Search & Discovery

Tsumihon provides a powerful multi-provider search system that lets you find manga, doujinshi, and other books across a wide range of sources. Whether you prefer typing a title, scanning a barcode, or snapping a photo of a cover, there are multiple ways to discover and add books to your library.

Multi-Provider Search

When you perform a search, Tsumihon queries 15+ providers simultaneously, returning results from databases, storefronts, and community catalogs all at once. Results are organized into tabs per provider, so you can quickly compare listings and pick the one with the best metadata.

Each provider tab shows its own set of results, including cover thumbnails, titles, and basic metadata. You can switch between tabs freely without re-running the search.

Adding Books from Search Results

Tap any result to view its full details, then add it to your library. When adding a book, at least one title field is required — Japanese, Romaji, or English. You do not need to fill in all three.

After a book is successfully added, a dialog appears offering two choices:

• Back to Library — return to your collection to continue browsing.
• View Book — go directly to the newly added book's detail page.

ISBN Barcode Scanning

Use your device's camera to scan the ISBN barcode printed on a physical book. Tsumihon validates scanned codes against ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 checksum algorithms to ensure accuracy before performing a lookup.

• Point your camera at the barcode on the back cover or inside flap.
• On a successful scan, the recognized ISBN is displayed on screen.
• If the scanned code is not a valid ISBN (for example, a product UPC), an error message is shown instead.

Once a valid ISBN is detected, Tsumihon automatically searches all providers for matching entries.

OCR Search via Gemini Vision AI

If you have a physical book but no barcode is available, you can use OCR search powered by Google's Gemini Vision AI. Take a photo of the book's cover, and the AI model will extract the title text from the image. The extracted title is then used as a search query across all providers.

This is especially useful for books with Japanese titles that would be difficult to type manually. To use this feature, you need to configure a Gemini API key in Settings under the AI Features section.

Image Search

Reverse image search lets you find a book by its cover art. Provide an image — either from your camera or photo library — and Tsumihon will perform a reverse image lookup to find matching entries across supported providers.

This is particularly helpful when you have a screenshot or saved image of a cover but don't know the title.

Search Methods at a Glance