A shelf is a saved question to your library: “what to listen to on the road”, “what I never get around to”. The answer is rebuilt every time you open it, instead of going stale like a hand-made list.
A shelf stores a condition, not a list of books. A new book that fits the condition is already on the shelf; finish one and it leaves the “Listening” shelf on its own. Shelves live as a strip above the list in the Library; the first chip in the strip is “All”, that is, the whole library.
Shelves are free and unlimited in number. With Pro sync they travel between iPhone and iPad together with progress and bookmarks.
01/09
Save a filter as a shelf
Any set of library filters becomes a shelf in two taps. That is how “Listening”, “Not started” and “Set aside” come to be.
Open the Library, tap the filter icon in the top right corner and choose “Filters…”.
Tick the conditions, for example the status “listening”, and tap “Show”.
A bookmark button, “Save as a shelf”, appears next to the filter chips. Tap it.
Name the shelf, pick a badge and check the line “N books match right now”: an empty shelf is visible before saving, not after.
Tap “Save”. The shelf takes its place in the strip above the list.
The bookmark button shows only while a filter is active and no shelf is open: a shelf without conditions would mean “the whole library”, and a filter on top of an open shelf narrows that shelf instead of starting a new one.
02/09
Open a shelf and get back to all books
Shelves are not a separate screen but a strip above the list: the answer belongs where the books are.
In the Library, tap a shelf chip in the strip above the list. The list is rebuilt to its condition.
To go back, tap “All”, the first chip in the strip, or the same shelf once more.
Sorting is stored with the shelf: open it a month later and the order is the same.
The strip is visible as long as there is at least one shelf. From the first launch it holds a ready-made “On device” shelf — the next scenario is about it.
03/09
The “On device” shelf
One shelf is there from the first launch. It answers the question everyone has sooner or later: what will play right now, with no network.
Tap “On device”, the first shelf in the strip.
The list holds the books whose files take up space on this phone, partly downloaded ones included: they play from the first second.
Books offloaded to iCloud, entered by hand or stored on another device do not make it onto the shelf.
It can be renamed, adjusted or deleted like any other shelf. Once deleted, it does not come back — not after a restart and not after resetting the settings.
It has a single condition, “On device”. You can put it into a shelf of your own too, say together with a series: you get the part of the series that is already downloaded.
04/09
Add a book to a shelf from its card
Sometimes no condition fits, but the book belongs on the shelf. Pin it by hand: it stays there regardless of the other conditions.
Open the book card and tap “⋯” in the top right corner.
Choose “Add to shelf”.
Tap a shelf in the list and a checkmark appears. Tapping again takes the book off the shelf.
No suitable shelf? Type a name into the “New shelf from this book” field and tap “Create”.
A pinned book goes into its own condition group, so it stays on the shelf even when it fails the other conditions.
05/09
What a condition is made of
Twenty-three kinds of conditions, from author, series, universe and tags to “has bookmarks” and duration.
Open a shelf for editing and tap “+ condition” in the Condition section.
Catalog: author, narrator, genre, series, series completion, universe, tags, language, books. Pick several values at once.
Status: status, progress, rating, favorites, has bookmarks, kept on device, has metadata problems.
Media: media type, audio or text; editions; storage — on device, in iCloud, linked and six more states; the “On device” switch.
Time and numbers: added, played, duration.
A condition can be flipped: in the list of authors, narrators, genres, series, tags or languages tap a row a second time and you get “not Remizova”. Exclusions are highlighted in red.
06/09
Build a complex shelf: groups, AND and OR
One filter cannot express “all science fiction except one author, plus everything untouched for a month”. A shelf can: inside a group conditions narrow (AND), between groups they combine (OR).
Open a shelf for editing. The first group is already there: it is your filter.
Add conditions to it with “+ condition”. They are joined with AND: a book has to match all of them.
Tap “Add group”. An OR appears between the groups: matching any one of them is enough.
Watch the line “N books match right now”; it is recalculated on every change.
The trash icon at the bottom of a group, next to “+ condition”, removes the group — it is there when there is more than one; the cross in a row removes the condition.
07/09
Shelves by time: “not opened in a month”
A shelf stores an intent, not a date: “in the last 30 days” still means the last thirty days half a year later, not “since August 17”.
Add the “Added” or “Played” condition.
“In the last” is what appeared or played recently: 7, 30, 90 days or a year.
“Not opened in the last” is what you never get around to: books not opened for the whole period. Available for “Played” only.
Tap “Done”. The period is recalculated every time the shelf is opened.
A period from the filters goes into the shelf as the same intent: “7 days” still means the last seven days a month later. Custom dates are saved as an explicit range: “what I added on holiday”.
08/09
Arrange the shelves your way
The shelves you open every day go first. The app has no opinion about importance: the order is yours.
Touch and hold any shelf chip in the strip.
Choose “Shelf order”. A list of shelves with handles on the right opens.
Drag the shelves by their handles into the order you want and tap “Done”. The strip rearranges at once.
The item appears once there are at least two shelves. The “All” chip always stays first: it is the way back to the whole library.
09/09
Rename, change the badge, delete
Everything is in one editor, the same one the shelf was created in.
Touch and hold a shelf chip in the strip; a menu opens.
Choose “Edit”.
Fix the name, the condition or the badge and tap “Save”.
The “Delete shelf” button is at the bottom of the editor. The books stay where they are: only the condition is deleted.
Deletion happens at once, with no confirmation. A shelf whose condition comes from a newer version of the app is shown in the strip with a question mark: it cannot be opened or edited, so the condition is not overwritten.
What shelves do not do
Shelves are not in CarPlay, widgets or the Now tab, only in the Library.