Scanning

When something stops working mid-task, this is the page to check first. The sections are named after the symptom, not the cause, so use key: Ctrl-F for what you’re actually seeing. If nothing below fits, email support@lyralibrary.com and tell us what you were doing when it broke.

Nothing happens when I scan a barcode

This is usually due to a browser extension intercepting the scanner’s keystrokes. As far as the browser is concerned, your scanner is just a very fast keyboard, and anything that hooks keystrokes can swallow them before Lyra sees them.

The fastest way to confirm it:

Once you’ve confirmed it’s an extension, the fix is to find the specific one:

In a normal window, open your browser’s extensions page and turn them all off.
Reload Lyra and scan. It should work.
Re-enable extensions one at a time, reloading and scanning between each, until the scan breaks again. The last one you turned on is the culprit. Leave that one off (or whitelist lyralibrary.com in its settings, if it supports that).

Extensions known to cause this:

Password managers: 1Password, Dashlane, LastPass, Bitwarden. They watch every input field for login forms and sometimes eat keystrokes meant for other fields.
Writing assistants: Grammarly, LanguageTool. They inject their own input layer over text fields.
Form fillers and coupon tools: Honey, Capital One Shopping, Rakuten, anything labeled “autofill.”
Accessibility overlays that rebind keys, and some screen-reader helpers.

If you manage browsers for a school and want to stop this happening to staff in the first place, allowlist *.lyralibrary.com in your password manager’s “ignored sites” list and you’re done.

The scanner types nothing, or the wrong field lights up

Not an extension this time. Focus. The scan goes wherever the cursor is.

A stray click on the scanning screens fixes itself. On Check In, Check Out, Inventory, and the two holds screens, if the cursor has landed on a button, a row, or the page itself, the first character of the next scan pulls focus back to the field: scan bar and is typed in — so the scan lands anyway. Pressing key: / does it deliberately.
The cursor sitting in another text box is the exception, and it’s the usual cause of this. Lyra can’t tell your typing from a scanner’s, so it leaves a text box you’re in alone — including a search box on the same screen. That’s how a barcode ends up in field: Search by name or barcode — harmless if it was a library card, since that search matches barcodes too, but a copy barcode typed there finds nothing. key: / is suppressed there for the same reason, so click into the field: scan bar and scan again.
A scan aimed at a dialog or a popover goes to the dialog. Focus recovery stands aside while one is open, since you opened it to type or click in it. Close it and the cursor returns to the field: scan bar.
On screens not built around a scanner, click into the barcode field first. They don’t recover focus for you: a stray click moves the cursor and it stays moved.
Make sure the Lyra tab is the active one. If Lyra is in a background tab or behind another window, the keystrokes go to whatever app is in front, which is occasionally a very confusing way to discover a barcode in your email draft.
One scanner per machine. If two scanners are paired (a USB one and a Bluetooth one, say), figure out which one is sending and unpair the other.

The scanner adds extra characters, line breaks, or types in all caps

This is the scanner’s own configuration, not Lyra. Two things to check:

Suffix and prefix. Lyra expects each scan to end with a single Enter / carriage return and no prefix characters. If you’re seeing the barcode followed by extra characters, or the cursor jumping to the next field after every digit, your scanner is set to emit something extra. Most scanners have a printed sheet of “programming barcodes” you scan in sequence to set this; look for “Add CR Suffix” / “No Prefix” / “Restore Factory Defaults”.
Caps lock. If the host computer has Caps Lock on, many scanners flip their output and your alphanumeric barcodes come through inverted (or mangled). Turn Caps Lock off on the computer, not on the scanner.

We don’t try to enumerate every scanner model here; the manual or the programming-barcode sheet that came with it is the right reference.

The camera scanner is missing, or reads nothing

Every scanning screen shows a camera button under the scan bar: button: Scan with the camera on check-in, check-out, inventory, and the two holds screens, and button: Scan with the camera in the dialog: Add Book via ISBN dialog. If it opens and says message: This browser can't use a camera here. Close this and type the barcode instead., the browser is not offering a camera API to Lyra at all (some school-managed browsers and in-app webviews block it); use a wedge scanner or type the barcode. If it says message: The camera could not be started. Close this and try again., the device has no camera or another app is holding it. If it says message: Camera access is blocked. Allow the camera for this site in your browser settings, then try again., do exactly that: allow the camera for Lyra in the browser’s site settings and reopen it.

If the camera is running but won’t read:

Light and glare. Laminated labels reflect. Tilt the book or the phone, and on phones with a flash, the torch button at the top of the camera view lights the shelf.
Fill the frame. Get close enough that the barcode spans a good part of the guide box, and hold still for a beat.
A barcode you just read won’t read again immediately. That’s deliberate — it stops one label from being submitted over and over while it sits in view. Point the camera away for a moment, then come back to it.
Check the format. The camera reads Code 128, Code 39, Codabar, EAN-13/UPC-A, and QR codes. An unusual symbology from an older system may need the wedge scanner.

Each successful read ticks the counter at the bottom of the camera view and vibrates on phones that support it, so you can work by feel.

Still stuck

Email support@lyralibrary.com. Include:

Your browser and operating system (e.g., “Chrome on Windows 11”).
The scanner model, if you know it.
What you were doing when it broke, and what you expected to happen.

We answer faster when we don’t have to ask for those three things first.