Google Play Books Audiobooks App Reviews

Why doesn’t page turning work with Speak Screen on iOS? Speak Screen. With the feature activated, you can drag down with t********** on any screen to have the text read out to you. A floating control panel appears allowing you to adjust the speed of the reading.

Even on good WiFi, audiobooks don’t download. Streaming is constantly interrupted by error messages.

I really enjoy this app. I just wished it had the feature of uploading your own Audiobooks, if so, my life would be so much easier.

Small detail but it makes a big difference. The old page flip animation in landscape mimicked turning a page in a real book. The new animation is like you have a xerox copy of a book (2 scanned pages per piece of paper). It is really distracting while reading because the page animation is too long. Please return to the old page flip animation style. If you are going through the effort to mimic a real page turn make it look like turning a page in a real book!

There is so many free books it’s awsome you have to get this app !!!!😃😂

It has a bug. When I highlight something + adding notes it doesn’t save it from time to time.

It crashes and crashes and crashes on my iPad. The Kindle app is the Rock of Gibraltar by comparison. As soon as I’m done with this book, bye-bye.

C’Mon google. Just copy amazon kindle app. Add collections feature at least.

Since the most recent update the app is force closing when attempting to read a book.

I started buying my books on Play Books because when they say a book doesn't have DRM it actually doesn't have it, unlike Kindle. Another plus over Kindle is Latin is an option for translation and the current series I'm reading -Terra Ignota- makes that a highly useful feature. Books also keeps my current reading place well cross-platform. Unfortunately, the iOS version of Play Books is disappointing. Besides it just not being a very nice looking app, and lacking some options with selected text (please automatically display a definition when I select a word - an obvious missing - and I’d like to be able to share definitions, translations, etc. of selected text), the worst part for me is the highlighting feature is completely s****** up. I use highlighting a lot. When I look a word up I like to review them later so I use a color for that; then a color for grammar or spelling mistakes, another for storyological problems. I can reproduce a few different highlighting issues. Selecting a word and looking it up often unselects it in terms of the color and handles but not for 'real'. If I then press a highlight color the highlight remains invisible but the tool shows the highlight as being removable with the x. Other times after the definition lookup the word appears highlighted by a color but is not and I have to select it then highlight then remove the highlight to clear it completely. Leaving a page and coming back often dumps the highlights. Sometimes highlighting a word causes other highlights to appear on the page, which I never made, including partial words, even through page turns. And the highlights made on iOS Books do not reliably appear when I check them on Android, though they seem to be fine in the other direction - Android to iOS. I had hoped this latest app updates would solve the issue but it didn't. If I want to read the book and have the highlights work I can always use the Android version but that is frustrating to have to switch platforms. I need the highlighting to work properly on iOS please.

As is usual with Google, the new update is not as good as the original. The new version is slow, unreliable, and buggy. Highlights only show on the page open when loaded. Loading takes an inordinate amount of time. Crashes are frequent.

It seems like with the new update the iPhone won't sleep if the play books app is open. This is bad news for me because I often go to sleep reading, and count on the auto shut off. Can you please make this possible again!?

We recently moved from exchange to google. We are unable to share documents with Play Books. This was a useful feature that I can’t seem to utilize. I’d love for a share feature within the application.

Can hardly read a book. Crashes as soon as I open it. Takes forever to load.

Why doesn’t App Version 5.0 page turning work with Speak Screen on iOS 12.0? It STOPS on EVERY page!!!! Speak Screen. With the feature activated, you can drag down with t********** on any screen to have the text read out to you. A floating control panel appears allowing you to adjust the speed of the reading.

I have been using Google Play books for years, I have temporarily switched over to the iOS platform and feel some of the Android features like read aloud should be added.

Easy access to books.

I like the read aloud option but I don’t have this option on my iPhone why? I like to read but when I am at work I can’t look at my phone and read the read aloud option will at least let me listen to the book while I am at work please get this option it’s ridiculous the iPhone doesn’t have this option from google

Tried audio book and it says play preview but you can’t here the whole thing why?

Literally unusable. Crashes literally every single time I try to highlight text. Used to work fine.

Compared to the iBooks app, the Kindle app or even many PDF readers, this isn't a good reader, especially for academic or scholarly work. Selecting text is a huge pain (the app always seems to want to turn the page rather than drag the selector bar); highlighting only synchs intermittently between the iOS app and Google books in my browser; and support for Apple pencil is pretty minimal. It's a shame because the selection of free public domain works is so good.

