BloomReads — Support

Books tab, plus button. Scanning the barcode on the back cover is the easiest and gets the right edition, so the page count and cover are correct. You can also search by title or type it in yourself.

Search asks four catalogues at once — Open Library, Google Books, Apple and NeoDB — and shows whichever answers first, so most books turn up. If yours does not, try the barcode, which finds editions a title search misses. For an old, rare or self-published book, add it by hand; nothing in the app needs it to be in a catalogue.

That happens when the edition we matched is not the one on your shelf. Open the book and edit it — anything you change by hand stays put and is never overwritten.

Yes, and it is what the shelf is for. Open a book, tap the slot for its spine, edge or cover, and choose Scan with camera to photograph the real thing, or Choose a photo to pick one you already have. The app straightens it and drops it onto the shelf.

The photograph is kept on your phone and is never uploaded. It travels only inside a backup file you export yourself, and you can remove it from the same menu that added it.

Same books, two views. Books is the list — what you own, what you are reading. Library is the same thing put on shelves, where you arrange it, name it and make it look how you like.

No — BloomReads is a place to keep track of your reading, not to read in. It has no book text of any kind. The shelf is there because a library you enjoy looking at is a library you come back to.

No. Ratings only feed the Ratings section in Stats. Skip them and everything else works the same.

Yes. Export your library on the Goodreads website, then open Import from Goodreads in Profile. Your ratings and the dates you finished books come across, and anything already on your shelf is left alone. The file is read on your phone and never uploaded.

Yes. On Home tap I read today and put in what you read. If you only remember the pages, we work out roughly how long that took, so your goal and your streak still count it.

A day only counts once you hit your daily goal, so a day where you read a little but fell short will break it. Raising your goal can also break a streak you already had, because past days get measured against the new goal.

Yes, and it is worth doing. Tap the goal row on Home and set something you can hit on a bad day — ten minutes is a real goal. You can raise it later.

Two things to check: the switch in Reading reminders is on, and you have added at least one time. If notifications were refused, turn them back on for BloomReads in the iPhone Settings app.

Touch and hold anywhere on your Home Screen, tap the plus in the corner, then find BloomReads and choose Your library. The widget draws from your own shelf and needs no connection.

Yes — Profile → Appearance offers Light, Dark, Beige and Cocoa, plus System if you want it to follow the phone. There is also a second Home Screen icon to choose from.

It uses Apple's own Screen Time system. You pick the apps in Apple's picker, and they are shielded while a reading session is running and released when it ends. The app never learns which apps you chose — it only receives anonymous tokens from Apple.

It is a self-control aid, not a security or parental-control feature: anyone holding the phone can switch it off. Do not rely on it where being unable to reach an app could cause harm.

Your library is not uploaded. Every book, session, note and rating — and every photograph you take of your own copies — is stored on your device. There is no account and no sign-in, and the only way any of it leaves as data is if you share a backup file yourself.

Three things do leave, and we would rather be straight about all three. First, we collect anonymous usage statistics, and only from two places: setting the app up, and the guided tour that follows. How far you got, where you stopped, whether a button worked — tied to a random ID for the install and never to you. When those two are over the app stops sending them, so the screens you open and the sessions you read afterwards stay on your phone. A short profile of the install does carry on — the length of your streak as a number, how many days you have opened the app, whether you subscribed — and none of this carries content: a search sends how long your query was, not what you typed, and the streak travels as a figure with no session or book behind it.

Second, the app records the screens you move through while you set it up and during the guided tour, so we can see where people get stuck. Recording stops when those end — your library, your sessions, your notes and your stats are not recorded. Text you type into a field there is masked, along with passwords, email addresses, card numbers and phone numbers; what is on screen otherwise is not, so a recording of the tour can show a book cover or title.

Third, if you write to us in the support chat, that message reaches us — but only what you type. No title, no author, no note goes with it.

The Privacy Policy sets all of this out in full, including how to ask for a recording or a conversation to be deleted.

Because we advertise the app, and we need to know which advertisement brought someone here — otherwise we are paying for advertisements without knowing whether any of them work. That is the only thing the permission is used for.

If you allow it, Apple's advertising identifier is passed to Singular, the company that does the measurement for us, to match your install to an advertisement you saw. If you decline, nothing is read and nothing is sent, and the app works exactly the same. Either way, nothing about what you read ever goes to an advertiser. You can change your answer whenever you like in the iPhone Settings app, under Privacy & Security → Tracking.

Only to look up a book when you add it. Reading, logging sessions, your shelves, your widget and all your stats work with no connection at all.

There is no account, so nothing moves by itself. Before you switch, use Backup & Restore in Profile to save a file — AirDrop it or keep it in Files — then restore it on the new phone.

Profile → Erase all data wipes your library, sessions, collections and reminders from the device, and deleting the app does the same. Statistics, recordings and support conversations already sent are covered separately — see Your rights in the Privacy Policy, which explains how to ask us to delete them.

BloomReads is a subscription. The plans and prices are shown before you pay, and everything in the app is included — every shelf, every session, every stat, the widgets and the app blocking. Nothing is held back for a higher tier and there is nothing else to buy.

Subscriptions are handled by Apple, not by us, so cancelling is done in your Apple Account: open Profile, tap Manage subscription, and turn off renewal there. You keep what you paid for until the period you already paid for runs out. Deleting the app does not cancel a subscription.

That is usually a different Apple Account — a restore is what fixes it. Tap Restore purchase, either on the subscription screen or in Profile, while signed in to the Apple Account you originally bought with. Nothing is charged twice.

Apple processes all purchases, so refunds go through Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com. We cannot issue them ourselves.

Open the support chat — the speech-bubble icon at the top of Home or Profile — and tell us there. Your app and iOS version go with the message, which usually saves a couple of back-and-forths, and the reply comes back to the same conversation. If you would rather use email, Contact support by email in Profile fills the version in for you, or write to abeto.studio@gmail.com directly.