Book Nook: a reading tracker with a shelf you decorate

What it is

Book Nook is a reading tracker for iPhone. You add the books you own or want to read, time your reading sessions, and the app turns that into stats, streaks and a monthly summary. It is free, with no ads, no subscription and no paywall. It has been on the App Store since April 2025 and runs on iOS 17 and later.

The feature that makes it different is the shelf. Every book you add lands on a bookshelf you arrange yourself. You pick a theme or build your own, add a candle or a plant, and move books around. There is a plain list view when you want one, but the shelf is the home screen, and it is the reason people open the app when they are not reading.

Adding a book

Most reading apps make this step slow. Book Nook gives four ways in:

• Scan the barcode on the back cover.
• Search by title, author or ISBN.
• Pick from the current New York Times bestseller lists.
• Type it in by hand when the catalogue does not have it.

A book that comes from a scan or a search arrives with its cover, author and page count already filled in. The manual path exists for library sale finds and small-press books that no catalogue knows about.

The reading timer

You start a session from any book and log your pages when you stop. The timer runs as a Live Activity, so it stays on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island after you leave the app. That matters for a reading app specifically. People read with the phone face down, and a timer that only exists inside the app is a timer nobody looks at.

Each session counts toward a daily goal and a streak. Stats shows reading time, pages and streak for the week, month or year, with a per-day chart.

Reading Wrapped

At the end of each month, and again at the end of the year, Book Nook turns the books you finished into a shareable summary: books, hours, pages, days with reading, top genre, top author, biggest day, average rating. It is the same idea as the music streaming year-in-review, applied to reading, and it is the part of the app people post.

Reading with other people

You can set a goal for the year, join a reading challenge, or start a book club around one book. You can follow other readers and see what they start and finish. Your library syncs to every device you sign in on.

Why native

Book Nook is a native SwiftUI app, and three of its core features only work that way:

• The barcode scanner needs the camera pipeline.
• The Live Activity timer needs ActivityKit and the Dynamic Island.
• Shortcuts and Siri support need App Intents.

A web wrapper could show a bookshelf. It could not keep a timer on the Lock Screen.

Book Nook is on the App Store, and the website is at trybooknook.com. It is one of five apps I ship under White Marble LLC, alongside Grainy, Wanderlist, DialAnyone and Citrus Mobile.