I read on my iPad. But I find books everywhere. In bookshops, at friends’ places, on someone’s shelf at a cabin. Book Scanner lets me scan the barcode and buy the book digitally, right there and then. No need to remember the title or search for it later.

Hold up a book to your iPhone camera and Book Scanner picks up the barcode automatically. It looks up the book on Apple Books so you can buy it with a tap. Found it, bought it, done.

Every scan is saved to your history. Browse books you scanned weeks ago or share your whole collection with a tap. Great for those moments when you spot three books but only have time for one.

Go Premium

Premium opens up the full set of sources: Amazon Kindle, Google Books, the Norwegian National Library, ebok.no and ISBNdb. Ads disappear. You choose the order of sources yourself and pick your preferred Amazon store from 20 countries.

Book Scanner remembers books found through premium sources even before you upgrade. When you’re ready, your library is already there.

Citations

Export book details as plain text, BibTeX or Markdown. Handy for students, researchers, or anyone who needs proper references without the hassle.

Features

• Fast, automatic barcode scanning with haptic and sound feedback
• Buy Apple Books directly from the app
• Full scan history as your personal book catalogue
• Share books with friends
• Export citations in plain text, BibTeX or Markdown
• Flashlight for scanning in low light
• Available in English and Norwegian
• Premium: six book sources with custom ordering
• Premium: 20 Amazon regional stores
• Premium: no ads

Changelog

SwiftUI (Current version)

Completely rebuilt in SwiftUI. Faster scanning, smoother experience, and a fresh new look. Added ISBNdb as book sources for Premium users.

2026.1

Book Scanner has undergone a spring cleaning! These are the new premium features:

• Every Amazon site is now available as a source for books. The US store is still the default, but any other store can be chosen.
• ebok.no can now be used by you lucky few who know Norwegian.

And for every user:

• The scan history can now be shared using your preferred citation mode, using either a bullet list, markdown reference list or Bibtex.
• From History we can now quickly navigate to the book source using the swipe menu.
• And navigation from book details to the source is easier than ever.

2020.1

Premium users receives the following goodies:

• Added the ISBN Database as a book source. Book Scanner should now find even more obscure titles
• All book sources can now be re-ordered, not only Apple Books, Amazon or Google Books
• The source websites of books from other sources than Apple Books can now be opened within the app

In addition, everybody gets:

• Support for iOS 13 dark mode
• The list of all scanned books can now be exported and shared
• Also improved sharing text when sharing a single book
• Introduced optional haptic feedback throughout Book Scanner
• Book Scanner should behave better when iPhone has a flaky Internet connection

And some bugs where squeezed too, sorry about those:

• Fixed access to Amazon that was missing for some users
• Fixed a crash bug that could manifest when a book was shared
• Removed ISBN Search as a book source

1.7.2

• Added support for iOS 12 and the latest iPhones.

1.7

Introducing the most requested feature of all, support for Amazon as a book source:

• Amazon will be used as a Premium book source.
• The ordering of the sources can be changed for Premium customers. Like the results from Google Books better than Amazon? No problem!
• View more information about almost any book, even if it does not exist in iBooks.
• The Settings screen contains links to all my other apps.

Fixes:

• BibTeX citations use and instead of & if a book has multiple authors.
• Book Scanner can be started from the today widget even if no book has ever been scanned.
• While tweeting feedback about the app, the app icon and link could sometimes be submitted with it using vital tweeting characters.
• Books on iBooks not available in your country will now open the iBooks app instead of showing an indefinite loading graphic.

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