productivity

Apple Books

by vgnshiyer

Access your Apple Books library, organize notes, and get personalized book recommendations—just like a genius bar appoin

Provides access to Apple Books library data, enabling retrieval and search of book collections, highlights, notes, and reading activity for personalized book organization and recommendations.

github stars

40

Direct access to Apple Books database10+ search and retrieval tools

best for

  • / Readers who want to analyze their reading habits
  • / Students organizing research notes from multiple books
  • / Book enthusiasts tracking their library and highlights

capabilities

  • / Search through book highlights and notes
  • / List books organized by collections
  • / Retrieve reading annotations and activity
  • / Find highlights by color coding
  • / Get book details and metadata
  • / Perform full-text search across annotations

what it does

Accesses your Apple Books library data to retrieve books, highlights, notes, and reading activity. Helps organize and analyze your personal reading collection.

about

Apple Books is a community-built MCP server published by vgnshiyer that provides AI assistants with tools and capabilities via the Model Context Protocol. Access your Apple Books library, organize notes, and get personalized book recommendations—just like a genius bar appoin It is categorized under productivity.

how to install

You can install Apple Books in your AI client of choice. Use the install panel on this page to get one-click setup for Cursor, Claude Desktop, VS Code, and other MCP-compatible clients. This server runs locally on your machine via the stdio transport.

license

Apache-2.0

Apple Books is released under the Apache-2.0 license. This is a permissive open-source license, meaning you can freely use, modify, and distribute the software.

readme

Apple Books MCP

Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Apple Books.

PyPI License: Apache 2.0 Buy Me A Coffee

At a glance

  • Ask Claude to summarize your recent highlights
  • Ask Claude to organize books in your library by genre
  • Ask Claude to recommend similar books based on your reading history
  • Ask Claude to compare notes from different books read on the same subject

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/77a5a29b-bfd7-4275-a4af-8d6c51a4527e

And much more!

Available Tools

ToolDescriptionParameters
list_collections()List all collectionsNone
get_collection_books(collection_id)Get all books in a collectioncollection_id: str
describe_collection(collection_id)Get details of a collectioncollection_id: str
list_all_books()List all booksNone
get_book_annotations(book_id)Get all annotations for a bookbook_id: str
describe_book(book_id)Get details of a particular bookbook_id: str
list_all_annotations()List all annotationsNone
get_highlights_by_color(color)Get all highlights by colorcolor: str
search_highlighted_text(text)Search for highlights by highlighted texttext: str
search_notes(note)Search for notesnote: str
full_text_search(text)Search for annotations containing the given texttext: str
recent_annotations()Get 10 most recent annotationsNone
describe_annotation(annotation_id)Get details of an annotationannotation_id: str

Installation

Using uv (recommended)

uvx can be used to directly run apple-books-mcp (without installing it).

brew install uv  # for macos
uvx apple-books-mcp

Using pip

pip install apple-books-mcp

After installing, you can run the server using:

python -m apple_books_mcp

Configuration

Claude Desktop Setup

Using uvx (recommended)

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apple-books-mcp": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [ "apple-books-mcp@latest" ]
        }
    }
}

Using python

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apple-books-mcp": {
            "command": "python",
            "args": ["-m", "apple_books_mcp"]
        }
    }
}

Upcoming Features

  • add docker support
  • add resources support
  • edit collections support
  • edit highlights support

Contribution

Thank you for considering contributing to this project!

Development

If you cloned this repository, you can test it using Claude Desktop with below configuration:

Use uv venv to create a virtual environment and install the dependencies.

uv venv
uv sync

Debugging

With Claude Desktop

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apple-books-mcp": {
            "command": "uv",
            "args": [
                "--directory",
                "/path/to/apple-books-mcp/",
                "run",
                "apple_books_mcp",
                "-v"
            ]
        }
    }
}

With inspector

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uvx apple-books-mcp

Opening Issues

If you encounter a bug, have a feature request, or want to discuss something related to the project, please open an issue on the GitHub repository. When opening an issue, please provide:

Bug Reports: Describe the issue in detail. Include steps to reproduce the bug if possible, along with any error messages or screenshots.

Feature Requests: Clearly explain the new feature you'd like to see added to the project. Provide context on why this feature would be beneficial.

General Discussions: Feel free to start discussions on broader topics related to the project.

Contributing

1️⃣ Fork the GitHub repository https://github.com/vgnshiyer/apple-books-mcp
2️⃣ Create a new branch for your changes (git checkout -b feature/my-new-feature).
3️⃣ Make your changes and test them thoroughly.
4️⃣ Push your changes and open a Pull Request to main.

Please provide a clear title and description of your changes.

License

Apple Books MCP is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.

FAQ

What is the Apple Books MCP server?
Apple Books is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server profile on explainx.ai. MCP lets AI hosts (e.g. Claude Desktop, Cursor) call tools and resources through a standard interface; this page summarizes categories, install hints, and community ratings.
How do MCP servers relate to agent skills?
Skills are reusable instruction packages (often SKILL.md); MCP servers expose live capabilities. Teams frequently combine both—skills for workflows, MCP for APIs and data. See explainx.ai/skills and explainx.ai/mcp-servers for parallel directories.
How are reviews shown for Apple Books?
This profile displays 10 aggregated ratings (sample rows for discoverability plus signed-in user reviews). Average score is about 4.5 out of 5—verify behavior in your own environment before production use.
MCP server reviews

Ratings

4.510 reviews
  • Shikha Mishra· Oct 10, 2024

    Apple Books is among the better-indexed MCP projects we tried; the explainx.ai summary tracks the official description.

  • Piyush G· Sep 9, 2024

    We evaluated Apple Books against two servers with overlapping tools; this profile had the clearer scope statement.

  • Chaitanya Patil· Aug 8, 2024

    Useful MCP listing: Apple Books is the kind of server we cite when onboarding engineers to host + tool permissions.

  • Sakshi Patil· Jul 7, 2024

    Apple Books reduced integration guesswork — categories and install configs on the listing matched the upstream repo.

  • Ganesh Mohane· Jun 6, 2024

    I recommend Apple Books for teams standardizing on MCP; the explainx.ai page compares cleanly with sibling servers.

  • Oshnikdeep· May 5, 2024

    Strong directory entry: Apple Books surfaces stars and publisher context so we could sanity-check maintenance before adopting.

  • Dhruvi Jain· Apr 4, 2024

    Apple Books has been reliable for tool-calling workflows; the MCP profile page is a good permalink for internal docs.

  • Rahul Santra· Mar 3, 2024

    According to our notes, Apple Books benefits from clear Model Context Protocol framing — fewer ambiguous “AI plugin” claims.

  • Pratham Ware· Feb 2, 2024

    We wired Apple Books into a staging workspace; the listing’s GitHub and npm pointers saved time versus hunting across READMEs.

  • Yash Thakker· Jan 1, 2024

    Apple Books is a well-scoped MCP server in the explainx.ai directory — install snippets and categories matched our Claude Code setup.