Even in our hyper-digital world, there’s a special joy in owning physical objects. That comforting feel of a paper book. The ritual of playing a record. A nostalgic thrill on gazing upon a shelf of action figures. Screens cannot replicate such things.
However, your iPhone can help you keep track of what you own, bringing order to the chaos of physical collections. The apps in this round-up will help you say goodbye to accidental duplicate purchases and hello to a grin-inducing overview of your beloved belongings – wherever you happen to be.
Book Tracker (free + $16/£15 lifetime)
Digital books are convenient, but you can’t beat the tactile feel and focus you get from a paper tome. Book Tracker understands this and is on hand to help you manage even the most sprawling library. Adding new items is a breeze – use the barcode scanner or tap in ISBN codes. Once done, you can explore layouts to display your collection the way you like it – and quickly filter it to pinpoint specific titles you’re after.
It doesn’t stop there. A robust tagging and rating system lets you view your collection in countless ways. And the app goes the extra mile by helping you log digital editions, track loaned books, build a wishlist of future purchases, and tag titles you’re looking to sell. With iCloud sync, these details are always at hand across all your devices. For the one-off price, Book Tracker is a steal for any bookworm.
Music Tracker (free or $11/£10 yearly or $35/£35 lifetime)
If you’d like ‘Book Tracker for music,’ look no further. The creator has built an equally impressive app for music fans that prize vinyl and CDs. Again, you can input items via scanning or search – but Music Tracker also adds Shazam support, to snag nearby earworms and add them to a wishlist. And similarly to Book Tracker, this app has first-rate tagging and filtering, along with support for digital editions.
On selecting an item, you can browse a wealth of information, including album descriptions, artist credits, and a track list – complete with play buttons that fire off a song in Apple Music. Prefer video? YouTube links are integrated too. With space for personal notes and quotes, Music Tracker is an impressive, friendly, flexible tool for the most ardent music buff.
Alternatively: Discogs (free) also provides tools to log your music collection, but it leans more into community and sales. If you’re as much into trading and seeing what’s currently hot as managing what you already own, it’s well worth a download.
GamePal (free or $30/£30 yearly or $50/£50 lifetime)
Unlike music, where vast libraries are available to stream, much of gaming history remains locked away on physical cartridges and discs. Hence why many gamers cherish their physical collections, which may stretch back across decades of devices and formats. Enter GamePal, a no-nonsense app that echoes Book Tracker and Music Tracker, in making it simple to keep tabs on all your gaming treasures.
Input relies on search or IGDB IDs (no barcode scanner here!), but it’s simple enough to add physical and digital media from upcoming releases right back to ancient formats. Your list can be rapidly filtered by platform and play status, and reordered in various ways. A Calendar tab helps you track upcoming releases, and there’s a journal to document epic high scores.
Generously, all this comes for free, although pay for the Platinum tier and, along with supporting the app’s creator, you unlock personalized reminders, stats analysis, custom notes, and more.
Alternatively: GameTrack (free or $30/£30 yearly or $100/£100 lifetime) offers a more visually engaging, if slightly less efficient, gaming tracking experience. There’s a hint towards discovery, showcasing popular and upcoming releases. And there are community features through a GameTrack account. The free version lets you add unlimited games. Pay and you get tags, pinned games, customization, and a barcode scanner.
iCollect (free + $30/£30 per type or $30/£30 unlimited)
If you’re a collector of many different things or want to track something not covered by dedicated apps, try iCollect. The app enables you to manage a wide array of collection types, including movies, art, coins, stamps, and trading cards. Select one and iCollect automatically adds relevant fields that you manually populate – or automatically add to, if fortunate enough to be collecting objects with barcodes.
While perhaps less polished than the apps mentioned so far, iCollect is simple enough to use and feels accommodating to variable needs. Wisely, the free tier also lets you get a feel for the app by adding up to 30 items to each collection type. Should you want more, you can unlock unlimited items by category (30 bucks each) or for all categories (60). If the outlay – or having everything in one place – feels a bit overwhelming, the developer also offers a range of individual apps tailored to specific categories.
Classifier (free + $10/£10 yearly or $30/£30 lifetime)
This app shares some similarities with iCollect but leans more towards managing physical collections of any kind. There are templates for a range of collections, including coins, trading cards, stamps, and Lego figures. These come pre-loaded with relevant fields, making them a great starting point. However, if you’re a truly bespoke collector, you can build custom templates.
Adding items typically involves pairing your own photos with filling in relevant fields. You can also create a wishlist for elusive items you’re still hunting for and use tags to organize and group your collection in a way that makes sense to you.
The free version of Classifier limits you to two collections with 20 items each. Paying unlocks unlimited everything and lets you export collection data as a spreadsheet. Since this app requires more manual effort than most, we’d suggest favoring alternatives for objects with barcodes. But Classifier’s open-ended nature makes it an excellent choice for cataloguing more unique treasures.