I love to read when I have time and this app has proven in my opinion to be great. I have purchased various books and novels without having trouble with the download, I even can download them anytime on my cellphone without any issues. Keep up with the excellent job!!!

I’ve highlighted information for several meetings, all gone. Sometimes you cannot highlight information. Syncing to other devices, terrible. So I’m through.I hold the app just in case there’s a miracle update that reports.I wouldn’t give this one star.

You look up authors names or the book title and it doesn’t give you the accurate results. The author and title are nowhere to be found even though the book is on Google Play. There search function is from 1980.

Walter

How do I purchase a book pass the sample? All I am given is the sample.

I want the option to read on my kindle

For some reason the app will not open after the application update. Even after I performed an apple IOS update the same results occur, black screen and returns back to the homepage.

No se coordinan los libros en dos dispositivos diferentes.

There are a lot of other excellent book readers out there, still this one is of the worst kind.

This is what I need 😊

great app! I would love the ability to turn pages with a tap of the apple pencil (without touching the screen, ex: the double tap gesture).

The app is deceptive. There is virtually no offline content. You must be connected to the web for it to work. Besides this, books will frequently not work properly. You have to close it then reopen. Google usually does better than this.

This app is so limited. It does not allow you to maintain your reading place if you need to go to another page. Secondly, the search option doesn’t work at all. Third, the highlight function is so impaired, that I need to keep trying tore- highlight. I don’t know how they get away with this.

Can only use one device. Super expensive to begin with. I have a textbook but I purchased this to make life easy, but it doesn’t work. Waste of money. I don’t recommend.

It’s good. Finding helpful so far. As new to google play in my iPhone iOS device too early to comment more . Even in future likely to switch phone from iphine iOS to android. As iPhone user have problems with space iCloud memory management Unnecessary cost ! either pay for space or buy another phone. Sad ! Bad practice from iPhone. Let’s all do healthy business Impressive google. Keep doing better. Best wishes to the google team.

There’s nothing comparable to the convenience of having a resource like this Bible at your fingertips with an easy to navigate app. Thank you for making it available.

If you can’t listen on a plane ride, then what’s the point?

Nothing in this App

Text highlights is totally broken. When text highlighted going back to the highlighted text jumps to wrong location and pervious text is no longer highlighted. Shame on Google for a broken app. Waited for several updates still not fixed.

The highlights feature is poorly designed and totally buggy. You have to select a single word, and then use selection bars to extend the selection. The highlight menu often gets in the way of the area you want to select into. You can’t extend selection across column or page boundaries. Once you have the selection you want, it often takes several presses on the color to get it to highlight. Then, there’s a 50/50 chance that the highlight gets saved correctly. If you rotate the page or leave the app, the highlight may be over a totally different piece of text, or it may no have been saved at all. Then, apparently, there is no way to retrieve the highlights. You can get a document with links to them, but not the highlighted text itself. Otherwise it’s ok. So, fine for bubblegum reading. Avoid if at all possible for serious reading.

Load of c*** so far. Tried to open in iPad and iPhone. Down load it many times now. Can not open it? Come Google. Get it together and sort this mess out. You say it is easy to use. Fill like it is useless to keep trying. I can buy my books easy but can not get your app to work?

Play Books doesn't work on my iPad Pro. I uninstalled the app then installed it again, but still it didn't work. Fix the app, please!

I don’t see any price tag or option to buy. Only option available is SAMPLE download. How do I buy books here?

I downloaded a sample, read it, and then decided that I wanted to purchase the full version but there was no option to do so.

I highlighted information I needed to share at a meeting.It was all gone.This is supposed to be Google. Terrible,Terrible,Terrible. Terrible,Terrible instead of 5 Stars . I would not recommend to anyone. 8/13/18 still the worst. All those 5 stars are probably people working for google or relatives. Look at (see all ) You find other people who do not like the update.

The catalog is great and the fact that they offer audiobooks is also great but the app has two major problems (for a while now): I lost the count on the Number of times I have made all my purchases available off-line and then when I switched to my other account the app simply DELETES ALL MY CONTENT!!! And the second issue is that on lower speed internet connections the app simply won’t download content. It keeps informing the same error that it wasn’t possible to download the files. Sometimes I have to try for hours to download some of my purchases.

