Installation

Prerequisites

Python 3.9 or higher — required for the pip installation method. Install Python with pip enabled for Windows, Linux, or macOS.
Calibre (optional but recommended) — lncrawl uses Calibre to convert ebooks to formats like MOBI, PDF, DOCX, and others. Without it, output is limited to EPUB, plain text, and JSON. Download Calibre from calibre-ebook.com/download.

macOS Calibre path: After installing Calibre on macOS, you must add it to your PATH before running lncrawl:

export PATH="$PATH:/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS"

If you installed Calibre to a different folder, replace /Applications/ with the correct path.

Installation methods

pip (recommended)
Standalone binary
pip from GitHub
Docker

Install the lightnovel-crawler package from PyPI:

pip install -U lightnovel-crawler

In some environments you may need to use pip3, python3 -m pip, or python -m pip instead of pip.

After installation, verify it works:

lncrawl -h

If lncrawl is not found, your pip scripts directory may not be in your PATH. You can run lncrawl using:

python3 -m lncrawl -h

Download a pre-built binary — no Python installation required.

Download the binary for your platform

Windows: lncrawl.exe
Linux: lncrawl
macOS: lncrawl

For older releases, visit the GitHub Releases page.

Make the binary executable (Linux/macOS)

chmod +x lncrawl

Run the binary

./lncrawl -h

On Windows 8, 10, or later, the OS may flag lncrawl.exe as unsafe to download or run. Bypass this security check to execute the program — it is a false positive from an unsigned executable.

On Linux and macOS, installing via pip is recommended over the standalone binary.

Install directly from the GitHub repository to get code that has not yet been published to PyPI.

pip install -U git+https://github.com/lncrawl/lightnovel-crawler.git#egg=lightnovel-crawler

The master branch is the latest stable code. The dev branch contains in-progress changes that may be unstable.

Docker runs lncrawl in an isolated container without touching your system Python.

Pull and tag the image

docker pull ghcr.io/lncrawl/lightnovel-crawler
docker tag ghcr.io/lncrawl/lightnovel-crawler lncrawl

Create a data directory

mkdir -p ~/.lncrawl

Run the container

docker run -v ~/.lncrawl:/data --rm -it lncrawl

For convenience, add an alias to your shell profile:

alias docker-lncrawl='docker run -v ~/.lncrawl:/data --rm -it -p 8080:8080 lncrawl'

Run the web server via Docker

docker-lncrawl server

Verify the installation

Run the following command to confirm lncrawl is installed and working:

lncrawl -h

You should see the lncrawl help output listing available commands (crawl, search, server, etc.). If the lncrawl command is not found, try:

python3 -m lncrawl -h

Get Started

Usage

Configuration

Sources

Contributing

Prerequisites

Installation methods

Verify the installation

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Get Started

Usage

Configuration

Sources

Contributing

​Prerequisites

​Installation methods

​Verify the installation

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Prerequisites

Installation methods

Verify the installation