Shelves & Reading State
Shelves
Shelves are named collections you create to organise your books. Each shelf belongs to a library — the shelf pills shown at the top of the book grid are those that belong to the currently active library. There are two types of shelf:
Manual Shelves
Manual shelves contain exactly the books you add to them.
Creating a shelf: Open Settings > Shelves or use the sidebar to create a new shelf.
Adding books: Drag a book’s cover from the grid onto a shelf pill at the top of the screen.
Removing books: Open the shelf, then remove individual books from the shelf view.
Smart Shelves
Smart shelves are defined by filter rules and update automatically. For example, you can create a smart shelf that contains all books with reading status “Reading”, or all books by a specific author.
Smart shelves recalculate their contents whenever books or reading state change — no manual maintenance needed.
Available filter rules include:
| Rule | Description |
|---|---|
| Reading status | Match by read/reading/unread/etc. |
| Author | Match books by a specific author |
| Series | Match books in a specific series |
| Genre / Tag | Match books with a specific genre or tag |
| Library | Match books that belong to a specific library (admin only) |
The Library rule is only visible in the filter builder for admin accounts. It lets you build cross-library smart collections, such as a shelf that spans books from two different personal libraries.
Reading State
Each user tracks their own reading state per book. Reading status options are:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Unread | Default — book has not been read |
| Reading | Currently reading |
| Paused | Reading paused |
| Rereading | Reading again |
| Read | Finished reading |
| Abandoned | Stopped reading, not planning to finish |
Setting Reading Status
You can set reading status in several ways:
- Book detail page — change the status for a single book
- Bulk select — select multiple books in the grid and set status for all at once
- Kobo sync — reading progress syncs automatically from Kobo devices
Reading state is per-user — each user in a multi-user setup has independent tracking.