FathomModern reading room for Jellyfin libraries

Install with Docker Compose

Fathom listens on port 3000, like every Coral module:

services:
  fathom:
    image: getcoral/fathom:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    depends_on: [jellyfin]
    ports:
      - "3003:3000"
    environment:
      FATHOM_DATA_DIR: /data
      JELLYFIN_URL: http://jellyfin:8096
      JELLYFIN_API_KEY: ${JELLYFIN_API_KEY}
      JELLYFIN_USER_ID: ${JELLYFIN_USER_ID}
    volumes:
      - ./fathom-data:/data
    networks: [coral]

JELLYFIN_USER_ID is the user’s UUID, not their username — read it out of the URL when you open that user in the Jellyfin dashboard.

Every one of those environment variables is optional. Start the container bare and Fathom will ask for the Jellyfin connection on first run and store it in fathom.sqlite under FATHOM_DATA_DIR. Mount that directory if you want the setup to survive a container rebuild.

The published image is getcoral/fathom on Docker Hub. The module’s own documentation currently walks through running from source rather than the container, so the Compose service above is assembled from the image’s configuration.

Reading is a different browsing problem

A film library and a book library want different interfaces, which is the reason Fathom exists as a separate module rather than a tab inside Aurora.

Video browsing is driven by momentum — continue watching, what is next, what was just added. Reading is slower. You come back to a shelf you were partway through, or you browse covers looking for something to start, and the useful unit is the collection or the series rather than the individual episode.

So Fathom is cover-first and deliberately quiet. Featured shelves, recent additions, collection views, and title detail pages with the metadata Jellyfin holds. No autoplaying trailers, no rails competing for attention.

Everything it shows comes from Jellyfin at request time. Fathom keeps no copy of your library and no second metadata store — just its own connection details in SQLite.

Fathom vs Kavita and Komga

This is the comparison most people actually need, and the answer depends entirely on where your books already live.

Kavita and Komga are full reading servers. They scan your disks, maintain their own database and metadata, handle users and reading progress, and are considerably more mature at reading specifically — better readers, better series handling, better manga support.

Fathom is not a server. It is a client over Jellyfin, and that is the whole proposition: if your books, manga and comics already sit in Jellyfin alongside your films, Fathom gives them a proper interface without you running and maintaining a second server, a second user list and a second backup.

If your reading collection is large and reading is the main event, Kavita or Komga will serve you better. If it is a shelf sitting in the media server you already run, Fathom is the smaller answer.

The full breakdown is in Fathom vs Kavita and Komga.