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Libraries Overview

Libraries are a distinguishing feature unique to solyto — personal collection trackers for the things you own, read, watch, play, cook, and collect. Each library is purpose-built for its type of content, but they all share a consistent interface so you always know your way around.

solyto includes eight libraries:

LibraryWhat you track
Music LibraryAlbums and artists — vinyl, CDs, digital
Book LibraryBooks with reading progress and series tracking
Movie LibraryFilms and series with IMDb import
Game LibraryVideo games and board games
Recipe LibraryRecipes with ingredients and meal types
Quote LibraryQuotes from books, people, films, and more
Link LibraryBookmarks and saved URLs
Plant LibraryHouseplants and garden plants

Every library shares the same core capabilities (where they make sense for that content type):

  • Search — search across the library’s key fields (e.g. title and artist for music, title and ingredients for recipes). Press Ctrl+F to focus the search bar.
  • Filters — filter by genre, rating, wishlist, and library-specific filters, with a clear-all button.

Each library has its own genre system. You can customize genres — add, rename, and remove them — to match how you think about your collection. Assign one or more genres to any entry.

  • Ratings — rate any entry on a 1–5 scale
  • Wishlist — flag entries you want, and filter for them

Most libraries offer a view switcher: List and Cards. The Music and Book libraries add two 3D views:

  • Shelf — a wooden bookshelf with covers on display
  • Spine — covers arranged like book/record spines, with a hover-out 3D flip; book spine width is derived from page count

Where an entry came from an external service, a “Search on / Show on” shortcut links back to that provider.

Each library supports cover images — album art, book covers, movie posters, plant photos, and so on. Upload your own or let solyto fetch them automatically from the import service.

Add colored tags to any entry. Tags are shared across features, so a tag you create in one library works the same way everywhere.

Download your data at any time as a .csv file. Your data stays yours. See Exporting Data.

The Music and Book libraries offer recommendations powered by an OpenAI-compatible API. When you request one, pick from:

  • A favorite — something similar to what you already love
  • Something I haven’t seen before
  • Just something random
  • Something new

solyto then picks an entry from your library (for “new”, it fetches a fresh release via Deezer/Hardcover). Use “Try again” to reroll. Recommendations are generated on-demand only — nothing happens until you click the button. See Music Library and Book Library for details.

solyto can notify you when artists or authors in your library release something new. Release notifications are available for:

  • Music — new albums and singles from your artists
  • Books — new books from your authors
  • Movies — new screen releases from your library

Notifications are configurable per channel (Telegram, email, push). See Notifications for setup.

You can search online and import from external services like Deezer, Discogs, Goodreads, Hardcover, IMDb, TMDB, Steam, BoardGameGeek, and Chefkoch. Imports only happen when you explicitly trigger them — solyto never pulls data from third-party services in the background. See Importing Data for details.