Margins: Book Tracker

I want to say first and foremost how fun the little extras in this app are; being able to make yourself into a sketched image for your pfp and the random light / den animation at the bottom. The app feels loved. Margins is truly so aesthetically pleasing in general. My favorite part is the fact that you can choose which cover you want to display as part of your read. This is so incredibly important to me (idk why) but I hate when I love a cover and good reads opts for an older more meh cover and it doesn’t feel as complete or tracked. The margins app doesn’t disappoint here! Second favorite part is the vibes section; I find it usually pretty hard to find myself a good book with an equally good cover (I am one of those readers that needs a cute cover not gonna lie) but this one hits the mark. You can type in the vibe you’re going for and it literally generates multiple books with short summaries explaining why it matches that vibe. Amazing actually. I hope the team does even more with Margins! I would love to see some automatic good reads integration (ability to write and read Goodreads) so I don’t have to use both! Also another great feature would be maybe Apple Watch integration for starting and stopping the reading timer.

Have been using this since I almost lost all my data from another book tracking app. I honestly really like it (feels less productivity-coded than a lot of other trackers with a friendlier and unique UI, nice features that don’t get bogged down with too much complexity, and fairly good UX that seems to be continually improved upon). Would love ocr included since I mostly read library books that I can’t physically highlight, but I don’t expect it from most trackers! All that said, the biggest dealbreaker on this app is not being able to add titles yourself. Totally understand that this can get messy quickly if not structured and organized well, but having to wait a while (months, if ever!) for a book to be added to a tracker is a bit counterintuitive. Doesn’t really matter if almost two million books have been added recently—there are thousands more across so many genres coming out constantly and doesn’t seem sustainable to keep up with this in its current process. Why not have ISBNs be mandatory when adding a new title, so that if it’s already been input it can’t again to help with avoiding repeats? Seems like there COULD be a solution and I hope one comes along! Because I’d love to keep with this tracker, but not sure I can in the long run with this main hurdle.

I downloaded a bunch of book tracking apps to see which one I liked and by far Margins was the best one for me. I like how I can make multiple lists for different genres or “to be read” lists. I like that i can sort finished books as well if I had read them long ago. I also liked being able to have books not marked as “TBR” but still put them in a list unlike other apps where you have to categorize them. Being able to put something in multiple lists was helpful too. The reading tracker is nice and works well. I like the yearly stats on the homepage. What drew me to it was definitely the lists and categories i can create and the “change dates” feature when adding past books and current books. The stopped reading category is perfect as well! The only thing that would be cool is a calender that shows what books you read each day so u can see how long it takes to finish one in a more visual format. I also wish i could update my progress in a book by the pages i read rather than the time in a day I have read and then just click “finished reading”. But it isn’t a feature i need per say. Overall, i love it! Definitely an upgrade!