The great thing about books? You can never get enough of them. But if you find your book collection becoming unmanageable, there are plenty of home library apps to help you get it under control. Take stock of the tomes on your increasingly crowded shelves with these eight top-rated cataloging home library apps for iPhone and Android. Then you can carry your personal library right in your pocket for easy reference.
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1. Goodreads
Like many avid readers, I use Goodreads to keep track of my TBR and read negative reviews of books I love to make myself angry for fun. But there’s a lesser-known barcode scanner feature that lets you add books directly to lists without having to search for them. This is a great way to keep tabs on what you’ve already read vs. what you hope to read in the future. And, it’s free! https://renewprofiles549.weebly.com/how-to-get-rid-of-pronto-app-on-mac.html.
Available for iOS and Android.
2. Libib
Finally, an app for amateur librarians (we’re out there, I promise). Libib offers both paid and unpaid plans. The free option lets you scan and organize up to 5,000 books—plus movies, video games, and albums—while the pro plan has space for up to 100,000. Both versions of the app give users access to tons of additional features.
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3. Delicious Library 3
Statistics nerds will fall for this app’s chart feature. It breaks down everything from the retail value of your book collection to the amount of pages currently on your shelves. Delicious Library also makes recommendations based on how you rate books you’ve read, so you always have inspo for your TBR.
Available for iOS and Android.
4. Reco
While not a cataloguing app in the traditional sense, Reco lets you keep track of recommendations from friends, and dole them out too. Think of it as your cheat sheet for when you can’t remember what books you wanted to read while you’re browsing at Barnes and Noble.
Available for iOS.
5. Library Thing
Library Thing is similar to Goodreads, but with a stronger focus on the cataloging aspect. Part social media platform, part library-style catalog, the app sources book info from more than 4,967 libraries worldwide (plus Amazon). There’s even a feature that tracks titles you’ve lent out to friends. If you’re generous enough to let any of your books out of sight, that is.
Available for iOS and Android.
6. Book Catalogue
This app takes more of a bare-bones approach. It allows users to input titles manually or search by IBSN or barcode and sort using a variety of metrics including author name. It’s free and has a 4.4 rating on the Google Play store.
Available for Android.
7. Gerty
Gerty is for readers who really miss taking literature classes in college. While primarily an ereader, it allows you to organize both physical books and ebooks on shelves. Note-taking and journaling features let you annotate your reading experience in myriad fun, interactive ways.
Available for iOS.
8. Book Crawler
This is another stellar cataloguing app that helps you compile an easily searchable list of books you own, It connects with Goodreads so you can check out reviews of titles you haven’t read yet or see how your opinions on books differ from that of your friends.
Available for iOS.
What are your favorite home library apps?
For the last few decades, reading printed books has been on the decline year to year. Some part of the change can perhaps be attributed to the rise in other forms of entertainment (e.g. Netflix and iTunes), but mostly it’s just been all of us collectively deciding to switch to a variety of book reading apps.
In 2011, Amazon announced that they were selling more electronic books than physical ones through their Kindle platform, which was available on all Kindle devices, as well as smartphones, tablets, and personal computers. Apple with the iBooks ePub reader for Mac, iPad, and iPhone was not too far behind. The rest of the apps for reading books were generally created by smaller third-party startups.
The first, and easiest, way to send files is to use e-mail. This will probably work for the. How to copy apps from one mac to another. Some apps maintain their preferences in an easily accessible configuration text files which can be copied over. The previous approach may still involve a lot of work and may not be desirable. A simpler approach would be using macOS Migration Assistant. This feature lets you easily transfer settings, apps and data from one Mac to another. Then connect the two computers using one of the options described above, and open Migration Assistant on your Mac mini. Select “From a Mac, Time Machine backup, or startup disk” when asked how you want to transfer your information, click Continue, then select the disk you want to transfer information from. Mac apps are great in the sense that they are mostly portable—all you need to migrate an app is drag it from one computer to the other (with a few exceptions: bigger apps like Final Cut or Adobe. Cloud based file transfer is the second method to transfer data from Mac to Windows, on our list. For this, you’ll need an internet connect on both the computers and a common cloud based storage location, like One Drive, DropBox or Right Backup.
While reading on dedicated devices, such as Kindle, Nook, or Kobo, now takes the top spot, with smartphones and tablets coming in second, reading books on Mac also has its own benefits, which have long been overlooked. Let’s see how and why you should read more on your Mac.
