How to use Tags and Smart Lists to organize your collection

Beyond Positions and Series, Book Tracker gives you powerful tools to organize your library with Tags and Smart Lists. These features let you group books by custom themes or automatically generate lists based on filters.

What are Tags?

Tags are labels that you can assign to books to group them by any criteria you choose.

For example:

  • Genres: Fantasy, Biography, Mystery.
  • Personal categories: Signed, Favorites, Wishlist priority.
  • Custom uses: Books for research, Gifts, School reading list.

How to assign Tags to a book

There are several ways:

  1. From the book detail page
    • Open a book.
    • Tap Edit.
    • Scroll to the Tags section.
    • Add an existing tag or create a new one.
  2. From the book list
    • Long press a book (or right-click on Mac).
    • Select Assign → Tags.
  3. From the three-dot menu in a book detail page
    • Select Assign → Tags.

You can assign multiple tags to the same book.

What are Smart Lists?

Smart Lists are dynamic lists that update automatically based on filters you choose. For example, you can create a Smart List for:

  • Books rated 5 stars.
  • Books in the Unread status tagged “Non-fiction”.

Whenever a book meets the conditions, it will appear in the Smart List without you adding it manually.

How to create a Smart List

  • On iPhone: from the Home screen → scroll to Smart Lists → tap + Add Smart List.
  • On iPad and Mac: from the Sidebar → go to Smart Lists → tap + Add Smart List.
  • Choose your filters (status, tags, format, rating, etc.).
  • Save your Smart List with a name.

The list will update automatically whenever new books match your chosen filters.

Why Tags and Smart Lists are useful

  • Tags give you maximum flexibility to organize your collection your way.
  • Smart Lists save time by automatically grouping books based on rules.
  • Together, they let you build a personalized system that scales for any size of library.

Best practices

  • Use Tags for themes that are unique to you (e.g., Signed by author).
  • Use Smart Lists for rules-based organization (e.g., Unread audiobooks).
  • Keep your tag names consistent for easier searching.
  • Combine Tags + Smart Lists for powerful results (e.g., Smart List of Unread + Fantasy + >500 pages).

✅ With Tags and Smart Lists, Book Tracker gives you full control over how you categorize and discover your books, beyond the basics of positions and series.