Review Insights · App Store
Apple Books
Apple · 79,013 ratings · ★ 4.4
4.4
★★★★★
79,013 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 27 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"
11 negative reviews mention this · 41% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Just doesn’t fulfill my reading needs. First of all it takes way to long to load anything and I have great connection second they don’t have any of the books that I am looking for including hatchet, lord of the flies etc many things should be fixed not the greatest at all" - Jackboy😯53/+
2
"book"
9 negative reviews mention this · 33% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Just doesn’t fulfill my reading needs. First of all it takes way to long to load anything and I have great connection second they don’t have any of the books that I am looking for including hatchet, lord of the flies etc many things should be fixed not the greatest at all" - Jackboy😯53/+
3
"apple"
7 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Trash. Apple Books is trash you can’t export anything to Speechify. You can’t have your phone read it to you. And you can’t use it on Windows. The software is for the Apple ecosystem only. Can’t use it on a Kindle. You have to have Apple products …" - Ummyeahsoo
4
"read"
7 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Just doesn’t fulfill my reading needs. First of all it takes way to long to load anything and I have great connection second they don’t have any of the books that I am looking for including hatchet, lord of the flies etc many things should be fixed not the greatest at all" - Jackboy😯53/+
5
"doesn"
5 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Just doesn’t fulfill my reading needs. First of all it takes way to long to load anything and I have great connection second they don’t have any of the books that I am looking for including hatchet, lord of the flies etc many things should be fixed not the greatest at all" - Jackboy😯53/+
6
"reading"
4 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Just doesn’t fulfill my reading needs. First of all it takes way to long to load anything and I have great connection second they don’t have any of the books that I am looking for including hatchet, lord of the flies etc many things should be fixed not the greatest at all" - Jackboy😯53/+
7
"library"
4 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Search goes to the store, not your Library, book Search down too. No way to search my own library. It automatically goes to their store. I WANT TO FIND A BOOK I HAVE. 👎🏽 Also, book search used to have a memory. Keep the search when going back to check out another result. NOW IT DISAPPEARS. YOU HAVE TO …" - DS. .
8
"long"
3 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Just doesn’t fulfill my reading needs. First of all it takes way to long to load anything and I have great connection second they don’t have any of the books that I am looking for including hatchet, lord of the flies etc many things should be fixed not the greatest at all" - Jackboy😯53/+
9
"anything"
3 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Just doesn’t fulfill my reading needs. First of all it takes way to long to load anything and I have great connection second they don’t have any of the books that I am looking for including hatchet, lord of the flies etc many things should be fixed not the greatest at all" - Jackboy😯53/+
10
"apple books"
3 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Trash. Apple Books is trash you can’t export anything to Speechify. You can’t have your phone read it to you. And you can’t use it on Windows. The software is for the Apple ecosystem only. Can’t use it on a Kindle. You have to have Apple products …" - Ummyeahsoo
11
"store"
3 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Search goes to the store, not your Library, book Search down too. No way to search my own library. It automatically goes to their store. I WANT TO FIND A BOOK I HAVE. 👎🏽 Also, book search used to have a memory. Keep the search when going back to check out another result. NOW IT DISAPPEARS. YOU HAVE TO …" - DS. .
12
"highlight"
3 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Search goes to the store, not your Library, book Search down too. No way to search my own library. It automatically goes to their store. I WANT TO FIND A BOOK I HAVE. 👎🏽 Also, book search used to have a memory. Keep the search when going back to check out another result. NOW IT DISAPPEARS. YOU HAVE TO …" - DS. .
📋 All 27 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").
Just doesn’t fulfill my reading needs
First of all it takes way to long to load anything and I have great connection second they don’t have any of the books that I am looking for including hatchet, lord of the flies etc many things should be fixed not the greatest at all
Trash
Apple Books is trash you can’t export anything to Speechify. You can’t have your phone read it to you. And you can’t use it on Windows. The software is for the Apple ecosystem only. Can’t use it on a Kindle. You have to have Apple products so you pay to read it on your phone MacBook it’s pretty limited!
Doesn’t let you access books you’ve purchased
I’ve recently tried to reread books I purchased in good faith only to be told I cannot redownload them. I never deleted them and I was not informed that I would no longer have access to them. I’m no longer buying books from Apple Books. It’s a total scam.
Being able to play and pause is a bare minimum
How have you not figured this out with the endless money Apple has. God forbid I use my Apple earbuds pause button to pause my book that I bought from Apple on an Apple app on an Apple iPhone.
Search goes to the store, not your Library, book Search down too
No way to search my own library. It automatically goes to their store. I WANT TO FIND A BOOK I HAVE. 👎🏽
Also, book search used to have a memory. Keep the search when going back to check out another result. NOW IT DISAPPEARS. YOU HAVE TO TYPE IN YOUR SEARCH...... AGAIN 👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽
Search in this app is now BROKEN.
MORE!!!- the process of Red underlining Text in a book is so stupid!! You have to highlight it, then highlight itself, then you have to highlight it again, then you have to go into the menu and pick the red underline, and THEN, you have to select it again because it deselectED itself to F-N DEHIGHLIGHT IT!!!!!! HOW STUPID IS THAT?!
