Your whole personal library, catalogued properly
A local-first personal book collection tracker - no account required, nothing stored in someone else's cloud. Search a title, author or ISBN to add it, track what you own, you're reading, you've read, want or have lent out, rate it out of five stars, and see your whole library laid out in a card-catalogue-style shelf.
Shelf view lays your collection out grouped by status - cover art and a star rating per title, so you can see what you're reading, own, or still want at a glance.
Search by title, author or ISBN to pull cover art, publisher, year and page count in automatically via the Google Books API, with an Open Library cover fallback - no key or setup required.
Owned, Reading, Read, Wishlist and Lent - the last one so you can actually remember who's borrowed a physical copy, not just what you own.
Rate anything you've read, tag titles however suits you, track series and reading order, note the shelf or box a physical copy lives in, and keep freeform notes.
Totals, unique author count, average rating and books added this month - plus a breakdown by status and by rating, and your top publication years.
Hit "Surprise me" for a random pick from anything you haven't finished yet - built entirely from your own local data, no recommendation algorithm involved.
Select several books at once to bulk-change their status or delete them together - handy for sorting through a big pile after a clear-out or a house move.
Your collection lives on your own device - no server dependency for day-to-day use, just the shared Metre2 account for sign-in. Nobody else's cloud, nobody else's rules.
Export your whole collection to a readable JSON file whenever you like, and import it back in later. No lock-in, no proprietary format holding your data hostage.
Shelf for browsing by status, Grid for a dense cover-art overview, List for a sortable table with everything laid out - filter any of them by status or a quick search.
Shelf view grouped by status, the List view, Stats, and Settings - a look at the actual app, not a mockup.
Goodreads is a popular free web app for logging and reviewing books, built around a social feed of what friends are reading. Here's how a local-first Windows desktop tracker compares for someone who wants a private collection catalogue rather than a social network.
| Feature | Book Library | Goodreads |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | £4.99 one-off after trial | Free (owned by Amazon, ad-supported) |
| Works fully offline | ✓ | ✕ |
| Your data stays on your device | ✓ | ✕ (stored on Amazon's servers) |
| Social feed / following friends | ✕ | ✓ |
| "Lent" status for physical copies | ✓ | ✕ |
| Clean JSON export of your whole collection | ✓ | ~ (CSV export only) |
| Native Windows desktop app | ✓ | ✕ (web app / mobile app) |
| One account across a whole app portfolio | ✓ | ✕ |
Comparison based on Goodreads' publicly listed pricing and features as of August 2026 (goodreads.com) - pricing and features change over time, so check goodreads.com for current details. Goodreads is a trademark of its respective owner; this comparison is for informational purposes and isn't sponsored by or affiliated with Goodreads.
No separate account for your book data - it's stored on your own device. You do sign in with your one shared Metre2 account, the same login used across every Metre2 app, but your collection itself is local-first and never required to sync anywhere.
Search by title, author or ISBN to pull cover art, author, publisher, year and page count automatically via the Google Books API, with an Open Library cover fallback - no key or setup required. Or add a book manually with your own details. Camera barcode scanning isn't wired up in this first Windows build yet.
Shelf view groups your collection by status in a card-catalogue layout. Grid view is a denser cover-art-only layout for scanning a large collection quickly. List view is a detailed sortable table with title, author, status, rating and year.
Yes - export your entire collection to a clean, readable JSON file at any time from Settings, and import it back in later. No lock-in.
Owned, Reading, Read, Wishlist and Lent - five statuses covering the full lifecycle of a book in your collection, including titles you've lent out to someone else.