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iPhone app · 2026

Bookling

A cozy reading tracker for iPhone: every book you finish fills the shelves of a little room that grows as you read.

My role
Independent developer: product, design and engineering
Status
Getting ready for the App Store
Platforms
  • iPhone: Coming to the App Store
Bookling's room by day: a small 3D study with a bookcase, armchair and desk, and the book on the desk below.
Your room, with the book on your desk.
Another Bookling room at night, lit by lamps and a stove.
Another room, at night.
A new keepsake in Bookling: a dragon's egg for finishing five fantasy books.
A keepsake, earned by reading.

The idea

Your books, in a room of your own

Bookling keeps track of what you read around a small 3D room. Every book you finish takes its place on the shelves, and keepsakes such as a raven, a dragon egg or a telescope arrive as you read. Tap the armchair to read inside the room, with rain at the window or a fire in the hearth.

How it works

A rendered room, put together live

Each room is rendered in Blender as layers with a manifest. The app puts the layers together, lights the bookcase, and projects every book's spine into the room's perspective.

  • Spines are designed from each book's cover.
  • The room follows the time of day; Pro adds seasonal decorations.
  • Book details come from Open Library and Apple Books.

The hard part

Everything works without an account

Apple asks that apps not require an account unless their core features need one. Bookling works fully without signing in; Sign in with Apple adds backup and friends later, and books added before signing in are kept.

What's next

Launch

Version 1.0 is in App Store Connect. Next come testing on a real iPhone, a TestFlight beta with readers, and App Review.

What I did

  • Researched the cozy reading-app market and its competitors, and set the product's direction and decisions.
  • Built the app in SwiftUI and SwiftData, with its logic in a tested Swift package and widgets that share data through an App Group.
  • Built a Blender pipeline that renders each room as layers the app puts together, with every book placed in the room's perspective.
  • Set up the Supabase backend for accounts, backup and friends, with Sign in with Apple and the account kept optional.
  • Prepared the App Store listing, privacy labels and screenshots.

Results

  • A diorama reading room rendered in Blender, with more rooms in Pro, that follows the time of day.
  • Every finished book takes its place on the shelves with a spine designed from its cover; keepsakes come from reading, never from buying.
  • Reading sessions in the room with soundscapes, a timer and a Live Activity, plus Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets.
  • Import from Goodreads or StoryGraph, reading picks made on the iPhone, friends' rooms, and a shareable video of the reading year.

Key decision

Earned or bought?

Choice

Keepsakes in the room come only from reading and can never be bought.

Why

Each object then stands for something the reader did, so a room shared with friends tells its owner's story.

Tradeoff

There is no shop for decorations; Pro sells extra rooms, seasonal decorations, widgets and the full reading journal instead.

Built with

  • SwiftUI
  • SwiftData
  • Blender
  • Supabase
  • WidgetKit
  • ActivityKit