Browsing Your Library

Your library is home to everything you’ve brought into Becoming. Open it at app.usebecoming.com/library.

Sources and Highlights tabs

The library has two tabs:

Sources — the books, articles, videos, and podcasts you’ve imported.
Highlights — every passage you’ve marked, across all your sources.

Switch between them at the top of the screen.

Search

Search works two ways at once:

Keyword — find the exact words you remember.
Meaning-based (semantic) — describe what you’re looking for in plain language, like “passages about starting over”, and Becoming finds highlights that fit the idea even if they don’t share your words.

You don’t have to choose. Just type what’s on your mind.

Filters

Narrow things down with filters:

Type — Books, Articles, Videos, or Podcasts.
Shelf (on Sources) — Want to read, Reading, Read, or Archived. See Shelves.
Tag — group highlights by topic.
Origin — where each item came from. Only the sources actually in your library appear here, with labels like “PDF import” or “Manual”.
Date added (on Sources) or Date captured (on Highlights) — when it entered your library.

Working with sources

The Add source button starts a new import. Sources appear as a table on desktop and as cards on a phone — click or tap one to open its page.

Shelves

Every source sits on one of four shelves, shown next to it in the list and on its page:

Want to read — you have it, but haven’t started. Books from a starter shelf, suggestions you added, and Goodreads’ to-read shelf land here.
Reading — you’re partway through.
Read — you finished it. Books that arrive with your own highlights, from Kindle, Readwise, Apple Books, Kobo, Play Books, photos, a PDF, or by hand, start here. So do Goodreads’ read books, with the date you finished them.
Archived — put away from the Reader queue, highlights and all.

To move a source on the web, open the ⋯ menu on its row or on its page: the Shelf section lists Want to read, Reading and Read, with a check on the current one. In the app, the same rows are in the ⋯ menu on the source’s screen. For an article or a video, finishing it in the Reader, or Mark as read there, puts it on Read; archiving stays in the Reader too.

A Shelf filter narrows the Sources view to one shelf.

A source’s page

Every source has a page of its own, with its cover, title, type, where it came from, which shelf it’s on, and how many highlights you’ve kept from it. From there you can:

Read it in the Reader, or Continue reading where you left off — when Becoming has its full text, like an article, a newsletter, or a video.
Open original — the page or video it came from, in a new tab.
Move it to another shelf, Export as Markdown or Delete source, from the ⋯ menu.
Go through its highlights. Share or delete any of them, or open one to see it on its own page.

The shelf rows, Export as Markdown and Delete source are also in the ⋯ menu on each row of the Sources view, without opening the source. See Export Your Highlights for what the export contains.

Working with highlights

Each highlight sits on its own card. From a card you can:

Show more to read the full passage (on longer highlights).
See any note attached to a highlight (notes come from your source, like Kindle).
Share it as an image or as text — see Sharing a Highlight.
Delete it.

Some cards carry chips: a Popular chip for quotes other readers loved, a Translated chip when a popular quote was auto-translated, and on videos a ▶ play-chip that jumps to that moment in the source.

A highlight’s page

Click or tap a highlight card to open its own page: the full passage, any note on it, where it sits in the source and when you saved it, and its tags — add tags or remove them right there. The source’s title at the top takes you to the source’s page, and the share icon in the corner makes an image of the passage.

Tags on The Academy

On The Academy, highlights are auto-tagged as they import. Each suggested tag is yours to confirm (keep it) or remove.

Deleting sources

Deleting a source removes it and its highlights. Delete one from its page or from the ⋯ menu on its row, or select several in the Sources view and remove them at once.