Goodreads is the default because it's Amazon's and everyone's already there — not because people love using it. High Shelf tracks books the same way, plus movies, TV, games, and music, in an interface built for a phone, not a 2007 desktop browser.
Free to use. Forever.
Same shelves-and-ratings idea for books. The gap is everything Goodreads was never built to hold.
| Feature | High Shelf | Goodreads |
|---|---|---|
| Books | Yes | Yes |
| Reading progress (page tracking) | Yes | Yes |
| Movies | Yes | — |
| TV shows | Yes | — |
| Video games | Yes | — |
| Music / albums | Yes | — |
| Ratings & reviews | Yes | Yes |
| Social feed & follows | Yes | Yes |
| Redesigned mobile app in the last few years | Yes | Largely unchanged |
| One-click Goodreads import | Yes | n/a |
The book habit doesn't change. What changes is not needing three other apps for everything you're not reading.
Books, plus movies, TV, games, and music — same account, same feed, same followers.
Import shelves, ratings, and reviews from Settings → Import — no retyping years of reading history.
Logging a book, rating it, and moving on takes seconds — not a form built for a desktop browser a decade ago.
Goodreads' scale is real — nearly two decades of reviews and a catalog that's hard for any newer app to match on sheer coverage, especially for obscure or older titles.
If you're active in Goodreads groups or yearly reading challenges and that community is what keeps you there, that's not something switching apps replicates overnight. High Shelf's goals feature covers the "read N books this year" habit, but not the group discussion layer.
Sign up, then head to Settings → Import to bring your Goodreads shelves, ratings, and reviews over in a couple of clicks.
Download on the App StoreYes. Ratings, shelves (want to read, reading, read), and reviews import from Settings → Import and match automatically against High Shelf's book catalog.
Yes. Log your current page as you go — it's saved per day, so updating progress twice in one sitting doesn't create duplicate entries.
No. High Shelf is an independent app, unrelated to Amazon or Goodreads.
No. Importing copies your ratings and reviews into High Shelf — your original Goodreads account and data are untouched.
Yes — yearly per-media-type goals with a pace-colored progress ring, covering movies, TV, games, and music too, not just books.