-changelog, then the Vite build, then electron-builder, so a release regenerates the changelog as well as the binaries. The app identifier is electron.e-hentai.tagger, the Windows targets are the nsis installer and a zip archive, the icon comes from public/icon.ico, and the installer is configured with oneClick false and allowToChangeInstallationDirectory true, so a user picks the install directory rather than accepting a silent default. The file list the installer carries is explicit, with the built HTML, assets and icon, the fileLoader, public and modules directories, and the two Electron entry files index.js and preload.js, plus an extraResources copy from resources/extraResources.

SQLite through Sequelize, and Sharp for the images

The dependency list is where the local library implementation lives. The storage layer is sqlite3 with the sqlite package and Sequelize as the ORM, which is what lets the metadata be exported and imported. Image work is handled by sharp, which is the sensible choice for extracting and generating cover images. Archive handling comes from adm-zip and glob, and the file scanning in the fileLoader directory is what walks the folder tree. The local network browsing feature is served by express, and outbound requests go through node-fetch with https-proxy-agent, which matters for anyone behind a proxy. The window state is kept by electron-window-state so the reader reopens where you left it, lodash and nanoid round out the utility side. On the development side there is a Vue context menu package, several icon sets from vicons, and a comic read script package, and the repository carries an eslint flat config in eslint.config.mjs and a Vite configuration in vite.config.mjs.

The tag data is the part that leaves your machine

The library itself is local, and the tags are not. The features depend on two external sources. The first is the gallery site, since the bulk tag fetching is what gives the library its tags, and the companion userscripts exist to move metadata in the other direction, copying it from a gallery page and highlighting local files on the site. The second is the tag translation source, and the README credits the EhTagTranslation database under its thanks section, which is what makes the Chinese tag translation possible and also means the translation quality is only as good as that database. A third source is the site itself for the comments, and the optional import of a full ExHentai metadata database backup, which is a way to seed tags without querying the site for every file. The design consequence is that a library built and tagged once keeps working offline, but a new file needs a network round trip to be tagged, and a failed fetch leaves an untagged entry rather than a broken one.

A conventional desktop repository layout

The top level of the repository is a normal Electron project. src/ holds the Vue application, manga_reader/ holds the reader, fileLoader/ the folder scanning and archive handling, modules/ the shared pieces, public/ the static assets including the icon, and resources/ with an extraResources subdirectory that the installer copies. The Electron entry points sit at the root, index.js and preload.js, next to index.html, with the Vite and eslint configurations beside them. There is a screenshots/ directory that the README embeds directly, which is why the images in the documentation always match the current build, and a .github/ directory for the workflows. The project also keeps a CHANGELOG.md and a CONTRIBUTING.md, and the README is written in three languages with the English and Japanese versions in separate files. The MIT licence is in the LICENSE file at the root.

A fast release cadence on a single platform

The release history is dense, with v1.6.14 on 2026-02-07, v1.6.15 on 2026-03-21 and v1.6.16 on 2026-07-11, and the package version in the manifest matches the newest tag at 1.6.16. The repository is not archived, and the last push was on 2026-08-30. That cadence matters for a tool that sits in front of a growing collection, since each release tends to add a library management capability rather than a rewrite. The limitation to keep in view is the platform, since the packaging configuration only defines a Windows target with the nsis installer and the zip archive, and the README badge states Windows 10 as the requirement. The project is funded by individual sponsorship through Afdian, which is the pattern for a single developer tool that serves a community, and the Discord server is where the questions are answered.

Editorial conclusion

exhentai-manga-manager fits a Windows user with a folder of manga who wants the same tag driven library organisation that the gallery site offers, but local, searchable, and with a reader attached. It does not fit a person whose collection is on Linux or macOS, since the package targets Windows, and it does not fit a user who wants the tag set to be self contained, because the tag translation and the bulk tag fetching both reach out to external sources. Verify three things before you adopt it: that the archive formats you keep, including zip, rar and 7z, are covered, that you are comfortable with a tool that talks to the gallery site to fetch tags, and that the metadata export and import works as a backup for the library, since that is the part that protects the effort of tagging everything.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MIT
3. README
4. Releases
5. SchneeHertz/exhentai-manga-manager on GitHub