Also, book search used to have a memory. Keep the search when going back to check out another result. NOW IT DISAPPEARS. YOU HAVE TO TYPE IN YOUR SEARCH...... AGAIN 👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽
Search in this app is now BROKEN.
MORE!!!- the process of Red underlining Text in a book is so stupid!! You have to highlight it, then highlight itself, then you have to highlight it again, then you have to go into the menu and pick the red underline, and THEN, you have to select it again because it deselectED itself to F-N DEHIGHLIGHT IT!!!!!! HOW STUPID IS THAT?!
Money
Yeah it costed money just to read one book one star
False information
It says "No need for subscription" but it actually makes you pay for books 😠
Terrible
Terrible can’t buy or pay for books
Inappropriate
This is a bad app because it had inappropriate pictures on it
Horrible
It was wonderful when I was able to highlight and look up words, but that has stopped
I will have to join a different book club.
I will have to join a different book club.
Tried everything
It doesn’t let me open any books. I’ve reinstalled the app, shut down my device, forced the app closed, checked iCloud and my iOS is up to date.
Lost Access to PDFs in Apple Books After Inactivity
I downloaded a lot of PDFs for reading and studying, assuming they’d be stored permanently. However today i discovered that i can’t access them anymore after not using them for a year and a half. The files are visible on my library but i cant open them. They all have small cloud looking icons on the bottom right corner. Is there any way to recover them or redownload them? Really appreciate any help.
No way to hide the Store
There is no way to hide the advertisements in the Home tab and make the Library tab their main page when opening the app.
In addition, there is also no way to load ebooks onto the app through syncing.
In addition, there is also no way to load ebooks onto the app through syncing.
Not highlighting
When I’m reading a book and I want to highlight something with the pen. The highlighting part moves to another section of the book page. It doesn’t stay on the same page or paragraph.
Read books
Yes
Randomly uploads portions of the book to the cloud, annoying!
This app was my main app to use for reading. About six months ago, after one of the updates, it started glitching and uploading my currently read book to the iCloud, even during reading and even in an airplane mode. As a result, a portion of the book is always in the cloud and is not available off-line. So when I’m reading the book, sometimes I just come across a bunch of blank pages in the middle of the book. It’s especially annoying when I’m off-line (ie in flight) and cannot simply re-download the book from cloud.
I’m sure Apple is aware of this, but it’s not in a rush to fix it.
I’m sure Apple is aware of this, but it’s not in a rush to fix it.
Don’t use for annotations, it will spontaneously delete all your files
I was using this app to annotate my notes for school. For a year, I was doing just fine using this app for my note annotations. A few days ago, after restarting my iPad, all my notes disappeared. After a 2 hour call with a senior specialist, no resolution was found, my year long notes are all gone. Horrible bug issue.
It's really terrible but they don't really care
So many people already complained for years - they don't care because they want to force their icloud into this app. Keep uploading your stuff to the cloud and when you are offline you cant read. No matter what you do, really, i am trying for years, they will keep removing your books from the phone, or otherwise you turn icloud off then they remove your entire library off the iphone. There is literally no way to get rid of this miserable iCloud mess. They like it like this, and will never put a simple button to f let you keep a certain book on the f device. Terrible.
Latest update wont play my books
Getting this program to play anything other than app store books is a waste of your time.
Sync issues
Syncing between devices is terrible and incredibly frustrating. It often does not work.
Boring no cash prizes.
Boring no cash prizes.
App is bugged
I bought this manga a while ago and tried downloading it so I could read it but no matter how hard I try the download is just frozen and when I go all the way out of the app it restarts and I tried deleting the app and redownloading it but now all my want to reads are gone FIX THIS
No full screen
A lot of wasted screen. Give a full screen of text please. How hard is that?
Yeah no subscription required
Only have to buy every book (use liby)
Doesn’t show total time read
Compared to Audible, this app doesn’t have as many features to customize. Apple sort of just forces what they think is enough without any solid updates. It would be helpful if I could change what’s viewable in the player in terms of listening time. Time elapsed in chapter is already present as it time remaining. But time listened:time remaining would be helpful.
The audiobooks experience needs work
It feels a little unfair to give this two stars because I think the experience for traditional ebooks is great. However, the audiobooks experience needs serious work.
The biggest issue is there’s no way to add a manual bookmark in audiobooks. This is basic, and has actually made me go to audible.
There’s also many books that don’t have chapter titles. That paired with the lack of bookmarks makes the experience pretty frustrating.
As long as I’m asking for things, it would be nice if Apple provided the same syncing features that audible and kindle offer if you have both the audio and print version of a book.
Hope they update this soon!
The biggest issue is there’s no way to add a manual bookmark in audiobooks. This is basic, and has actually made me go to audible.
There’s also many books that don’t have chapter titles. That paired with the lack of bookmarks makes the experience pretty frustrating.
As long as I’m asking for things, it would be nice if Apple provided the same syncing features that audible and kindle offer if you have both the audio and print version of a book.
Hope they update this soon!
No
So laggy yet so annoying
Sentiment summary
85%
Positive (4-5★)
4%
Neutral (3★)
11%
Negative (1-2★)