I have tried a bunch of book reader apps on my iPads over the years. Every one of them feels rough and unpolished, compared to the sleek, delightful UI of Apple Books. Indie readers like Yomu have mobi support, markdown export for highlights, OPDS and other nice things, but I don’t really need those features. I just want a simple, cozy place to enjoy the books.
The one big issue I had with Apple Books was its Bookstore advertising. Ads in a supposedly cozy place is unacceptable. There was a post complaining about exactly that back in 2022.
Recently I found I can actually disable the Bookstore via
Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Allowed Apps & Features > Book Store
Yes. You read that right. A toggle for a feature in Books is buried in obscure Screen Time settings and hidden from search results.
Dark pattern concerns aside, that toggle does work, and it makes using Apple Books delightful again. I own the DRM-free EPUBs so Apple’s vendor lockup—another dark pattern—is no concern to me.
Thank you! I currently use Readwise Reader because it’s the only app I found that made it possible to read ePubs and PDFs cross-device in the same app. I don’t really need most of its other bells and whistles—e.g., its AI features—so perhaps the Books app could be a viable alternative.
At this point I just gave up looking for an alternative and converted most of my books to PDF and use Panels app for iOS/iPad OS /Mac, progress synced w/ google account and books synced via iCloud Drive.
Books has one significant issue for me continue using it seriously. Any download from the Bookstore is impossible to remove permanently. It remains in your purchase history forever. Even free downloads. The analogy is to have a history record of all books, magazines, and newsprints that you ever pulled from the grocery store shelf just to check out that attention-grabbing headline permanently attached to you for as long as you shall live. Not saying that I am the example of this case but, I would not want someone after my passing to be reviewing my account and be able see the magazines peeked my interest when I was young and wild. And I am certainly not happy that Apple is so thoughtful to store my “hidden” purchase history “in case I want to redownload things some day later”.
You might also want to look at BookShelves. Although it is on version 1.0, apart from a few little niggles it works really well. It can read most formats (non-DRM) and can handle enhanced Epubs very well. It also has a integrated Standard EBooks and the Internet Archive into the app, so you can search for out of copyright books
It costs £$€5.00 , but has a 10 book trial
My only issue has been library management, I seem unable to merge icloud and on-device libraries, although the dev has told me he is looking into it.
I downloaded Bookshelves, imported two books, and the next time I opened the app it greeted me with “Book Not Available” errors for both of the books. Apparently the backend database (along with the app) is vibe-coded—there are numerous signs—and could become corrupted at short notice.
Lora but no Georgia font is a horrific crime. The reading UI is ugly, a cheap imitation of Apple Books.
The ad post says no telemetry but the in-app “Disable Analytics” option is off by default.
I would never recommend a new, vibe-coded app to anyone. Especially one advertised aggressively on r/MacApps. It’s a guaranteed disappointment. Totally vibe-coded apps don’t age well. They peak at the moment you know of it.
Oh yes, it does. The only way you can get rid of that back history is to make a new iCloud account. Even then, for legal reasons, they memorialize your old account someplace.
If you want to take Apple out of the loop altogether, download Yomu … an Omoton Matte Screen Protector and Yomu on my iPad Mini even made my Kindle unnecessary…
Yomu is a lovely app, but unfortunately, unlike Apple’s Books app, it doesn’t support searching, highlighting and annotating PDFs From the support page:
Text selection, annotations or search are only supported for EPub, Mobi and Kindle formats but not for PDF or Comic books.
OP was talking about reading books specifically, so thats what I chimed in on, hence my Kindle reference. If we are talking about reading comic books, then Smart Comic absolutely destroys Apple Books.
And I am certainly not happy that Apple is so thoughtful to store my “hidden” purchase history “in case I want to redownload things some day later”.