Scanning barcodes

1. Open Scan from the Add / Scan button.
2. Line the book’s ISBN barcode (usually on the back cover) up inside the clear band — that band is the part of the picture actually being read. A manual ISBN entry field also works if the camera can’t focus.
3. In dim light, tap the flashlight button to light the barcode.
4. Review the matched book, then Add to Library, Edit details first, or Skip.
5. For a book you don’t own, "Add to want list" records that you want it without recording a copy — the useful one when you’re standing in a shop. A book already on the list says so instead of offering to want it twice.
6. Optionally set the shelf it belongs on — the location you pick is remembered for your next scan. If the place you want isn’t there yet, "Add a location…" at the end of that list makes it without leaving the book.

If the book is already in your library, you’ll be offered a link to view it instead of adding a duplicate. If it’s tracked as borrowed rather than owned, scanning tells you that too.

A book is recognised by any of its numbers, in any form: the 10-digit and 13-digit versions of an ISBN are the same book, whether you scan the barcode, type one in, or import a file that uses the other one. The same goes for a barcode you scanned once before — the answer is kept, so scanning it again is instant, and that includes a code no catalogue could identify.

Cataloguing a stack goes quickly: after a book is matched, the camera stays ready for a short while so your next scan starts instantly rather than waiting for the camera to open again. It switches itself off as soon as you are no longer about to scan — when you open the editor, leave the page, or simply pause for half a minute.

A magazine’s barcode is read like a book’s. Instead of looking for a book, AllMyBooks finds the magazine it belongs to — from your catalogue, or from the Library of Congress the first time — and opens the form for adding an issue, where you type the volume, number and cover date (the small extra barcode some magazines print beside the main one is not read). A US newsstand barcode no book carries gets a "This is a magazine" button: choose the magazine once, and that barcode opens it straight away on every later issue.

On the website, and on the phone app’s Scan tab (One at a time) for a magazine the catalogue already knows: it opens a short form for the issue’s volume, number and cover date. Naming a new magazine, teaching it a newsstand barcode with "This is a magazine", and bound volumes are on the website.

• Magazines →

If you have a USB or Bluetooth barcode scanner — the kind that types the number and presses Enter for you — the Scan Barcode page has two modes for it beside the camera. Scanner looks each book up and waits for you to confirm it, one at a time. Rapid is the mode for a wall of un-catalogued books: it keeps a single field focused and adds every barcode on its own, with no confirming and no clicking between books.

1. Open Add / Scan → Scan Barcode, then choose Rapid.
2. Pick the room or shelf once — everything you scan in that session goes there. Change it mid-session and only later books follow the new choice.
3. Scan book after book. Each one gets a sound and a line in Recent scans, and the running count goes up.
4. Scanned the wrong book, or fed two at once? Press Undo on that line — the copy it added is removed and the count goes back down.

Nothing stops the loop. A book you already own gets another copy and says so ("already owned — added a copy"), because a second copy is a real thing to own rather than a mistake. A barcode nothing can identify is set aside under "Needs manual entry" with the code kept, so you can finish it by hand later while you carry on scanning.

The sound is a convenience, not the record: where a browser blocks it, the status line and the running count still tell you what happened.