Review Insights · Google Play
Kobo | eBooks & Audiobooks
Kobo Books · 303,406 ratings · ★ 4.5
4.5
★★★★★
303,406 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 31 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"books"
13 negative reviews mention this · 42% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Let me download all my books with no arbitrary limit." - Y D
2
"kobo"
5 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "The search in the app is laughably bad. Takes forever, and the results are completely irrelevant. On the website it's even worse. A book that clearly exists (because a link to it appears when searching on Google) is nowhere to be found when…" - Bohdan Kulyk
3
"phone"
5 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "The app took forever to finally launch and has been trying to load my library for 5 minutes. (sat my phone down and forgot it was still open) Ill be uninstalling it until they hopefully fix it." - Ramon Terrell
4
"load"
4 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "The app took forever to finally launch and has been trying to load my library for 5 minutes. (sat my phone down and forgot it was still open) Ill be uninstalling it until they hopefully fix it." - Ramon Terrell
5
"read"
4 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "already have an account. Will not connect to my account!" - Robin Lyon
📋 All 31 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
The search in the app is laughably bad. Takes forever, and the results are completely irrelevant. On the website it's even worse. A book that clearly exists (because a link to it appears when searching on Google) is nowhere to be found when searching directly on the kobo store website. And why do the filters default to the local language when the title being searched is clearly in English? It's the absolute bare minimum functionality for an online store, so how can you not get it right?
The app took forever to finally launch and has been trying to load my library for 5 minutes. (sat my phone down and forgot it was still open) Ill be uninstalling it until they hopefully fix it.
Freezes continuously. Very disappointed
already have an account. Will not connect to my account!
App is glitchy, books don't open. Personalising is tedious. Support is non existant.
Randomly hangs on modern phone. Even prevents the Android attention key sequence from letting you escape. Must lock/unlock/system key and terminate app. Escaped Kindle for a much worse experience. Sad. Oh, and if you're offline, good luck even loading the app. 1+ minute launch time IF it even starts. Not much use for vacation, IOW.
the app for listening to audio books is very difficult to use. utterly impractical. IT'S easy to lose your spot and extremely challenging to find it again. Even the chapter names are not included... only the numbers
Currently having issues with not being able to use my audio credits on the website that they are telling me to use. Phone i was using died and is no longer charging. the app allowed me to use my audio credits in the manner that they promoted and advertised. Trying to get back into the app is nion impossible with all the annoying pop ups and and parts that refuse to work. For some reason the staff don't go to the app but go to the website instead. If this continues I'm leaving Kobo for Audible
Account deleted, continual crashes made it impossible to read past the first page. I screenshot my booklist, I'll go buy them from an independent bookstore
Hundreds of tracking attempts by this app over just a few days. Spyware and deleted...
App often will not load books. what's the point of an e-reader app if I can't read my books?
ebooks will not load in the mobile app! please fix!
constantly resets my books so I have to skim though a hundred pages to find my place again. really annoying
usless
Not apparent how books were supposed to be paid for. Generally hard to navigate.
no settings, difficult to use. now that I'm partially vision impaired. I find audible books just as enjoyable but even after trying out the kobo plus listening only plan which I felt was cheaper than my kindle unlimited by far. I was unable to find anything to work with the app.
very hard to navigate
App was excellent until a few days ago where it stopped loading my books. And if the books do load then pages get skipped. Irritating as I don't have my Kobo reader with me
App freezes frequently, doesn't finish searches, and is generally extremely slow
Let me download all my books with no arbitrary limit.
phone app is not a priority for this company
the search feature is very weak and returns books that should not have been included in the search results
App crashes everytime when screen is off or phone locked. Please fix this Edit - I tried reinstalling still the same, issue not resolved. Kindly check the bug and clear the issue asap.
really hate that there's no option for first line indent instead of the blocks of text.
The reading app works terribly. Sometimes you have to pick a chapter twice or it sends you to a random page you've already read. A PDF or a plain text file would be a better experience.
Ok app, when it works. Glitches constantly. Downloads sometimes get to 99 percent then stop. Can't listen to them, can't delete the download, delete the book from library and then add back and its the same thing. Can download other books and listen but when it glitches on a book you have to uninstall and reinstall app.
no ability to share epubs to kobo is a massive minus
purchased books not viewable in app, viewing options limited.
The epub download service is completely unreliable. If it wasn't for decent audio books I'd get rid of the service altogether
Watch them like a HAWK with your money, take screenshots of EVERYTHING.
there is nowhere to pay online and every single book is unable to be read. even books that have already been paid for, that is so wrong
Sentiment summary
88%
Positive (4-5★)
5%
Neutral (3★)
8%
Negative (1-2★)