Browsing Without an Account

You don’t need an account to open the links people share with you on Agathos Books. Invitations, library previews, and shared book pages all work as a guest — you only need to sign up when you’re ready to join a library or do something with a book.

What You Can See as a Guest

Without signing in, you can open:

Library invite links — Instant-join links and email invitations a library sent you
Library join previews — A library’s page link shows its name, photo, description, and member and book counts
Book pages — Read the title, author, and description of any book someone shares with you
Series pages — See the books in a series a friend links you to

What Requires an Account

Libraries on Agathos Books are invite-only, and their shelves are visible to members only. That means browsing a library’s catalog — along with anything involving your own data — requires an account:

Joining a library or requesting to join
Browsing a library’s books, members, or activity
Borrowing a book or joining a waitlist
Saving a book to Want to read, or recommending it
Adding books to My Books
Creating your own library

When you tap one of these actions as a guest, the app prompts you to create a free account and continues where you left off after sign-up.

Viewing a Book as a Guest

A book page someone shares with you shows the book’s cover, title, author, and description, plus how many members are reading or recommending it. Its main button is the thing you most likely came to do:

Borrow — when the link came from a library, such as a book a friend shared from their church’s library
Want to read — when it didn’t. It’s always on the page, so you can save the book for later either way.

Both ask you to create a free account first, then bring you back to the same book. The Home link at the top takes you to the Agathos Books home page, and Sign in is there if you already have an account.

Viewing a Library as a Guest

Tap a library’s page link and you’ll see its join preview — the library’s name, photo, description, and how many members and books it has. From there, tap Create account to join (or sign in if you already have an account) and a library admin will review your request. If you opened an instant-join link for that library first and tapped Maybe later, the same button takes you in through that link instead, so you join right away. If that link has stopped working since, you come back to it with the request to join already open.

The full catalog appears once you’re a member. See Joining a library for the whole flow.

See Creating your account for the sign-up flow.

Still Need Help?

If you have questions about browsing as a guest, contact support.