Organize Your Library

Where shelves are

• Mac and iPad: in the sidebar, under Library (smart shelves), My Shelves and Tags.
• iPhone: in the Library tab, tap the folder icon at the top left to open Shelves. The icon shows while you’re looking at the whole library.

Smart shelves

These fill themselves:

BookShelves sets the reading status for you: a book counts as reading once you’ve started it and finished when you reach the end. To set it yourself, right-click (Mac) or long-press (iPhone and iPad) a book and choose Reading Status, then Want to Read, Unread, Reading or Finished. Clear Status Override hands it back to BookShelves.

To mark a favorite, choose Add to Favorites in the same menu. In list view on iPhone and iPad you can also swipe a book for these actions.

Your own shelves

Create a shelf

• Mac and iPad: click New Shelf at the bottom of My Shelves.
• iPhone: tap + on the Shelves screen.

Give it a Name, and pick an Icon and a Color if you like. You can have up to 200 shelves.

Shelves inside shelves

A shelf can hold other shelves, one level deep. To create one:

• Mac and iPad: right-click or long-press a shelf and choose Add Sub-shelf.
• Anywhere: choose a Parent Shelf when you create or edit a shelf.

A shelf with sub-shelves shows a disclosure arrow; click it to collapse the group. Drag shelves up and down to reorder them, within their group. On iPhone, tap Edit on the Shelves screen first.

Add books to a shelf

• Right-click or long-press a book, choose Add to Shelf, and tick the shelves. Select several books first to add them all at once.
• Mac: drag books from the library onto a shelf in the sidebar.
• iPad: drag books onto a shelf in the sidebar, or tap Select, choose books, then the folder button.
• Mac: with a shelf selected, books you import go straight onto it.

To take a book off, open the shelf, right-click or long-press the book and choose Remove from the shelf. The book stays in your library.

Edit or delete a shelf

Right-click or long-press the shelf (on iPhone, swipe left on it) and choose Edit or Delete. Deleting a shelf doesn’t delete its books. Its sub-shelves move up to the top level.

Tags

Tags label books across shelves: a book can have many tags, and a tag can span your whole library.

• Tag books: right-click or long-press a book, choose Add Tags, and pick tags or create a New Tag.
• Manage tags: on a Mac, BookShelves > Settings, Tags tab; on iPhone and iPad, Settings > Tags. Here you can create, rename, recolor, reorder, merge and delete tags.
• Pin a tag to show it in the sidebar (Mac and iPad) or on the Shelves screen (iPhone), so you can open it like a shelf.

Tags that came with the book file (its subjects) aren’t listed in the tag manager, but you can search for them.

Search

Use the search field in the toolbar (Mac) or at the top of the library (iPhone and iPad). Search looks at titles, authors, tags, subjects, publisher, ISBN and notes. To search one field only, type a prefix:

title: author: tag: subject: publisher: isbn: notes:

For example, author:austen or tag:holiday.

Sort, filter and change the view

• Sort: the grid follows Settings > General > Sort By (Title, Author, Date Added or Recently Read). In list view on a Mac, click a column header; on iPhone and iPad use Sort By in the … menu, and tap the same option again to reverse the order.
• Filter: by read status or format, from the filter button in the toolbar (Mac) or the … menu (iPhone and iPad). Clear Filters removes them.
• Grid or list: switch with the view button in the toolbar (Mac) or the … menu. Settings > General > Default View sets which one the library opens in.

Select several books

• Mac: ⌘-click or Shift-click. A bar appears with Mark Read, Favorite and Delete, and right-click works on the whole selection.
• iPhone and iPad: tap Select, then the books, or Select All. Use the buttons at the bottom to add them to a shelf, favorite, tag or delete them.