What Are The Best Book Apps For Mac
Reading on your Mac has a few advantages over specialized readers or your smartphone. First of all, you have enough screen real estate to easily process a book of any kind, especially if it involves illustrations and graphs, which you can enlarge and modify as needed.
Second, reading on Mac doesn’t lock you into a specific format, such as .mobi, .epub, or PDF. If you’ve been wondering how to read book online, it’s practically only possible on Mac.
Third, as you read on your Mac, taking notes and annotation becomes so much easier. Reading could be a truly educational experience, which in turn could elevate the quality of your reading material.
Luckily, all the best book apps are available on Mac for less than the price of a single magazine. Most popular app examples include Kindle, iBooks, and MarginNote.
Is Kindle reader for Mac a good choice?
The most widely used reader for Mac is the Kindle app from Amazon. Undoubtedly, its best feature is the access to millions of Kindle-compatible books in the .mobi format. Besides, Kindle for Mac boasts an adjustable interface, where you can change your preferences as to fonts, line-spacing, and background colors.
The drawbacks of using a Kindle reader for Mac is mostly being restricted to .mobi format, available only on Amazon. Plus, the Kindle app doesn’t make it easy to upload your own books that you got somewhere else. For years, the Kindle reader for Mac has been avoiding the idea of bringing hyphenation to the platform, which makes text lines more uniform and easier to read. Although the platform supports hyphenation now, most of its books still don’t.
You can try and download Kindle for Mac on the official Amazon website or in the App Store. Kindle’s main competitor as of now is Apple’s iBooks app. Let’s see how they differ.
Why use iBooks for Mac?
Without a doubt, the iBooks app (now called Apple Books) is convenient simply because it already comes pre-installed with your Mac. You can use it to buy any book in the Apple Book Store, which carries nearly all the popular titles.
Unlike Kindle, Apple Books is the best ePub reader available on the market, although it also does support other formats, most notably PDF. You also have more adjustment options, particularly, hyphenation works much better in the iBooks app than it does on Kindle.
The latest updates to iBooks also included the support for audiobooks, which has expanded a straightforward book reader app into a full entertainment and education experience available at any time, whether you’re driving or relaxing at home.
How to read with MarginNote
The third popular book reader app is MarginNote. While it supports ePub and PDF just like iBooks, its unique features lie in advanced annotations, mind-mapping, and flashcards that allow you to better absorb all the reading material.
Annotations let you highlight text and make quick notes on the margins, whether to explain certain concepts or to save ideas for later use.
To make an annotation with MarginNote:
- Simply highlight the text by clicking and dragging your cursor
- Choose one of the available options: either make a note, add a tag, highlight with a certain color, or look up the sentence online
- If you’ve selected to make a note, use all the tools in the pop-up window and click on the icon in the top right when you’re done
To use the app to include an excerpt of text in a mind map:
- Choose one of the available excerpt tools from the top bar
- Highlight the part of the text you’re interested in
- Click Add to MindMap
To make a flashcard in MarginNote:
- Highlight the text as before
- Click on the share icon in the top bar
- Select Add to Card Deck
Finally, you can export all your notes into Evernote, Anki flashcards, iThoughts mind-mapping, or print.
MarginNote is an indispensable ePub reader for Mac if you’re a student, professional researcher, lawyer, or just like to read challenging books that need some breaking down for better retention.
Make reading experience more focused
Book Scanner App Mac Free
In the end, no matter which app you choose for reading, you should hope for a good, distraction-free reading experience, where you can focus on one thing at a time.
HazeOver is a lightweight Mac utility that allows you to automatically dim everything on your screen but the currently active app. It lives in the background but is always available in your menu bar in case you need to adjust some preferences, such as the level of dimming.
Used Book Scanner App
So when thinking about the best book reader app for your Mac, lean towards Kindle only if you already have a large library of .mobi books. Otherwise, choose the iBooks app for lighter reading materials and MarginNote when you really need to dive into something worth contemplating. Accompany all of these apps with HazeOver to improve your reading experience and minimize any distractions.
Best of all, you can try MarginNote and HazeOver for free via Setapp, a platform of more than 150 Mac utilities that bring solutions to any app-related problems. What’s next on your bookshelf?
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