Downloads

Frequently Asked Question about Downloads.

How do I download multiple chapters or series at the same time?

Two settings in More→Settings→Downloads control this, and both start conservative on purpose: hammering a source is how you get your IP banned from it.

• Concurrent source downloads is how many sources are worked at once, five by default.
• Concurrent page downloads is how many pages are pulled at once from each of them.

Raise the second one only for a source you know tolerates it. A source that starts returning errors or blank pages under load is telling you to put it back.

Why did my downloads stop midway?

Downloads stopping midway may be related to network connection issues or source problems. Reikai will provide notifications regarding encountered errors during download attempts.

Why can't I see my downloads?

Downloads might not be detected due to multiple factors:

• Inaccessibility of the download location.

  Ensure the SD card is properly detected if in use.

• Source name changes.

  Rename the source's folder to match the new name.

• Series title modified by the source.

  Adjust the folder title to the updated name.

How do I manage what's downloading?

Navigate to More→Download queue to interact with queued downloads.

Manga and light novels share the queue, with All / Manga / Novels chips to narrow it. Each series is one card holding its chapters.

• The pause button stops and restarts whatever is currently shown, so pausing on Manga leaves novels running.
• Sort and Cancel all are in the toolbar overflow, and Cancel all clears only what is shown.
• Drag a card by its handle to move that series up or down the queue.

Can I use both internal storage and external SD card storage?

No, you must choose a single location. Internal storage performs better than external SD cards.

Why does my device photo gallery contain series pages?

Reikai typically prevents series pages in downloads from appearing in your device's photo gallery by default through a .nomedia file. However, in some cases, this might not function as intended.

A quick solution is to create the .nomedia file yourself, name it as such, and place it in your downloads folder. If the issue pertains to local source, put the .nomedia file in the respective local folder.

How are downloads organized on the filesystem?

They are stored as downloads/Source Name/Manga Name/Chapter Name (abcdef).cbz. Light novels use a folder of their own, novel_downloads/Source Name/Novel Name/, with each chapter saved as an .html file. Everything below applies to both. The abcdef string is the first 6 hexadecimal digits of the MD5 hash of the URL of the chapter, so that if two chapters have the same name, they won't try to write to the same filename. In the case of a scanlator, it is Scanlator Name_Chapter Name instead of just Chapter Name.

Because of the prevalence of operating systems like Windows which have arbitrary limitations on special characters in filenames, by default Reikai will avoid using certain characters in filenames, specifically: "*:<>?\|. Of course, / is also banned. All of these characters are replaced by underscores if they appear in source, manga, chapter, or scanlator names.

Some users have reported using exceptionally buggy operating systems which also have problems with other Unicode characters, such as (but not necessarily limited to) emojis. If you must use Reikai with such an operating system, turn on Disallow non-ASCII filenames in More→Settings→Advanced, which keeps any non-ASCII character out of a filename. Such characters will be replaced with their hexadecimal representations instead. The special characters mentioned above are still replaced with underscores, if present, rather than hexadecimal.

None of the above considerations affect the way series and chapters are displayed in Reikai, which is based on their metadata rather than filenames. Because the local source reads comic metadata files, if present, its functioning is also not affected by filename changes if you convert an external source download directory into a local source directory.

If you change that setting after downloading anything, you may need to do some manual work so Reikai can still find those downloads. Chapter filenames do not need to be changed, as Reikai is able to check multiple options for a chapter filename, and will find the already-downloaded chapters. Manga and source directory names, however, need to be updated manually if they contain non-ASCII characters. Here is an example:

./例 ソース (ALL)/最高のマンガ！/Scanlator Name_始まり_182cce.cbz
./e4be8b20e382bde383bce382b9 (ALL)/e69c80e9ab98e381aee3839ee383b3e382acefbc81/Scanlator Name_e5a78be381bee3828a_182cce.cbz

The inability for a device to handle Unicode characters in filenames is a bug. Please consider contacting your device or operating system vendor to report this, or consider using a standards-compliant device in future, if possible.

A download keeps failing. Is that a bug in Reikai?

Usually not. Reikai's download code is Mihon's, so whether a chapter can actually be fetched is almost always on the source or extension side, not the app. Common cases:

• Blank in the reader too / a Cloudflare error: the source's own server is unreachable. Nothing to do but wait for it to come back, or route it through a Cloudflare bypass proxy if that is the block.
• Won't download until you open a chapter first: some sources only build their page list once you have opened the reader (a session or decrypt step). The downloader asks for the list cold and gets nothing until you have viewed a chapter once.
• Renders in the reader but saves zero pages: the page shows, but the extension's parser returns no pages, so there is nothing to save.

Quick test: try the same source and chapter in Mihon. If it fails there too, it is not specific to Reikai (more likely the source blocking you, or something on your network: ISP, DNS, a VPN or firewall). If it works in Mihon but not Reikai, that one is on me, so open an issue with the exact source, chapter, and steps.