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Dwellum comes from two words: dwell and vellum.

To dwell is 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. To dwell is also to live somewhere, which is where we get the word dwelling: a place that feels like home.

Vellum is 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, just the way from one harbor to the next. A book tracker doesn’t need to be the whole map either, packed with every feature imaginable. It just needs to show you where you are, and the way to your next book. Vellum was also made by hand, slowly, over weeks, and because it took so much care to make, it was saved for words worth keeping. I’ve tried to build Dwellum with that same kind of care, through thoughtful, intentional design, right down to the smallest details.

Put them together and Dwellum even sounds like a place, like an atrium or a sanctum. Say it out loud and it sounds round and soft, with no hard edges, much like the rounded corners on just about everything in the app. A quiet space to keep your books, plan what’s next, and remember where you’ve been. A home for navigating your reading.

The name explains the logo, too. 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.

Dwellum uses the Apple Books catalog to find books, covers, and metadata. When you search for a book, Dwellum pulls results directly from Apple’s database. That means the catalog is large, but it’s not everything. Very niche titles, some self-published books, and certain regional editions may not appear. When that happens, you can add the book yourself, cover and all. But if a book is available in the Apple Books app, it will show up in Dwellum.

Dwellum pulls its book data from Apple Books. That decision took three tries to get right. Google Books was tested first, then Open Library, and neither one held up to the standards I was looking for.

The covers made the call. Apple's are publisher-verified and consistently sharp, and the same image scales from a thumbnail in your library to the full-size cover you can pinch and zoom into on a book's detail page. Other sources gave back blurry scans, wrong editions, or nothing at all, and an app built to show off your covers can't work that way.

The rest of the data is just as steady. Exact release dates, so Coming Soon actually knows what's coming soon. Genre labels written by publishers rather than crowdsourced, so a book that says Epic Fantasy means it. Descriptions are straight from the publisher too, the same ones on the back of the book, not a fragment someone half-filled in years ago.

Speed and limits sealed it. Google Books caps how many searches an app can make in a day, shared across every person using it, and that ceiling isn't one they raise anymore. Open Library had no ceiling but took its time, often several seconds just to return a list. Apple's limit resets every minute and applies to your phone alone, so no matter how many people are using Dwellum, your search is only ever competing with itself. And it's quick. Results land almost the moment you hit search.

The one gap is that Apple only carries books it sells as ebooks, so a handful of older, self-published, or region-locked titles won't turn up. When that happens, you can add the book yourself, cover and all.

You betcha. Your library, notes, reading history, and followed authors are stored on your device and synced through your personal iCloud account. Dwellum doesn’t have its own servers and never sees your data. There are no analytics frameworks, no advertising SDKs, and no third-party tracking tools in the app. The only external connection Dwellum makes is to Apple’s search API when you look for books, and those queries aren’t stored. You can read the full privacy policy in About Dwellum in Preferences for more detail.

Yes! Dwellum syncs your library through iCloud automatically, so your books, notes, and reading history are all backed up and available on any device signed into the same Apple account. If you ever delete and reinstall Dwellum, your library will come back on its own. No setup required on your end.

Yes! Dwellum can import your library from Goodreads, StoryGraph, or any CSV file. Head to Preferences and tap Import & Export to get started. You’ll find step-by-step instructions for exporting your data from each service, and Dwellum will handle the rest, including your reading history, notes, and ownership info where available.

Dwellum organizes your books across five lists: Reading is for books you’re actively reading right now. Reading Next is your short list of books you definitely plan on reading soon. Someday is for books you might read one day, and is a broader list of books you’re interested in but haven’t committed to yet. Read is for books you’ve finished. Set Aside is for books you’ve stopped reading, whether temporarily or for good.

Yes! You can drag and drop books to set your own reading order within any list (as long as the sort is set to Manual Order). This is especially useful for Reading Next and Someday, where the order you plan to read your books matters. Your custom order syncs across devices too.

The core Dwellum experience is completely free, and it always will be. There are no pop-ups asking you to upgrade, no banners at the top of your home screen or library, and no features designed to feel broken until you pay. Everything you need to search for books, organize your library, take notes, and track your finished dates is included from day one.

An optional lifetime upgrade called Dwellum Waymark is on the way, adding extra features for readers who want to go further. It will never replace or get in the way of the free app you already have. You can read more about Waymark in the next question.

Dwellum Waymark is an optional lifetime upgrade that adds extra features on top of the core Dwellum experience. It isn’t available yet, but it’s on the way. When it launches, it’ll live quietly in the preferences sheet, there for readers who want it and out of the way for those who don’t.

