Living Shelf

Photograph your shelves once, then find any book in seconds - by title, author, or the exact shelf it sits on. Works offline. No account, no ads, no tracking.

Find the book you want, right where you left it.

WHAT IT COSTS Living Shelf includes five shelf scans every month at no charge. Your library, search, shelf maps, importing a book list, and adding books by hand are never limited.

For unlimited scanning there is a monthly option, a yearly option, and a one-time lifetime purchase. Prices are shown in the app. Monthly and yearly options renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the period ends, and can be managed in Settings, Apple Account, Subscriptions. The lifetime option is a single payment that never renews. Living Shelf turns a photograph of your bookshelves into a library you can actually search, so a title never disappears into a wall of spines again.

PHOTOGRAPH YOUR SHELVES Point your camera at a shelf. Living Shelf reads the spines and builds your library from what it sees. Clear matches are saved for you. Anything uncertain waits under Needs checking, so nothing is guessed into your collection.

MAP YOUR ROOM Map a whole bookcase, divide it into sections, and mark each shelf. If the photograph is taken at an angle, drag the grid corners to match it, then adjust rows and columns one line at a time. Shelves can be removed or restored individually, so bookcases with uneven columns still map correctly.

FIND ANYTHING Search by title, author, bookcase, or shelf. Locate opens your library map, shows the shelf a book belongs to, and takes you to the photograph of that shelf.

SEE WHAT CHANGED Rescan a shelf and compare it against what you had before. Highlighted areas show you what to look at. They are a prompt to check, not proof that a book has gone missing.

WORKS OFFLINE Reading spines happens entirely on your device. Online lookup adds catalog details and cover art, and you can switch it off completely in Settings.

SHARE A LIBRARY Sync through your own iCloud account, and share a library with family or housemates. You can stop sharing at any time.

PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account. No analytics. No advertising. Your library and your photographs stay on your device and in your own iCloud.

Requires iOS 17 or later. Designed for iPhone and iPad.

Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/