Your home library
Ex Libris
Keep track of every book in your home.
Scan a whole shelf of barcodes in one go and Ex Libris fills in each edition from Hardcover's catalogue. Note who borrowed what, rate what you've read, and see your library in charts. Built with SwiftUI, with your library kept on your iPhone.
Coming soon to the App Store
Your whole library, in your pocket
Ex Libris keeps track of the books you own, where they came from, who has them and what you thought of them.
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Scan a whole shelf
Work along a shelf as fast as the camera reads barcodes. Scans are looked up twenty at a time, so the camera never waits on the network, and books already in your library are spotted as duplicates.
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The right edition
Each barcode is matched to its edition in Hardcover's catalogue, with its title, authors, cover, publisher, pages, year and genres, and its format when Hardcover knows it. No barcode? Search by title or author.
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Nothing lost on the way
A barcode that can't be matched is kept with a small photo of the book and room for a note, so after a long shelf you can still tell which one it was. Search for it later, or fill in the details yourself.
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Who has it
Note each copy's format, when and where you got it, who you've lent it to, and anything else worth remembering.
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Reading and rating
Mark books as owned, reading, read or did not finish, rate them out of five, and note when you finished. Swipe a book in your library to mark it read or rate it.
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Summaries written on your iPhone
Apple Intelligence condenses a book's description into a couple of sentences, on your iPhone. When there's no description to go on, the summary is labelled as an AI note, so a guess never passes for the publisher's words.
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Your library in charts
Books, pages and pages read, ratings, formats, genres, decades, top authors and publishers, and the books you add and finish each month. Tap a bar to see the books behind it.
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Easy to browse
Search your library, and sort it by title, author, when you added it or when it was published.
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Two themes
Pastel, or Black & White with pure black for OLED screens. Both follow your iPhone's light and dark setting.
Made for iPhone
Ex Libris is built with Apple's own frameworks, so it works like the rest of your iPhone.
- SwiftUI and SwiftData
- Apple's New York serif throughout
- Text that follows your text size
- Light and dark mode
- Barcode scanning built into iOS
- Charts drawn with Swift Charts
- Summaries by Apple Intelligence, on device
- Your token kept in the iOS keychain
- Book details saved for use offline
Your library stays on your iPhone
Ex Libris keeps your books, notes and ratings on your iPhone. There's no LittleFoundry account, no analytics and no tracking. To look books up, it sends the barcodes you scan and the searches you make to Hardcover with your own API token, which is kept in the iOS keychain. Summaries are written on your iPhone.
Get Ex Libris
Ex Libris is coming soon to the App Store. Updates install automatically.
Installing
- Get Ex Libris from the App Store.
- Add your Hardcover API token. For now, Ex Libris looks books up with a token from your own Hardcover account. Sign in at hardcover.app/account/api, choose New API Key, and paste it into Settings in Ex Libris.
- Scan your first shelf. In the Add tab, tap Scan Barcode and point the camera at a book's barcode. Or search by title or author.
Requirements
- iPhone
- iOS 27 or later
- Book details
- A Hardcover account and API token, for now
- Summaries
- Apple Intelligence, on an iPhone that supports it (optional)
Questions
Why do I need a Hardcover token?
Ex Libris gets its book details, such as covers, authors and genres, from Hardcover's catalogue. Until it can sign in to Hardcover for you, it uses an API token you create in your own Hardcover account. Settings → Remove Token deletes it from your iPhone.
Is Ex Libris made by Hardcover?
No. Ex Libris uses Hardcover's API for book details, but it's made by LittleFoundry and isn't affiliated with Hardcover.
What happens when a book isn't found?
Ex Libris keeps the barcode, with a photo of the book, in a Not Found list you can open from the Add tab. From there you can search for it by title or author, or enter it by hand.
Will scanning use up my Hardcover requests?
Hardcover limits how many requests a token can make each day. Ex Libris looks up twenty barcodes in each request, and pauses a long scan before your daily allowance runs low, so some are left for searching. The scanner and Settings show how many are left today.
Do summaries need the internet?
No. They're written by Apple Intelligence on your iPhone the first time you open a book, and kept with it. They need an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence, with it turned on.
Can I use Ex Libris on more than one device?
Your library is kept on the iPhone you use it on, and doesn't sync between devices.