v4.0
Thematic Search
Search your notes and quotes by concept, not just keyword. Type a theme like “power” or “solitude” and Lectr finds related passages — even ones that never use that exact word. All analysis runs on your device using Apple’s language tools.
- Tap the Thematic chip on the Notes & Quotes tab to activate
- Your search term becomes a persistent scope — then use the search bar to narrow within thematic results
- Entries matched only through semantic expansion are marked with a “related” badge
- Multilingual — searches in the language you type (English, Polish, French, and more)
Reading Portrait → Library
- Reaction Tracker tag pills are now tappable — tap to jump to the Library filtered by that tag
- Tag bar auto-expands to show the selected tag
ISBN Lookup
- We are now a customer of ISBNdb for better book metadata coverage when scanning barcodes
- Three-tier fallback: ISBNdb → Open Library Books API → Open Library Search API
- Flashlight toggle for scanning in low light
- Helpful hint after 5 seconds if no barcode is detected
Recommendations Which Respect Your Privacy
Book recommendations now ship to all users, built on the same on-device privacy layer from day one. We’ve designed a privacy-first recommendations approach which we are very proud of. Your tag names, notes, and quotes never leave your device. Before any data is sent, each term you created is replaced with a generic literary descriptor using Apple’s on-device language model — the server sees broad reading themes, never your personal vocabulary. Recommendations are generated by AI from this anonymised portrait of your reading interests.
- On-device semantic proxy mapping via NLEmbedding — a 287-term codebook of generic labels replaces user-created tag names and NL-extracted themes before they leave the device
- Recommendations hidden until your Reading Portrait has meaningful NL output (minimum 5 annotations)
- Books added from recommendations are tagged with source “Recommended” — find them with
source:recommendedin the Library search bar
Book & Quote Sharing
Share books and quotes with anyone — no account needed, nothing leaves your device except the title, author, and ISBN.
- Share a book from the book detail toolbar — generates a universal link that opens in Lectr or falls back to a web page
- Share individual quotes from the Quotes screen — includes the quote text, author attribution, and a link to the book
- Receiving a shared link shows book details with cover art (fetched via ISBN) and an “Add to Library” button
- Duplicate detection — if the book is already in your library, you’re taken straight to it
- Books added via sharing are tagged with source “Shared” — find them with
source:shared
Reading Portrait
- Collapsible Your Portrait and Concepts sections — tap to expand
- Trimmed prose — stats row shows the numbers, prose focuses on insights
- Quote colours sharing the same sentiment bucket are grouped into a single row
- Distinct prose for each sentiment level (very negative vs negative)
- Refined card styling with subtle blue tint and 0.5pt borders
Bug Fixes
- Fixed crash when deleting books from the Library
- Description editor sheet now opens in edit mode when tapped from Edit
Benchmarks
Tested with a 5,000-book library.
| Scenario | Time | |
|---|---|---|
| Library open | 15 ms | |
| Pagination | 19 ms | |
| Search | 206 ms | |
| Notes & Quotes (grouped) | 562 ms | |
| Notes & Quotes (search) | 143 ms |
v3.2
Reading Portrait
- Reading Portrait — an on-device snapshot of your reading life, surfacing themes, sentiment, engagement patterns, and your personal colour system
- NL-powered concept extraction and sentiment analysis across your annotations
- Teaser card on the home screen with top themes; tap to open the full portrait
- Generate on demand; refresh any time with a visual progress indicator
Book Added Feedback
- Confirmation card on the Home screen after adding a book — tap to view details, tap the author pill to search your library
- Quick toast notification when adding a book from other tabs
Authors
- Deterministic author ordering — multi-author books now preserve display order reliably across devices and CloudKit sync
- Drag to reorder authors in the book editor
Research Tools
- Template variable pills now insert at the cursor position instead of appending
- Drag to reorder research tools in Settings
Settings
- Toggle to show or hide the Reading Portrait card on the home screen
Benchmarks
Tested with a 5,000-book library.
