Add it in one move
Point at the barcode and the title, author and page count fill themselves in. No barcode? Photograph the cover and the text is read off it on the device. Or type it yourself.
A reading companion for iPhone. Scan the barcode, keep your place, and save the words you meet along the way. Nothing you write ever leaves the phone.
Download on theApp StoreiPhone and iPad · iOS 26 or later · free for three books
Your library, seen edge-on. Each book keeps its own colour and shows where you stopped, and the shape says the format: ruled for print, a folded corner for an ebook, a masthead for a magazine. Photograph a real spine and it lies there as itself.
In a bookshop
The question people actually ask, holding a paperback they half-remember buying. Precy already knows: your library is the inventory. Scan the barcode and it checks the book in your hand against everything you own, by ISBN, or by title and author when there is no barcode.
Owning the paperback is a real reason to want the audiobook, so a match in another format is reported as exactly that rather than as a warning. Nothing is blocked. The copy in your hand is the authority, not a catalogue.
What it does
Precy is built for the middle of a book, not the tidy-up afterwards.
Point at the barcode and the title, author and page count fill themselves in. No barcode? Photograph the cover and the text is read off it on the device. Or type it yourself.
A page, a timestamp, or a percentage through. Photograph the page and Precy finds the page number on it. Leave a line about what was happening, for the version of you who comes back.
Three kinds of note, because they are three different things. A word you met, a thought you had, and a question you want answered later. Questions stay open until you close them.
Tap a word in a photographed page and it is saved with its definition, its part of speech and how to say it aloud. Ask about a whole line and Apple's on-device model explains the sense used there, without the line leaving your phone.
Books, notes, bookmarks, recaps and reflections in one ranked list, with the piece that matched shown on the row. Spelling is not a test. The catalogue and the dictionary are searched too, when you ask for them.
Put a book down for three weeks and the plot goes with it. Write a recap when you stop and read it when you return. Every recap you have written is kept.
A paperback gets a spine, an ebook a folded corner, an audiobook a waveform, a magazine a masthead. Typeset on the phone, so renaming a book retitles its cover. Photograph the real spine and it stands on the shelf as itself.
Closing a book asks for a rating and a reflection while it is still fresh. Read it again next year and that becomes a second reading, not an overwrite of the first.
What you finished, when, how long it took and what you thought of it. Favourites kept separately. A record you can actually look back through.
Every book exports as readable Markdown, notes and bookmarks included. The whole library backs up to a single versioned file, and restoring it adds to what is there rather than replacing it.
Deleting offers an undo. Anything deleted waits in Recently Deleted instead of disappearing.
Signed in to iCloud, your library follows you and survives a lost phone. It is your own private iCloud database, not a Precy account. A widget keeps the book you are in the middle of on the home screen.
Privacy
Covers, page photographs, bookmarks, notes and recaps are yours and stay here. Two things go out, and only when you ask for them.
When you scan a book. The number and nothing else, to look up the title, author and page count.
When you ask a dictionary what it means. One word at a time, never a sentence you wrote.
Nothing else, ever. Reading a cover, recognising text on a page and explaining a line are all done on the device. There is no account to make, and the app has no analytics, no advertising and no trackers. This website counts anonymous page visits, which the privacy policy explains.
Credits
Definitions and parts of speech, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Borrowed definitions keep a link back to the page they came from.
Pronunciation and audio.
Book details from an ISBN.
Questions
Precy is a reading companion for iPhone. It keeps track of the books you are reading, where you stopped in each one, the words you looked up and the notes you made along the way. It is built for use in the middle of a book rather than for cataloguing a shelf afterwards.
Yes. Scanning a barcode in a shop checks that book against your whole library, by ISBN, or by title and author when there is no barcode. If you own it in another format it says so, because owning the paperback is a reason to want the audiobook rather than a reason to stop.
With a bookmark that records a page, a timestamp for an audiobook, or a percentage through. You can photograph the page and Precy finds the page number on it, and you can leave yourself a note about what was happening when you stopped.
Yes. Tap a word in a photographed page and it is saved with its definition, its part of speech and how to say it aloud. Definitions come from Wiktionary and pronunciation from the Free Dictionary API. Asking about a whole line is answered by Apple's on-device model, so the line never leaves your phone.
No. There is no account, no analytics, no advertising and no trackers in the app. Your books, photographs, notes and recaps stay on your iPhone and, if you use iCloud, in your own private iCloud database. Only two things are ever sent out: an ISBN when you scan a book, and a single word when you ask a dictionary what it means.
Yes. Every book exports as readable Markdown with its notes and bookmarks included, and the whole library backs up to a single versioned file. Restoring that file adds to what is there rather than replacing it.
With Precy Premium, yes, through your own iCloud account: your library follows you to your other devices and survives a lost phone. It is Apple's iCloud under your Apple Account, not a Precy account, so nobody at Precy can see it. The free plan keeps everything on one device.
Precy is free for up to three books on one device. Precy Premium removes the limit and adds iCloud sync for $1.99 a month or $12.99 a year. It needs an iPhone or iPad running iOS 26 or later. The parts that explain a word in context want Apple Intelligence switched on; everything else works without it.