Frequently asked questions

Mybrary is a private book tracker for your phone. You build a personal library, track your reading progress, organize books into collections, and keep stats on what you've read—all stored on your own device.

Mybrary is built around ownership and privacy. No account, no social feed, no ads, and no data collection. Your library lives on your device, and you decide when and how to back it up.

No. There's no sign-up, no login, and no email required. You open the app and start adding books.

Mostly. Managing your library, tracking progress, organizing collections, and viewing your stats all work completely offline. You only need an internet connection when you're searching for a book, scanning a barcode, fetching cover art, or loading recommendations—because those pull from online resources.

Three ways: scan its barcode, search by title or author, or enter the details manually. Scanning and searching pull the cover and other info automatically; manual entry lets you add anything, including books that aren't in any database.

Yes. Every field—title, author, ISBN, cover, genre, page count, format, narrator, and more—can be edited at any time from the book's detail screen.

You can add one manually, when the book is found through the database, or use Fetch Missing Covers in Settings, which scans your library for books missing artwork and tries to find covers for them in one pass. You also have the option to add a book cover during the manual add feature.

Point your camera at the barcode on the back of a book. That barcode is the book's ISBN, so Mybrary reads it and searches for a match. If it finds one, the title, author, cover, and other details fill in automatically.

The ISBN still gets filled in for you—you just add the title, author, and any other details yourself. You can also switch to a title search instead.

Yes, scanning needs camera access, and you'll be asked the first time you try it. If you decline, you can still add books by search or manual entry. You can re-enable the camera anytime in your phone's settings.

Standard book barcodes—EAN-13, EAN-8, and UPC-A. Nearly every printed book uses one of these. Very old or self-published books without an ISBN won't scan, so you'd add those manually.

Physical books, ebooks, and audiobooks—each with progress tracking that fits: Physical books: track your current page out of the total. Ebooks: track by page or by percentage, whichever you prefer. Audiobooks: track listening time in hours and minutes, and save the narrator.

Want to Read, Currently Reading, Finished, Paused, and Abandoned. Marking a book Finished automatically fills in the finish date and completes its progress.

Yes. Rate books from 1 to 5 stars and write a review or keep private notes on any book.

Yes. Tap the heart on any book to favorite it, then filter your library to favorites only when you want to find them fast.

Collections are custom groups you create and name yourself—"Book Club," "TBR," "Sci-Fi," "Did Not Finish," whatever fits. A book can belong to more than one collection.

Sort by date added, title, author, rating, or date finished. Filter by reading status, genre, author, format, favorites, or the month you finished a book. You can also switch between a grid and a list view.

Yes. Switch between light and dark appearance in Settings.

Mybrary looks at the books you've rated highly and the genres you read most, then finds similar titles. If it doesn't have enough to go on yet, it fills in with popular books similar to those in your library.

Recommendations get better as you add and rate books. If your library is small or unrated, there isn't enough signal yet—add a few books and rate the ones you've read.

It opens the Add Book screen pre-filled with that book's details, so you can add it to your library in a tap or two.

Total books, books finished, books finished this year, how many you're currently reading, favorites, average rating, total pages read, and total minutes listened.

Set an annual goal—say, 40 books—and Mybrary shows your progress toward it through the year. It's there for motivation, not pressure.

From Settings, tap Create Backup to save a snapshot of your library on your device. You can view your Backup History and restore any snapshot, which replaces your current library with that backup. Mybrary keeps your most recent backups automatically and you can set the limit to 5, 10, or 20.

On your device, in the app's own storage. They're local snapshots—not uploaded anywhere.

Export to JSON (keeps everything: ratings, reviews, dates, collections, progress) or CSV (a simple spreadsheet format). You can then save or share the file however you like.

Yes. Export your library from Goodreads or any other app as a CSV and import it into Mybrary. Mybrary has built-in recognition for Goodreads-style columns and shelves, so your read / currently-reading / want-to-read statuses carry over automatically. For other apps, as long as the CSV has at least a Title and Author column, Mybrary will handle the rest.

Export your spreadsheet as a CSV file and import it into Mybrary from Settings. The columns don't need to be in any specific order—Mybrary reads the column headers and maps them automatically. At minimum you need a Title and Author column, though ISBN is also recommended (for ease of fetching covers later). If your spreadsheet also has columns for ISBN, format, page count, narrator, genre, rating, review, status, or start/finish dates, Mybrary will pick those up too. The more information you provide, the better. Imported books are merged into your existing library rather than overwriting it.

No. Importing brings in a one-time snapshot. After that, Mybrary and the other app are independent—there's no ongoing sync.

Entirely on your device. There are no Mybrary accounts and no Mybrary servers holding your library.

No. There's no analytics, no ad tracking, and no usage reporting. Your reading history is yours alone.

Just two, and only when needed: the camera for scanning barcodes, and file access for importing and exporting your library. You can decline either and still use the rest of the app.

It's removed with the app. Export your library (or create a backup file you've saved elsewhere) before uninstalling or switching phones so you can import it again later.

Export to JSON on your old phone, transfer the file to your new phone however you like, then import it in Mybrary.

Mybrary is designed around privacy and ownership. Cloud sync would require accounts and servers. Instead, Mybrary gives you full control through local backups, exports, and imports.