| Scenario | Time | |
|---|---|---|
| Library open | 17 ms | |
| Pagination | 11 ms | |
| Search | 122 ms | |
| Notes & Quotes (grouped) | 522 ms | |
| Notes & Quotes (search) | 82 ms |
v3.1
Settings
- New Settings page — accessible from the Home menu, with device-local preferences that can differ between iPhone and iPad
- Default sort order for Library and Notes & Quotes — choose your preferred sort so it’s ready every time you open the app
- Review & Rating toggle — hide the review and rating UI throughout the app if you don’t use it
Research Tools
- Configurable research tools on book details — add up to 5 links to Google, Wikipedia, DuckDuckGo, or a custom URL
- Customisable query templates with
{title},{author},{publisher}, and{publication date}variables - Enable or disable individual research tools, name them, and reorder from Settings
Book Detail
- Description moved to the top of the Details section for better visibility
Library & Notes
- Refreshed empty states for Library and Notes & Quotes
- Subtle gradient background on Notes & Quotes
- Pulsing “Add Book” button during onboarding to guide new users
- Import spinner shows progress while a file is being processed
Fixes
- Keyboard now dismisses reliably when editor sheets close
- Eliminated duplicate data fetches on screen load and sort changes
- Book and entry counts stay accurate after deletions
- Prevented accidental CSV export trigger from the Home menu on startup
- Background enrichment tasks cancelled when a book is deleted
Benchmarks
Tested with a 5,000-book library.
| Scenario | Time | |
|---|---|---|
| Library open | 8 ms | ↓ 50% |
| Pagination | 11 ms | ↓ 42% |
| Search | 115 ms | ↓ 37% |
| Notes & Quotes (grouped) | 305 ms | ↓ 40% |
| Notes & Quotes (search) | 80 ms | ↓ 42% |
v3.0
Import & Export
- Import from Goodreads, StoryGraph, Calibre, and Kindle — drop in a CSV export or My Clippings.txt and Lectr converts it automatically
- Auto-detection — Lectr identifies the file format from headers so you never have to choose
- Smart deduplication — re-importing the same file won’t create duplicate books
- Background cover enrichment — missing covers and metadata are fetched from Open Library after import
- “Preparing export” spinner when generating a CSV export
- Filter your library by import source (Manual, Goodreads, StoryGraph, Calibre, Kindle)
- Tag colours are preserved across export and import
- HTML formatting is automatically stripped from imported reviews
Library
- Search operators — type
missing:cover,year:2020-2024,publisher:Penguin, orsource:kindlein the Library search bar to filter by metadata; combine operators with each other and with regular text search. Tap the ? button next to the search bar for ready-made suggestions
Notes & Quotes
- Grouped-by-book piles — notes and quotes are organised into collapsible piles by book in the default view
- Expand and collapse individual piles, or expand all at once
- Search by book title — typing a book name surfaces all its notes and quotes
- Search highlighting — matching terms are highlighted inline across notes, quotes, and the combined screen
- Sticky header — when you expand a book pile, the book’s cover and title pin to the top of the screen as you scroll through its entries; tap it to collapse and jump back
- Bulk selection — long-press to select multiple notes, quotes, or books for batch delete
- Bulk tag management — add or remove tags across multiple books at once
Home Screen
- “Remember these?” — a random selection of your saved quotes appears on the Home screen
- Tap a book cover to jump to its detail, or tap the note/quote content to see all entries for that book
Book Detail
- Redesigned book detail — grouped navigation card with rows for Review, Quotes, Notes, and Cross-References
- Book reviews — new dedicated review field with its own editor, visible from the detail card
- Star rating moved next to the review button for a cleaner layout
- Tap an author name to instantly filter your library by that author
Reading Status
- Did Not Finish status — mark abandoned books without them counting as read
- Status menu — tap the status badge to pick from all statuses instead of cycling through them
Onboarding
- New swipable onboarding carousel for empty libraries — Import Your Library, Add Your First Book, and Capture Your Thoughts
Camera & OCR
- Improved camera capture — faster orientation-aware cropping and image processing for scanning covers and text
Performance
- Faster scrolling on iPad — truncation heuristics adapt to screen width
- Reduced redundant data fetches on startup and screen transitions
- Larger default page size (30 books) fills bigger screens without extra loading
- Hardened CSV parser with strict validation and streaming tokeniser
- Accurate More/Less text truncation — character-count heuristics replaced with real text measurement
Benchmarks
Tested with a 5,000-book library.
