Features
Everything Bookshelf does
Bookshelf is a reading tracker for physical books and audiobooks, free on iPhone, iPad and Android, with no ads. It is built around the idea that a book app should know where you are in a book right now — not just that you are 43% through it.
Here is the whole thing, grouped by what you would actually be trying to do.
Building your library
Getting books in should take seconds, whether you are starting from nothing or arriving with a decade of history somewhere else.
Search across multiple catalogues
Book search runs against several providers at once — including national legal-deposit libraries for editions that English-language databases handle badly — and merges the results, so a book found by title comes back as complete as one found by ISBN.
Scan a barcode
Point the camera at the back of a book and it is in your library. Useful in a bookshop, and the fastest way to log a shelf you already own.
Import from Goodreads or StoryGraph
Both export a CSV, and Bookshelf reads it — shelves, ratings and read dates included. The importer is tested against a 20,000-book export, so a large library is not a problem.
Add anything manually
Self-published, out of print, a proof copy, a book in a language no catalogue covers well — if the databases do not have it, enter it yourself and it behaves like any other book.
Custom shelves and book nooks
Beyond read, reading and to-read, make your own shelves and arrange them how you like. Book nooks group things the way you actually think about them rather than the way a database does.
Tracking what you read
The part most apps treat as a single percentage. This is the reason Bookshelf exists.
Chapter-by-chapter progress
Log where you are by chapter, not just by page or percentage. Picking a book back up after a fortnight stops being guesswork, and 'nearly done' becomes a specific claim.
Reading sessions
Each sitting is recorded with what you read and how far you got, which is what makes the calendar and the statistics meaningful rather than decorative.
A reading calendar you can read
Every reading day fills in on a heatmap carrying the cover of what you were reading. A year of reading becomes one picture. Tap any day to see the session behind it.
Streaks and goals
Set a target for the year — or for a month — and watch it fill in. Streaks are there if that is what motivates you, and easy to ignore if it is not.
Audiobooks count
Audiobooks are tracked as first-class books with their own progress, not bolted on as an afterthought or left out of your totals.
Kobo e-reader sync
A small mod for Kobo devices pushes reading sessions, highlights, ratings and reviews back into Bookshelf automatically, one-way and over HTTPS. Read on the device; the tracking happens by itself.
Quotes and notes
The passages you underline are usually the part you most want back, and usually the part that gets lost.
Scan a passage with OCR
Point the camera at a page and the text is captured — no retyping a paragraph on a phone keyboard. Attach it to the book and the page it came from.
Notes as you go
Jot down a thought against a chapter while it is still fresh, rather than trying to reconstruct what you meant at the end of the book.
A quote a day
One of your saved quotes greets you on your profile each day, which turns a collection you would never scroll back through into something you actually re-read.
Statistics and recaps
Numbers that describe your reading rather than just counting it.
Detailed statistics
Pages read, books finished, average rating, genre breakdowns, pace over time, longest streak. Enough to notice things about your reading you had not noticed yourself.
Monthly recaps
A summary of the month — what you finished, how much you read, what stood out — generated automatically and worth sharing.
Yearly recap
The whole year in one place at the end of it, without having to wait for a platform to decide to make you one.
Making it yours
How the app looks is treated as a feature rather than something to apologise for.
14+ themes
Properly designed themes, not a dark-mode toggle. The whole app changes with them, including the widgets on your home screen.
A profile you arrange
Choose up to five cards and order them, so what you show other readers is what you care about — current reads, stats, a quote, your shelves.
Home-screen widgets
Native widgets on both iOS and Android: your shelf, a quote, reading goal, current progress, streak and a reading timer. Resizable, and they follow your theme.
Coming from somewhere else?
Bookshelf imports a Goodreads or StoryGraph CSV export, shelves and ratings included.
Reading with other people
Optional, and off to the side rather than the whole point of the app.
Friend shelves
See what people you follow are reading and what they have finished, without a feed algorithm deciding what you see.
Ratings and reviews
Rate and review what you read, on your own profile, for the people who actually follow you.
No ads, ever
Bookshelf is free to download and use and carries no advertising. An optional premium subscription unlocks extras; the tracker itself is not the product being sold.