Booksum transforms how you save and organize your favorite book quotes, passages, and notes. It’s the ultimate reading companion app for book lovers, students, researchers, and anyone who wants to remember what they read.
Why I Built Booksum
As an avid reader, I found myself constantly losing track of quotes, passages, and insights from books I loved. Highlighting in physical books was great—until I needed to find that one quote weeks later. I wanted an app that would:
- Capture instantly - Snap a photo of any page and extract the text automatically
- Organize effortlessly - Keep all my book snippets in one searchable place
- Annotate freely - Mark up passages with drawings, notes, and highlights
- Remember everything - Never lose a favorite quote again
📖 Your Digital Book Library
Build a personal library that grows with you.
ISBN Barcode Scanning
Point your camera at any book’s barcode to instantly identify it. Booksum auto-fills the title, author, cover art, and other metadata—no manual entry needed.
Visual Book Collection
Every book you add appears in a beautiful grid with cover art. See your entire reading history at a glance and browse your collection effortlessly.
Reading Status Tracking
Mark books as Read, In Progress, or To Read. Track your reading journey and watch your library grow over time.
Powerful Search
Search through all your saved content instantly. Find that perfect quote by keyword, author, or book title. Never lose a passage again.
📚 Book Details & Snippets
Dive into any book to see all your captured content.
Snippet Collection
Every captured page becomes a “snippet” stored within its book. Browse all your snippets for a book in one place, complete with page numbers and metadata.
Quick Navigation
Jump between snippets easily. See thumbnails of your captured pages and tap to view, edit, or annotate any snippet.
Flexible Organization
Organize snippets by page number, date added, or custom tags. Create collections for different chapters, themes, or projects.
📸 Smart OCR Text Extraction
Extract text from any captured page with powerful on-device OCR.
Powerful OCR Technology
Extract text from any captured image with on-device OCR (Optical Character Recognition). No cloud processing required—your data stays completely private.
Page Photography
The built-in camera is optimized for book pages. Supports volume-button shutter for one-handed scanning while holding a book open. Crop and adjust images to get the perfect snippet.
Instant Text Search
All extracted text becomes searchable. Find any quote or passage across your entire library in seconds.
Copy & Share
Copy extracted text to use anywhere. Share your favorite quotes to social media, notes apps, or with friends.
✏️ Powerful Annotation Tools
Make your snippets truly yours with a full suite of annotation features.
Drawing & Highlighting
Draw directly on your snippets with customizable brushes. Highlight important sections, underline key phrases, or circle concepts that stand out.
Text Notes
Add text annotations with full color selection. Place notes anywhere on the image to add context, questions, or your own thoughts.
Emoji Stickers
Mark important sections with emoji stickers. Quickly tag passages as favorites, questions, or key insights with visual markers you can spot at a glance.
Full Editing Freedom
Resize, rotate, and position annotations freely. Full undo/redo history means you can experiment without worry.
🤖 AI-Powered Summaries
Let artificial intelligence help you understand and digest your reading.
Instant AI Summaries
Get quick summaries of captured text. Perfect for dense academic passages or when you want the key takeaways from a longer excerpt.
Passage Clarity
Struggle with complex text? Get AI assistance to understand difficult passages, jargon, or unfamiliar concepts.
Smart Organization
AI-powered suggestions help you tag and categorize your snippets. Spend less time organizing and more time reading.
📊 Reading Insights
Track your reading habits and see your progress over time.
Reading Statistics
See how many books you’ve added, snippets you’ve captured, and pages you’ve scanned. Visualize your reading activity over time.
Progress Tracking
Monitor your reading journey with insights into your most-read genres, favorite authors, and reading streaks.
Engagement Metrics
Understand your reading patterns—when you read most, which books get the most annotations, and how your library is growing.
Beautiful Visualizations
Clean charts and graphs make it easy to see your reading habits at a glance. Celebrate your progress and set new reading goals.
🎨 Beautiful Design
A reading app should be a pleasure to use.
Material Design 3
Modern, clean interface following Google’s latest design guidelines. Every interaction feels smooth and intentional.
Dark Mode
Comfortable reading in any lighting condition. Switch between light and dark themes based on your preference or time of day.
Intuitive Experience
No learning curve required. The interface is clean and obvious—pick it up and start capturing in seconds.
Perfect For
- Book lovers & avid readers - Build a searchable archive of your favorite passages
- Students & researchers - Organize quotes and citations for papers and projects
- Writers seeking inspiration - Collect quotes, ideas, and passages that spark creativity
- Book club members - Save discussion-worthy passages to share with your group
- Anyone who highlights while reading - Finally, a digital home for all those underlined passages
Tech Stack
- Kotlin + Jetpack Compose - Modern Android UI with Material Design 3
- Hilt - Dependency injection
- Room - Local data persistence
- ML Kit - On-device text recognition (OCR)
- CameraX - Camera capture with volume-button shutter
- AI Integration - Text summarization and smart features
Get Booksum
Freemium model with generous free tier limits. Download today and never forget what you read.
Questions or feedback? I’d love to hear from you!