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BetterReads — a Goodreads alternative

I’m not a fan of the GoodReads app so I built my own. BetterReads is faster, private, and more feature rich. It’s, well, better. BetterReads is a 100% Swift native iOS app built to run extremely efficiently.

Some features I wanted that GoodReads was missing:
- local app data backup
- mark books as owned / unowned
- wider book rating range
- obsidian integration for reading notes
- better re-reading functionality
- better reading statistics
- fast start up time (~20ms)

While building this app, I tried to focus on building something that was ultra-functional and specific to my own use case. Those of us that enjoy building software in our free time tend to have the idea in the back of our minds that we might publish the app for fun, so we build for other people rather than ourselves. I have no reason to publish or market BetterReads, so why wouldn’t I build exactly what I want. For example, I prefer buying used books but don’t like walking around the book store with my phone out, so I built a watch integration that let’s me scroll through the books on my “Want to read” list that I don’t already own, sorted alphabetically by author. This might be useful to a few others, but I think most would be confused why the reading tracker has a watch app at all.

One of my favorites of the projects I’ve completed recently.