The Goobi viewer supports the source formats METS/MODS, LIDO and TEI for the metadata. The Plaintext, ALTO, ABBYY-XML and TEI formats are supported for searching and displaying full texts. Images must be imported in TIFF, JPEG, PNG and JPEG2000 formats for processing and displaying. The required sizes or sections for the dynamic image display are automatically calculated live, generated and delivered accordingly.

If the user clicks on the corresponding function, PDF files are generated live with an optional upstream title page for individual pages, structural elements or complete works. If available, the full text can also be stored within the PDF file.

The Goobi viewer provides a IIIF Image API for sustainable image display. In addition, IIIF Presentation manifests can also be called up, regardless of the source format of the metadata. The IIIF Change Discovery API, which is also included, provides information about changes to the database, while comments on images are also available as Open Annotation or Web Annotation in the IIIF Manifest.

The OAI interface of the Goobi viewer currently supports the formats METS/MODS, MARCXML, DublinCore, LIDO, TEI, CMDI, ESE and xepicur. The SRU interface delivers MARCXML to plants that originate from METS/MODS. Literature management programs can exchange data with the Goobi viewer via the integrated COinS and SRU interfaces and thus use it, for example, to generate quotations and bibliographies.

The search in the database of a Goobi viewer instance can be started using either a simple or an extended search mask. Hits of a work are displayed in aggregated form, with very flexible faceting within hit lists. The metadata fields used for this, as well as for the extended search mask, are freely configurable.

In addition to the search forms, the user interface provides various other accesses to the content. Works and objects can be presented within hierarchical digital collections. A calendar view, on the other hand, allows access to newspapers and other works for which complete dates are available. The configurable timeline, on the other hand, allows the display of a random number of works from a period selected by the user. The access by document type or material type again allows a different view of the available dataset.

Access to works and objects for which an access license has been defined within the metadata can be granularly restricted using different permission levels. For example, the display of metadata can be made accessible worldwide, the images, however, only to a certain user group or for visitors from a configured IP address range. The PDF download and a fully automatic moving wall can also be individually configured.

Local user accounts, OpenID (Google / Facebook), VuFind, LITTERA web.OPAC and Aleph X services are available for user authentication. After registration, users have the option of saving their own search queries and being notified by e-mail of new hits to the saved search queries. Images can also be commented on and works from the entire database can be transferred to your own watch lists.

Various views are available for displaying objects. In addition to thumbnail displays, metadata displays, full screen display, read view, full text display, 3D object display, audio and video playback, many other highly configurable views are available. Standard data on persons and corporations are natively supported from GND and VIAF, and named entities within ALTO files are prepared for visual research.