Book Tracker: TBR bookshelf Reviews

Update to four stars, hoping to go to 5! Developer responds quickly and fixed the slow import problem and the last name sort problem. I continue to wish for the ability to do bulk tagging, but the developer moves so quickly I have hopes that he will add this ability soon.

I wanted a database with a tagging system into which I could import my large (over 4,000 volumes) collection of books from a CSV file generated by Goodreads. To the good, Book Track can import the Goodreads CSV information, has both a Mac and an iOS version, and supports tags. Unfortunately, it is very slow importing the CSV (so flow, it failed in iOS and took hours on my Mac), is slow adding tags (a noticeable delay for each tag), and does not support tagging multiple entries at one time. And, a deal breaker, does not for some odd reason use Goodread’s Last Name, First name column from the CSV file, and so alphabetizes the collection by first name. I'm reluctantly going back to Excel to handle my collection, despite having to give up on multiple tags for each book.

I really enjoy BookTracker! And on day one already recommending it to a friend 🙂 It helps me keep track of books I already own. Which makes shopping in the stores easier for me lol. However, I spent the whole night scanning all the books I have (which convinced me to buy the pro version) and started marking which books I finished, gave them ratings, added a bunch of tags, and even wrote comments to myself. However, I’m noticing that after I finishing the rating I’ll go back to the library section and see the ratings just fine. And then I’ll do the next book rating & then when I go back to the library the ratings I completed are gone. I’ve redone the ratings on books a couple of times already and it keep disappearing. It’s very annoying. There’s no update pending on BookTracker so I’m guessing there’s a flaw somewhere on the developer’s side. Hopefully it gets fixed soon! —-oh and just a recommendation that could be fun…if we had the option to invite ppl to see our library/ratings.

I really like BookTracker! I love how I can sort my books by series and the statistics page is really helpful! However, I do have a few things I don’t like about it. I would like to have the option to list authors by their first name instead of last name. Also when you add a photo to a book it would be easier if the photo automatically resized to the necessary size instead of having me manually do it. It wasn’t easy to align and I think I cropped out part of the photo. Also, editing the book summary was difficult. It kept automatically taking me to the end of the summary even though I wanted to edit the beginning. Eventually I just deleted the whole thing and rewrote it. I still really like BookTracker though and I hope these problems can be fixed!

I could easily add all the books in the library by scanning the barcode. It uses Google book library to search books so it was able to find the most of the books I have. Some very old books and non-English books were not found which was expected. It is easy to add the book by searching it as well.
I like the fact that you can keep books in the Libra dictionary on your wish list in separate lists.
Adding covers manually is also easy.
Overall interface is very easy to use.
This is an excellent alternative to goodreads for tracking the books.

I have BookTracker to keep track of my child’s (age 9) books. It’s been useful for them to see how many they’ve read, the topic overlap, etc.
—> While I love the ease of sign-in, I can only see their library on their iPad. I would love an option so I can have their account on my device (iPhone) as well, so when we visit the library or a bookstore, I can know what they have and what’s on their wishlist to make better decisions. Is there a way to add a sign-on via a different account so their iPad generated list can appear on other devices? Thanks!

I’ve been on the hunt for a good book tracking app since giving up on the nonsense that is Goodreads. This one is quite close to perfect. I would like the way to add a persistent, custom sort to books in a series. If there is one, I haven’t found it. This way I could add a bunch of books in a series and their reading order, so when I finish up one book I have a quick reference to which book comes next.

Another, less crucial feature I’d like to see - a way to manually type in the current page number and/or percentage read. The +/- buttons are cute but not practical, especially for very lengthy books.

I love BookTracker because of its simplicity. EVERY feature is useful for me. I never waste time diddling with the functions, unlike other reading apps (which are just way too complicated and aggravating). Also, I love that nearly all the services are customizable! I can open BookTracker without wasting time, and I really like the user-friendly design. Goodreads and other reading apps are just too complicated—they are like reading social media accounts.

Rebecca

I’ve been using this for about a year and I like it. The developer is very responsive. I like the iOS Shortcut actions already provided and would like to see more. I appreciate that it doesn’t collect user info. I recommend it to my friends and family.

If the shortcut actions were improved a bit I would say 5 stars. Like, make the book selection action work similarly to how the Find Calendar Event action works, where I could select a book through Shortcuts based on the reading status or other characteristics. This would make it more convenient to update the reading progress.

I’ll preface this review by saying BookTracker does everything it advertises and I mostly wanted this to keep track of my physical library of books,tagging which I could borrow to friends and which are stuck on my kindle.
Tags were a nice solution to distinguish which were ebooks and which I could loan out. (I also tend to forget if they were from a Scribd subscription or the local library so that helped facilitate that need as well)

I love that I can update my reading progress without spamming all my friends on goodreads. I don’t even use a bookmark anymore bc I have the page on BookTracker and the instant gratification of progress shown at my finger tips.

