Download thing, open thing in vlc or music bee. People make complicated systems to automate this stuff but I don’t consume enough new media to make doing all of that worth it. Neither do I need my media remotely accessible, if I’m out doing something then I am busy and don’t need to be watching a movie or whatever. If I know the boredom situation is dire then I will bring my psp or a book with me. I’d rather consume media in my sort of nice audio and game setups than anywhere else anyways.

Music bee is like itunes from 10 years ago but without drm. I leave qbit and soulseek open cos sharing is caring

There isn’t much more you can do to streamline that workflow for ebooks, though the default Calibre library filesystem of subfolders by author makes it frustrating if your library is large and the books author is towards the end of the alphabet.

My new workflow (which is my old workflow but it’s been broken since Calibre companion was bought by some asshole) is use syncthing to sync your calibre autoimport folder, then use the Calibre reading list plugin to upload it to your device next time it connects.

For my reading app I use KOreader, it will allow you to connect to Calibre as a wireless device and let you browse your OPDS server if you have it enabled. Also it’s available on basically anything.

I eventually intend to host my Calibre library on my server and run it through a reverse proxy so I don’t have to worry about being connected to my home network for updated, but that’s a bit further down the road lol.