Track what you read in a database you own

The full walkthrough, from empty install to a working reading list — or read on for the written version.

A reading log is a long-term record

This is what makes books different from films or games. A watchlist is mostly about what comes next; a reading log accumulates. People keep them for ten or twenty years, and what they end up valuing is not the list of titles but the marginal notes — why they picked a book up, what they thought when they put it down.

Goodreads has been owned by Amazon since 2013, which is worth knowing when you decide where two decades of that goes. It does let you export your data as CSV, and that matters. But a CSV of titles and dates is a backup, not a collection: you cannot browse it, filter it by mood, or extend it with a field it never had. The moment you need it, you are rebuilding somewhere else from scratch.

The question is not whether you can get your data out. It is whether you ever needed to ask.

Where the data lives

In LifeTracker your collection is stored locally on your device — that is the whole storage model, with no server copy that counts as the real one. In practice:

• It works with no connection. The only online step is searching a title, which pulls the cover, author and year once. After that the entry is local and self-contained.
• No account. Open it and start. Registration exists only for the optional cloud plan, which adds sync and backup.
• Queryable. On desktop the database is a plain SQLite file: open it in any SQLite browser and ask it things no menu offers — how many books per author per year, or how long each one sat unread before you started it.
• It outlives the service. A file on your disk does not depend on a company's roadmap, its terms, or its owner.

Setting up a book collection

LifeTracker organises everything into categories and ships a Books template, so the fields and filters are already in place.

1. Create the category. Choose the Books template, then a style preset — the preset only affects how entries are displayed and can be changed later without touching your data.
2. Add a book. Search by title; the cover, author and year are fetched once and copied into your local database on save.
3. Set a priority. This is what turns a pile into a queue. Books accumulate faster than they get read, and the ones you genuinely want next should not be buried under the ones you added on a whim.
4. Write down why you added it. The template has a comment field for before you start. In a year you will have forgotten who recommended it, and that is usually the detail worth keeping.

Three filters, and nothing to file by hand

Books get a middle state that a film collection does not need, because reading one takes weeks rather than an evening.

Nothing is filed by hand. Setting a start date moves a book out of the pile and into what you are reading; setting an end date moves it into your history. A filter is a stored condition, not a folder.

What the template already tracks

• Author and year, filled in automatically from the book database when you pick a title.
• Waiting since — how long a book has been sitting unread. Anyone with a to-be-read pile knows this number is both useful and slightly accusatory.
• A comment before and after: why you added it, and what you thought once you finished. Keeping them apart is the difference between a list and a reading journal.
• Priority and rating, one for what is coming, one for what is done.

Fields you can add yourself

The template is a starting point, not a ceiling: you add fields to a category whenever you want, and they behave exactly like the ones that shipped with it. This is where a general-purpose tracker pulls ahead of a specialised one — a reading service gives you the fields its designers chose, and that is the end of it.

• Did-not-finish as a state of its own, so an end date does not have to mean you read the whole thing.
• Format — paperback, ebook, audiobook — and which edition you own.
• Who lent it to you, and whether you gave it back.
• A re-read counter, with a separate rating per reading. Books change more than films do between one encounter and the next.
• Where you bought it, if you care about supporting a particular shop.

And because LifeTracker is not a books app, the same database also holds your films, games, shows and habits. One tool, one file, one backup.

An honest comparison

Dedicated reading services do things this does not, and you should know which side of the trade you are on.

The social side is the real trade. If what keeps you reading is a yearly challenge, a group, or seeing what friends thought, a hosted service does that and LifeTracker does not. It is a private ledger, not a community. Plenty of people run both: the service for the conversation, a local database for the record they intend to keep.

Frequently asked questions