# Kavita v0.8.8 — v0.8.8 - Epub Reader Overhaul, an Annotation System and OIDC!
- Product: Kavita (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/kavita)
- Vendor: Kavita
- Date: 2025-10-20
- Version: v0.8.8
- Original notes: https://github.com/Kareadita/Kavita/releases/tag/v0.8.8
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/kavita/releases/v0.8.8
What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.
Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.
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- **added** — OIDC/SSO integration allowing server admins to configure OpenID Connect authentication alongside or replacing native authentication
- **added** — Custom font support for Epub reader with ability to upload font files or import from Google Fonts
- **added** — Annotation system for Epub reader with highlighting, rich text comments, and five configurable highlight color slots
- **added** — Ability to share annotations with other users on the server with opt-in privacy controls
- **added** — Upvoting functionality for user annotations
- **added** — All Annotations view accessible from user menu to see all highlights and notes across books
- **added** — Annotation export in JSON format
- **added** — Automatic account creation for OIDC users with configured default roles and age restrictions
- **added** — Role syncing option to inherit permissions from identity provider instead of defaults
- **added** — OPDS pagination support
- **added** — Continue From item in OPDS feeds to shortcut to reading progress
- **added** — Progress icons encoded into OPDS titles for better client compatibility
- **added** — Image bookmarking capability in Epub reader
- **changed** — Epub reader UX and codebase completely refreshed after five years
- **fixed** — Text bleeding issue in Epub reader
This is a massive release that Amelia and I have been working on for the past 3 months non-stop. If you recall from the last release notes, I said I wanted to focus on Feature Requests and so we picked up a few of the most popular requests: **OIDC** (170+ upvotes), **Custom fonts for Epub reader** (25+ upvotes), and **Highlight/Annotation system** (40+ upvotes). This is a feature packed release, so buckle up.
###### Epub Reader Refresh
First off, let's start with the new Epub reader. When tackling Annotations, we took the opportunity to refresh the UX and the underlying codebase, since it has been 5 years from when I originally wrote it. While tackling a new UI, I thought to also tackle some long standing, hard to reproduce issues, like text bleeding. Text bleeding ended up eating 3 weeks of pure madness as Amelia and I tried to fix (or just reproduce reliably), until we opened a bug bounty and @privatestefans fixed it. Even with all the pain, we brought some requested features around bookmarking images in the reader as well.
###### Epub Fonts
This has been a constant ask from many users and we finally got it out. From the font management screen, any user can download fonts to use within their books. Either upload a font file or better, copy/paste a Google Fonts url. Fonts can then be assigned to books via reading profiles.
###### OIDC
This release introduces one of our most requested features to date: OpenID Connect (OIDC/SSO) integration. Server admins can now configure OIDC to work alongside or fully replace Kavita’s native authentication system. The setup is designed to be straightforward to get it up and running quickly, while still offering advanced configuration options for those who need more control.
Admins can choose to enable automatic account creation, allowing users to join the server without manual intervention. When active, newly created accounts inherit the configured default roles and age restrictions. For more fine-grained control, role syncing can be enabled—bypassing defaults in favor of permissions defined by the identity provider, so you can manage all user access centrally.
Read all about it on the [wiki](https://wiki.kavitareader.com/guides/admin-settings/open-id-connect/).
###### The Annotation System
Users have been asking for the ability to highlight text and add notes when they read and have expressed a strong need for a software in the self-hosting community to tackle this need. Since the start of the epub reader 5 years ago, I wanted this system (and even solved the implementation), but never had time to tackle it.
The annotation system is currently implemented for the epub reader and it will be for the foreseeable future. It offers a way to highlight any passage of text and to write a comment about that with rich text (bold, underline, lists, images, etc). You can see any annotation within the reader to jump around, you can view from the series page or the new All Annotations view (accessible from the user menu in the top right).
Annotations have an owner, a marker if there are spoilers in the comment, and a highlight slot. There are a fixed 5 highlight slots with predefined colors,
_[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://github.com/Kareadita/Kavita/releases/tag/v0.8.8]_