| Scenario | Time | |
|---|---|---|
| Library open | 16 ms | |
| Pagination | 19 ms | |
| Search | 215 ms | |
| Notes & Quotes (grouped) | 514 ms | |
| Notes & Quotes (search) | 139 ms |
v2.1
- Redesigned note and quote cards — neutral backgrounds with a coloured vertical strip on the left edge - mark your notes and quotes with a visual indicator
- Editorial quotation marks on all quote displays — a large opening curly quote gives passages a typographic feel
- Quotes always render in italics; notes in regular weight, for clear visual distinction
- Consistent card layout across Home and Notes & Quotes screens — book cover and title at the top of every card
- Dynamic text editor sizing — the note and quote editors now grow to match your content
v2.0
- Fixed app startup when no iCloud account is available — the app now falls back to local-only storage instead of failing
- Minor text capitalisation fixes throughout the app
v1.9
- Privacy Manifesto — new dedicated privacy page linked from the About sheet, detailing how Lectr protects your data
- Comprehensive accessibility improvements — identifiers on all interactive elements, labels on icon-only buttons, decorative images hidden from screen readers, and hardcoded font sizes replaced with Dynamic Type
- iCloud sync documentation — new FAQ explaining how to enable or disable iCloud sync across your devices
- Two-tier cover image cache for faster scrolling — thumbnail and full-size entries per book
- Floating labels on book form detail fields
- Smarter library sorting — sorts by author last name and strips leading articles (The, A, An) from title sort
- Improved iCloud sync startup — debounced remote changes eliminate list flicker
- CSV import now handles BOM markers and URL request timeouts added throughout
- Collapsible tag bar in the library with dynamic two-line layout
v1.8
- Cover image thumbnails now appear on library rows and notes/quotes cards
- iCloud sync indicator stays visible while CloudKit is actively importing — no more premature "Getting Started" card
- Faster CloudKit sync — cover images stored inline instead of as external data
- Directional cross-reference labels (e.g. "referenced by" vs "references")
- Significant memory optimizations for large libraries — cover images downsampled to display size and cached efficiently
- Keyboard now dismisses after adding a tag on the book detail screen
- Improved keyboard dismissal throughout the app
- Visual polish — unified card backgrounds in the library, refined note and quote styling
v1.7
- Cross-reference books to each other — link related reads with optional comments
- Tappable author tags — tap an author name to instantly filter your library
- Manage cross-references from a dedicated sheet with edit and swipe-to-delete
- Clear button on the library search bar
- Improved tap targets and sizing for author tags
- Cleaner book detail layout — less clutter at the bottom of the page
v1.6
- App renamed to Lectr
- Export individual books as CSV from the book detail menu
- Swipe-to-delete with confirmation for notes and quotes
- Fixed double-tap creating duplicate books, notes, and quotes
- Tags section now visible in Library even with no tags
- Styled Save/Done buttons for better visual clarity
v1.1
- iCloud sync — your library now syncs across all your devices via CloudKit
- Voice-to-text dictation for the note editor
- Search your notes and quotes
- New Getting Started tips card for empty libraries
- Redesigned note and quote cards showing more content
- Edit and delete actions moved to the navigation bar menu on book detail
v1.0
Initial release — track and manage your books, notes and quotes.