Importing

Two routes, both on the Import page.

From the server — a file browser over the server's own filesystem, limited to what your account may see. Navigate to a folder and either tick individual files, or import the whole folder with "Include sub-folders". Files are indexed in place; nothing is copied.

Ticking "Remember this folder for rescans" adds it to your watched list, so a later Rescan picks up new files, re-reads changed ones, and flags entries whose files have vanished.

Upload from this device — a normal file picker, plus a folder picker (Chrome/Edge/Safari) that keeps the folder structure. Files land in your own subdirectory of the upload folder and are then indexed.

What happens to each file

1. Filename is parsed for series, issue, volume, year and title. It handles the usual shapes: Batman 001 (2016) (Digital) (Zone-Empire).cbr, Saga v01 (2012).cbz, The Walking Dead #100 - Something to Fear (2012).cbz, Sandman - 001 - Sleep of the Just.cbz.
2. EPUB and PDF document properties fill any gaps.
3. Embedded ComicInfo.xml overwrites all of it — it is the most reliable source.
4. The first page is extracted and thumbnailed as the cover.

Re-importing is cheap and safe. Unchanged files are skipped on size and mtime. Changed files are re-read, but metadata you edited by hand or pulled from Comic Vine is preserved — file metadata only fills empty fields. "Re-read file" on a comic's page forces a full overwrite when you actually want one.

Duplicates are detected within your own library by file size plus a hash of the first megabyte. Two accounts indexing the same file from a shared mount each get their own row and their own metadata; they do not collide.