I’m hopeful BookTracker will continue to get patches and maybe get an update for an Apple Watch feature where I can update the page number on my currently reading.

Love this as a great way to organize and catalog books on IOS and MacOS. The labeling system is fantastic and the new quote widget is my favorite!

Would love to see a large version of the quote widget and the ability to set it to change quotes from a collection of books.

Would also love to be able to tap and fill in the completion rate instead of using the + and - signs. All and all just a really fantastic app. Can’t wait to see where it goes next!

This is an amazing app. It does one thing, and it does it well. The interface is clean and simple.

I spent a while looking for an application to keep a catalog of my books and this one was the right fit. I didn’t have to add most of my books manually thanks to its scan barcode functionality. I get to organize them in series and keep my reading progress too.

All around, wonderful application.

There are a lot of really great aspects of BookTracker, but one the most frustrating aspects is that it sometimes fails to save my personal comments (the main reason for using BookTracker is to remember if I liked the author or series in the past). Since last week’s update it fails 90% of the time to save anything other adding it to my library. Because I read several books a week, It is too tedious or I can’t remember the books clearly, if I get behind.

I love BookTracker. I’ve tried many other book tracking apps, and this one is the best. If you’re looking for an easy way to track your books/reading on all your Apple devices, this is BookTracker .

One suggestion: allow users to hide the Loaned Out area in the navigation menu. For instance, I read all my books on a Kindle. I never loan my books out to people. I would love to be able to just hide that option.

Thanks for creating such an awesome book tracking app!

This is seriously the best designed book tracking app I’ve used. It already has basically everything I’m looking for in a book tracker in an great looking package! Even better, the developer seems committed to updating BookTracker with new features, and was responsive to feedback that I emailed him.

Looking forward to seeing BookTracker grow in both user base and features moving forward!

Awesome app and allows me to keep track of the books I'm reading or have read. One suggestion would be to be able to import my list of books from calibre. I am able to export a catalog of all my ebooks from calibre in csv format if we could read that somehow and add all the books would be amazing.

Was looking for a good book management app and tried a few and liked this one enough to go ahead and pay for it after I seemed to hit a paywall. I have hundreds of books and decided to start with my book club section. I created a tag for my book club books so that I can easily sort them but the tag will not stay on at least half of them which is really frustrating. Hopefully this will be corrected in an update but until then it’s a three star for me.

This is such a nice app. Simple to use. Visually appealing. Plus it is everything I want as an avid book collector. My one question for the developer is— will the option to sort books by author ever be available? I am using this to sort and manage all my books on my bookshelves; with the hopes of an easy sort by authors last name. However, 20 books in I realized I didn’t have the option to sort by author! Otherwise, solid app!

I love BookTracker and it’s on one of my most used apps. As I have a nice personal library and it’s a nice to keep my books categorized. I do own books that are first editions that cannot be found using the search online feature. There has to another method of finding these book types through BookTracker . If this tiny feature gets better at searching BookTracker will be phenomenal.

I like the graphical interface but wish the Import from Goodreads worked better. Even though it is in the Goodreads csv file, BookTracker did not import my “shelves” in any way. So now I’ve got a project on my hands if I want to recreate that. Same with “date read” - it’s not there and if I go to update the book from the Internet, it adds today’s date as the read date.

I get the issue with book images and don’t mind that so much.

Been using it for over a year and I couldn’t live without it. App is well-designed, privacy-protecting (unlike Goodreads, agh!), and has all the features I need. Developer is responsive and has frequent updates and improvements to BookTracker . Highly recommended!

BookTracker is perfect to keep track of your book library. It just works.
The developer listen to feedback and it’s getting better with time.

Go ahead and get it you will not waste your money.

This needs to be login based in addition to the automatic iCloud syncing. This way, you could have a library shared by a family, in which different people share the same books, but also have their own personal books. This will also allow for the same library on different devices with different Apple IDs.

BookTracker is almost exactly what I have been dreaming of for years. It has Apple’s Design language. It is fast. It now allows for recording quotes and the loaning option is fantastic.

There are just a couple things I would want to see and then it would be the perfect book app:

1. Track progress (more than just start and end date). I would love to see how my progress is on the book when entering the pages I have read each day.
2. When recording a quote I would love the ability to add the page number of said quote.

BookTracker is fantastic and I hope to see it become even better.

I love BookTracker. It’s modern looking, cleanly designed and easy to use. Lots of options. Easy scanning. I use it at book stores to prevent buying books I already have.