Feature Request: Cover Flow or Book Jacket Image display View

Negyb · February 9, 2025

Would it be possible in a future development for the Zotero team to consider putting a book cover (cover art) display option (perhaps including a field which stores the Book cover/jacket image as a jpeg). Its obviously less relevant for journal articles, but it would be a nice way to browse through the book items in ones library.
I would just like to know if this is possible and or being considered for a future build? And if so roughly when might we see something like this?
Programs like Bookpedia, Calibre, Bookends, DL, etc have this cover image view

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u5479963/brmd3lm1qsbjworpasaq.png

Negyb · February 9, 2025

or more simply like this?
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u5479963/xmmokoe4kv54m70epukl.jpg

cberrigan · February 9, 2025

Very much agree with this. Have requested in the past!

Negyb · February 11, 2025

or possibly draw from Calibre's open source implementation of this feature?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u5479963/69l53wj1inds74t1andw.png

CapitalPitanga · March 3, 2025

I agree so much

J.Woodtli · March 6, 2025

Just a: yes, please!

Negyb · March 14, 2025

If this is not a feasible feature request, can the developers let me know. I was just curious if something like this is on the horizon at all?

oyvindbs · 2025-04-24T11:52:03+00:00

Hi @Negyb, I just released an android app that creates a cover view, ZotShelf. It shows the covers in a collection in Zotero side by side. It is currently in closed beta, but send me a mail on appbugge@gmail.com if you wan to try. More info in this post:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/123769/zotshelf-new-app-that-shows-zotero-epub-covers-on-android-open-for-beta-testers#latest
and on my website:
https://oyvindsolheim.com/other/zotshelf/

Negyb · 2025-04-26T21:58:25+00:00

Thats amazing oyvindbs, sadly i'm locked into a Mac OS system. Any chance your app will come to Mac OS?

smteinturs · 2025-05-02T20:48:47+00:00

Hi @oyvindbs,
It's really great and it would be so useful ! Thanks a lot !
I work with a lot of comics, and to have a cover view in Zotero would be so nice.
Question : most of my comics in Zotero are references only (no epub nor pdf file). Would it be possible to make ZotShelf working as the Book Search + Dataview plugins in Obsidian about covers ? Meaning : import an image URL value with the Book Search plugin ("coverURL" value) and make it been displayed (through Dataview) ?
[EDIT : of course, the coverURL link targets an image which is saved locally. Works very smoothly and all parameters are very easy to set up]

I am not at all a developer, so what I am asking for may be totally irrelevant, or too different from what you are looking to achieve...

oyvindbs · 2025-05-05T12:30:24+00:00

Hehe, I'm trying to recreate the app as a plugin but as I'm only vibe coding it, I can't promise anything. I'm not an Obsidian user and I'm not sure what the plugins you're using are. Do all your books have a link to the cover image in their notes? Or is the link to the image only available when you use the plugin? What format is the images in? png/jpg or something else?