The core Dwellum experience is free, complete, and always will be. Nothing you have today will be taken away or moved behind Waymark. Features like your library, lists, notes, reading history, import and export, iCloud sync, and everything else that ships in the free app stays free forever. Waymark only adds to what’s here.

Waymark is designed as a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, so you pay once and own it for good. The price will start low when Waymark first launches, and it will go up as more features ship over time. That means early supporters get the lowest lifetime price, and anyone who buys in later is paying for a more feature-complete version of Waymark. Whatever price you pay, you keep every feature that ever lands in Waymark, including the ones added years later.

Dwellum is built and maintained by one person, and Waymark is what makes it sustainable to keep putting real time and energy into the app. The core Dwellum experience is already the app I set out to build and use myself. Waymark exists for readers who want something more, and a one-time lifetime upgrade felt like the most respectful way to offer that, without ever making the free app feel incomplete or pressuring anyone to upgrade. If you’re happy with the free Dwellum, that’s the intended experience. Waymark is there for readers who want to go further.

You can see the planned Waymark features on the Roadmap page in Preferences.

This is intentional. Once a rating system exists, every unrated book in your library starts to feel like unfinished homework. Ratings can also be inconsistent. For example, the book you’d rate three stars today might feel like a five star book next year. People and opinions change, but a rating remains static. Dwellum takes a different approach: if you loved a book, favorite it and leave a note on the book’s detail page about why. A few words about what a book meant to you will always say more than a number ever could.

Because Dwellum will never make you feel bad about how much (or how little) you read. There are no streaks, no challenges, no progress bars, no reading timers, and no notifications reminding you to log your reading. Those features turn reading into a task with a scoreboard, and that’s not what Dwellum is for. You read because you love to, not because you have to. Dwellum respects that.

Because you already know how far you are into a book. You have a bookmark in it, or your e-reader shows a percentage. Dwellum doesn’t need to duplicate that, and it definitely doesn’t need to turn every book into a half-filled bar reminding you what you haven’t finished yet. Progress bars only work if you update them constantly, and that turns reading into data entry. Dwellum tracks what matters to you: what you’re reading, what you’ve read, and what’s next. The rest is between you and your book.

A dedicated wishlist would feel redundant inside Dwellum. Your Reading Next and Someday lists already hold books you want to read, and the Ownership filter lets you narrow any list down to just the books you don’t have yet. So if you want to see everything you’re interested in but haven’t picked up, just open Reading Next or Someday and filter by Not Owned. That’s your wishlist. Adding another layer on top of that would create more to manage without solving a problem that isn’t already handled. That said, Custom Lists are coming in a future update, so if you still want a list called “Wishlist,” you’ll be able to create one yourself.

Dwellum searches the Apple Books database for results. Most traditionally published books are available, but some titles (especially self-published, very niche, or regionally published books) may not appear. If a book isn’t showing up, it’s likely not in Apple’s catalog rather than an issue with Dwellum. If a book you’re looking for isn’t showing up, you can add it manually by tapping the plus button on the search page and filling in the details yourself.

Tap the plus button on the search results page to add a book manually. You’ll be able to fill in the title, author, publication date, genres, description, and even add your own cover image. Only the title and author are required, so add as much or as little as you’d like. Once created, it’ll act like any other book in your library. Manually added books also include an “Edit Book Details” button in the ellipses menu on their book detail page to make changes later.

Genres in Dwellum are mapped from the categories that Apple Books assigns to each title. Sometimes those categories are broad, unexpected, or just a little off. Dwellum does its best to translate them into useful labels, but it’s working with what the source data provides. Genre editing is something being considered for a future update. If you come across any genre labels that seem off, or a book is filtering to the wrong genre, please report an issue on the Get In Touch screen.

Your library syncs to iCloud, so if you reinstall Dwellum on a device signed into the same Apple account, your books, notes, and reading history should come back automatically. That said, if you’ve disabled iCloud for Dwellum or deleted your iCloud data, your library would only exist on-device and could be lost. It’s always a good idea to make sure iCloud sync is active.

Dwellum was designed for iPhone, since that’s the device most readers have on them throughout the day. I’d love to bring a tailored iPad experience to Dwellum someday, and whether it happens (and how soon) will depend on user feedback. In the meantime, the iPhone version runs on iPad in windowed mode, which works nicely if you want to manage your library there. A Mac version isn’t planned at the moment.

Hit the Get in Touch button at the top of this page. With that button you can report an issue, send feedback, request a feature, or just say hello. Every message goes directly to me, a real, live, breathing person. I read everything that comes in, and love hearing from users, so please reach out!

Dwellum is designed and developed by one person, so your support means the world. Spread the word, share the app with a friend, reach out via email with any feedback you have, or leave a review for Dwellum in the App Store.