Everything you need to organize your collection, run your first scan, and start streaming to Longbox Reader.
Digital Longbox is a personal comic collection manager. It scans the CBZ, CBR, and PDF files you already have, figures out the series and issue number for each one, and organizes everything into a clean, browsable library — without moving, renaming, or altering your original files.
The typical setup is three steps:
Digital Longbox reads your existing folder structure to figure out how your comics are organized, so a little bit of consistent naming goes a long way toward accurate matching.
Keep each series in its own folder, with the issue files directly inside it. A folder name that includes the series name and, ideally, its start year in parentheses gives the most reliable match:
Amazing Spider-Man (1963)/Saga (2012)/Digital Longbox pulls the four-digit year out of the parentheses automatically and uses the remaining text as the series title.
Because colons ( : ) and slashes ( / ) can't be used in folder or file names on most systems, use these substitutions instead — Digital Longbox converts them back automatically when it builds the series name:
| Type this | Digital Longbox reads it as | Example |
|---|---|---|
- (space-hyphen-space) | Colon : | Batman - Year One → Batman: Year One |
-- (space-double hyphen-space) | Slash / | Cloak -- Dagger → Cloak / Dagger |
Add (exclude) anywhere in a file or folder name and Digital Longbox will skip it entirely during scanning — the check is case-insensitive, so (Exclude) works too.
Amazing Spider-Man 042 (exclude).cbzConvention Sketchbooks (exclude)/Files and folders that begin with a dot (hidden files) are also skipped automatically, along with a couple of known library-manager marker folders (such as .yacreaderlibrary and _gsdata_) so they don't get scanned as comics.
Tip: Only files with a .cbz, .cbr, or .pdf extension are picked up during a scan — anything else in a library folder is ignored automatically, so you don't need to exclude non-comic files like cover art or notes unless you'd prefer they weren't visible in your folder browser at all.
A library is simply a top-level folder that Digital Longbox scans. You can add more than one — for example, separate libraries for different drives or different collections.
A note on macOS network shares (SMB): we don't recommend pointing a library at an SMB network share on macOS. SMB access from macOS can be noticeably slower than a local or externally-attached drive, and connections can drop mid-scan on larger collections — which may interrupt scanning or thumbnail generation partway through. For the most reliable experience, use a locally attached drive (internal, USB, or Thunderbolt) wherever possible.
Before running your very first scan, take a minute to check your settings — a couple of choices are much easier to get right up front than to change after your whole library has already been matched.
Open Settings → Comic Matching and look at Enable metadata matching API. This is on by default, and it's what allows Digital Longbox to automatically identify series and issue numbers instead of leaving everything for you to enter by hand.
When this setting is enabled, a fingerprint (a hash) of each comic file — not the file itself — is sent to the matching service to look up series and issue metadata. No personally identifiable information is included in that request.
If you'd rather not send file fingerprints to the matching service, turn this off before your first scan. You can turn it back on later, but any comics already scanned while it was off will need a rescan to be matched. Please read the Privacy Policy before your first scan if you want the full detail on what is and isn't transmitted.
Why the matching service matters: automatic series and issue matching is the difference between a library that organizes itself and one you have to type in by hand, one comic at a time. The service improves over time because of the anonymous fingerprints and metadata contributed by scans — if you keep it enabled, your scans help make matching better for everyone, including future you.
If you edit a comic's metadata by hand — correcting a series name, fixing an issue number, adding your own notes — that custom data is submitted to the matching service for review. Some, all, or none of your changes may end up added to the shared database, depending on review.
Protect your edits: a future metadata refresh could overwrite the values you entered if the shared database doesn't yet reflect your change. To make sure that never happens, save your edits, then lock the issue. Locked issues are skipped by metadata refreshes and can't be edited again in the app until you unlock them.
Locking is per-issue, so you're free to lock only the comics where you've made changes you want to protect, and leave the rest open to future metadata refreshes.
Once your library is scanned, you can make it available to the Longbox Reader companion app on your phone or tablet:
8080, but you can change this before starting the server if needed.The server is designed for your home network only — communication uses plain HTTP, which is appropriate for a private home Wi-Fi network but should not be exposed to the public internet.
Double-check the folder naming — see Organizing Your Collection above. A missing or malformed year in parentheses, or a colon/slash that wasn't substituted, is the most common cause of a mismatch.
Confirm both devices are on the same Wi-Fi network, that Enable Server is turned on in Digital Longbox, and that you've entered the address exactly as shown in the Server settings panel. See the Longbox Reader connection guide for more.
This is most often caused by a dropped connection to a network drive mid-scan. If you're scanning from an SMB share, see the note in Adding Libraries above.
Still stuck? Reach out and we'll help you sort it out.