Shelves ​

The Shelves plugin adds faceted browsing for large book and audiobook libraries. Where the Library grid is built for scrolling and searching, Shelves is built for narrowing: pick an author, a decade, a format, a reading status, and see what's left.

It's most useful once a library is big enough that scrolling stops working — tens of thousands of titles, where you know roughly what you want but not its name.

Browsing ​

Shelves in the sidebar opens a full-screen browser. Each facet group shows its options with live counts, and choosing one narrows everything else:

• Author — sorted by surname, so Frank Herbert files under H.
• Decade — by publication year.
• Format — EPUB, PDF, or the audio formats in your library.
• Status — unread, in progress, or finished, from your own reading and listening progress.

Selections combine, and a search box narrows within them. Every result opens the normal series page, so nothing about the rest of the app changes — Shelves is a way in, not a separate world.

Counts and availability are per user: mature titles stay hidden from accounts without the permission, and reading status reflects your own progress, not anyone else's.

The index ​

Facets are served from an index the plugin builds from your catalog, which is what keeps browsing instant on a very large library rather than running four expensive queries per click. It refreshes on the schedulable Rebuild the browse index job, and after a library scan adds titles.

If counts ever look stale — right after a big import, say — rebuilding the index brings them back in line. That's library.manage; browsing itself only needs the normal library-view permission.

Settings ​

Shelves works alongside the Library grid's own Filters button; the grid filters what you're already looking at, while Shelves is for finding the shelf in the first place.