Build a reading tracker app for books, pages and a yearly reading goal

The shelves and the book record

Most readers think in three shelves: want to read, reading, finished. A fourth, abandoned, is worth adding; people like to record that they stopped, and it keeps the finished count honest.

Each book needs only a few fields to be useful: title, author, total pages (or hours for audiobooks), format, the date started and finished, and an optional short note. A rating is optional too; some readers prefer a one-line verdict to a score. Because cover images can't be fetched from the web, the app can draw a simple generated cover for each book from its title and a colour, which looks better on a shelf than empty boxes.

Logging progress without friction

• Update by page number, not by pages read, since that's what's in front of you. The app works out the difference.
• Percentage for e-readers, which often show progress that way.
• A daily log built from those updates: pages per day, and a calendar of reading days.
• Several books at once, each with its own progress bar on the Reading shelf.

Updating should take two taps from the home screen: pick the book, type the page. Everything else (the daily log, the averages, the finish-date estimate) follows from those entries.

Goals and challenges

A yearly goal in books is the classic, but pages or hours are fairer to people reading long novels. Show progress against a pace line: "14 of 30 books, 2 ahead of schedule". A reading challenge tracker adds categories to tick off, such as a book in translation, a book over 500 pages, a book by a local author, which you can define in the request.

For a school or library running a summer challenge, the categories and reading lists can come from CMS collections the organisers edit in the Anticode dashboard; the app shows them read-only and each child's progress stays on their own device. A printable reading log page, with a line for a parent's initials, covers schools that still want something on paper.

Describing it to Anticode

"A personal book tracker app. Shelves: want to read, reading, finished, abandoned. Add a book by typing title, author, pages or audiobook hours, format. Generated covers from title and colour. Update progress by page number or percentage. Calendar of reading days, pages per day, estimated finish date per book. Yearly goal in books or pages with a pace line, and a 12-category reading challenge. Saves on this device, export to CSV. Editorial design, warm paper tones."

Related builds: the habit tracker for a daily reading habit, the collection tracker if your shelf is more about owning books, and an author website if you're on the other side of the page.

What it can't do

• No book search or barcode scanning. There's no network to query a book database and no camera access. Titles, authors and page counts are typed in.
• No real covers. Outside images can't be loaded; covers are drawn in code.
• No friends or reviews feed. Nothing is shared between people, so there's no social side.
• No import from other services by connection. If another service lets you export a CSV, you can ask for a CSV import, and the books then live on this device.
• One device. The shelf on your phone isn't on your tablet. Export a file to move or back it up.

Questions people ask

Can a reading tracker app handle audiobooks?

Yes. Ask for hours and minutes as an alternative to pages, and for goals in either unit.

Can a class use it for a shared reading challenge?

Each child can use it on their own device with the same categories, but there's no class leaderboard or teacher view, because nothing is shared.

Can it show statistics at the end of the year?

Yes. Ask for a year-in-review screen: books and pages finished, the longest book, the busiest month, and the split by format or genre if you record genre. It's all worked out from your own entries on the device.

Will my reading log be lost if I change phone?

Yes, unless you export it first and import it on the new phone. Ask for a clear export button.