Why Dwellum?

Okay, I know. The app you know and have gotten used to suddenly has a new name. Changes like this can be weird, especially going from a real word to a name I made up. But your books, notes, lists and everything else in the app are exactly as they were. Only the name on the cover is different. Because change isn’t always fun, I’ve also included a little housewarming gift at the end of this page.

So, why Dwellum?

A working title

Atlas started as a code name, a placeholder I used while building the very first version. It was never meant to be the final name. It just stuck around long enough to make it onto the App Store, and then well, several updates past that. Placeholders are sneaky like that. While the app is still young, it felt like the right time to give it a proper name of its own.

Too many Atlases

I wanted a name that was entirely unique. Search for Atlas in the App Store and you’ll find maps, travel apps, and dozens of other things that are very much not this app. A name nobody else has means anyone looking for this app can find it just by typing its name. It also meant I could finally get a web address that’s simply the app’s name, dwellum.app, with no extra words tacked on.

A heavy name

I also wanted a name with a little less heaviness behind it. In Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titan condemned by Zeus to hold up the sky for all eternity. He’s usually pictured straining under the weight of the world, which is a lot to ask of a book tracker. Reading shouldn’t feel like a burden you carry, a goal you’re falling behind on, or a pile you need to get through. It should feel like a place you get to rest.

The other meaning never quite fit either. An atlas is a book of maps, the whole world laid out at once, every road, route, and border running every which way. But this app was never about covering all that ground. It’s about finding your own pace through your reading, one book at a time.

Dwell + vellum

Dwellum comes from two words, and each one has a little story behind it.

Dwell

The first is dwell, which means to remain somewhere for a while. Not to rush through or hurry on to the next thing, but to stay where you are and let it take as long as it takes.

That’s how reading should feel. You can stay with a book as long as it holds you, put it aside when it doesn’t, and come back to it whenever you’re ready. It could take a week, a month or a year. It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing wrong with taking your time.

To dwell is also to live somewhere, which is where we get the word dwelling: a place that feels like home. Somewhere to rest, with everything arranged just the way you like it.

Vellum

The second is vellum, the fine parchment that early books, and some of the first sea charts, were drawn on. Those charts didn’t try to show the whole world. They just showed what sailors actually needed: the way from one harbor to the next. A book tracker doesn’t need to be the whole map, packed with every feature imaginable. It just needs to show you where you are, and the way to your next book.

Vellum isn’t paper. Paper was quicker and cheaper to make, but vellum was made by hand, slowly, over weeks. The words were copied onto it just as slowly, one careful line at a time, and meant to be read the same way. Nothing about it was rushed, and your reading shouldn’t be either.

Because it took so much care to make, vellum was saved for words worth keeping, and so much of it has lasted for centuries. I’ve tried to build Dwellum with that same kind of care, through thoughtful, intentional design, right down to the smallest details.

Somewhere to stay

Put them together and Dwellum even sounds like a place, like an atrium or a sanctum. A place to dwell with your books, a quiet space to keep them, plan what’s next, and remember where you’ve been. A home for navigating your reading.

Softer around the edges

Atlas always sounded a little sharp to me. Say it out loud and it lands somewhere near cutlass, or cactus. Dwellum sounds round, and soft with no hard edges. Much like the rounded corners and radiuses on just about everything in the app.

It’s also just more fun to say. Dwellum. Dwellum. It kind of just rolls right off the tongue. Maybe it’s just me.

Same mark, new meaning

The logo isn’t going anywhere either. It’s still a bookmark with a compass dial for a nose, and honestly, it fits the new name better than it did the old one. Dwell is the bookmark, holding your place and waiting patiently for you to come back, however long you take. Vellum pulls double duty. It’s the very pages a bookmark is made to rest in, and the old sea charts that were dotted with compass roses to help sailors find their bearing, the same way you find yours from one book to the next.

From Voyager to Waymark

Atlas Voyager, the optional upgrade (still coming soon), is now called Dwellum Waymark. Voyager always sounded a little ambitious to me. It made it seem like you’d be packing a trunk and setting off on a grand expedition, traveling far and wide, reading more and going further. That was never the point.

A waymark is something much smaller: a marker left along a trail to let you know you’re still on the right path. It doesn’t hurry you along or point you somewhere bigger. It’s just there when you need it. That’s what this app is meant to be, a quiet guide, not an expedition leader. Waymark’s features are there to help you shape Dwellum around how you read, so you can wend your own path at your own pace.

A housewarming gift

This change is probably a sudden surprise, and so, as a sort of housewarming gift, I’ve added a planned future paid tier feature to this release, free for everyone, and available now.

You can now edit the cover and details within ANY book in your library, even those that came from Apple Books. Swap the cover for one you like better, fix a title, rewrite a description, or change its genres. The books in your Dwellum should look and read the way you want them to, not the way Apple Books says they have to. To try it, tap the ellipsis button on any book’s page and choose Edit Book Details.