Other than that, forget it. Forget sorting your books, looking up word definitions or doing searches for words outside of the app. The search function used to work until Google ‘fixed’ it in an update. Now the search function just loads your web browser to the Google home page. Thanks Google! The bookmarks function is clunky at best. Translation rarely works as expected. Pages often get cut off at random, or the app sticks on a page and has to be rebooted. Google really should take a page from the Kindle app, which has far and away superior functionality on all of these fronts. I only use this app to read the books my partner has downloaded to it, otherwise I avoid it because it’s seriously frustrating.

GOOGLE I expected better from you. This is the worst app I’ve ever seen. It crashes on starts, it bugs in the middle, it destroys everything on my iPad. Cmon google step it up!!

When using the app with a screen reader, which requires switching to flowing text, the pages will not turn. Users must completely log out of the book and log back in to progress to the next page.

I’m using this app to help me read books in Spanish, but it seems that every time I get an iPhone update, it defaults to translating “Afrikaans to Afrikaans.” Going through all the time to scroll down to Spanish and then again to English gives no results either. I never know how long this will last. I really value this app as a language learning tool. Please fix.

We recently moved from exchange to google. We are unable to share documents with Play Books. This was a useful feature that I can’t seem to consolidate.

The android version allows you to mark books as read. It would be a nice feature for iOS. The iPhone version does not show some of my book covers. That needs to be corrected.

I just downloaded app and it doesn’t work. There’s no way to download ebooks or audiobooks and a pop up keeps saying “oops, something went wrong “.

I still prefer Android over Apple. The fact I can download google apps(especially the ones I have purchased content on) onto my iPhone is pretty dope. Easy features such as read aloud, night reading, and turning pages with volume keys are well done. Been using this app for over 4 years on android devices.

I purchased a book to my IPhone it charged me but I can’t find any where to download the book. I emailed Google but they never replied. Poor app in my opinion.

I gave Google’s new Audiobooks support a chance, because I own Google Home products. Playback constantly fails, and then it will not remember the last playback location, returning to the one before it failed. This happens when using voice commands with your Google Home or when casting from this app. The only way playback won’t fail is you either play it locally on your phone or use Bluetooth, which is what I was doing before (and will now return to doing) with Audible. So for ebooks? Sure, go ahead and get it. But if you’re looking to start using this for your new audiobooks purchases, I must suggest you hold off until Google works out all the kinks and it doesn’t feel like a beta feature anymore.

Like the app. But you should update it to tell your subscribers. That when down loading a book or a sample of a book that they have already the book or the sample. Thank you Linda Rudolph.

Can you PLEASE add the feature where you can turn pages with the volume button? or maybe by clicking on the margins of the page?? Also can you add a feature where you can import books from the iBooks app to the Play Books app?

I wanted to like Google when I heard they entered the audiobook market but their selection, quality, and overall app experience has nothing on Audible. Good try, but no thanks.

This is the best except when my mom wants to get a book she has to go to her computer and it takes more than 30 min!!! I will give you a 5/5 stars IF you can press that when it says “end of sample” so you can buy it and it’s really frustrating for my mom!!! And it always get stuck on the loading screen and on my side of my WiFi bar (and my WiFi bar is max) it will always get stuck! And if you fix this I’ll give you 5/5 stars

I highlighted information I needed to share at a meeting.It was all gone.This is supposed to be Google. Terrible,Terrible,Terrible. Terrible,Terrible instead of 5 Stars . I would not recommend to anyone.

App is lagging and won’t open. Have this problem on my new iPad and 1 year old iPhone. Not sure why but the app is not stable for me.

I read a fair amount of technical books and like to highlight passages, etc. This is the first Google Playbook I’ve purchased, and highlighting is a nightmare. The actual act of highlighting is not difficult. However, if you highlight a line on the left page, you can not highlight anything on the same line on the right hand page. Worse still, after highlighting, then returning to previous pages, the highlighting is all over the place. Words highlighted that were not originally, passages “double” highlighted - a REAL MESS. Also, there is no way to write notes in the margins. If you intend to read and highlight, don’t buy a Google Playbook!!!

I have an iPhone and still have all of my google apps. The only thing I don’t like is not being able to purchase books directly in the app or search for books. I’d give it 5 stars if you could buy in the app. I hardly use a computer anymore and it’s a pain to drag out the laptop just to purchase a book. Other than that, love it

The app keeps freezing, I can only read one page after opening a book cause it freezes and I can't turn the page. I can't exit the book, bring up the chapters menu, the book settings, nothing. I force close and reopen the app, but it keeps on freezing. Also, something that REALLY bothers me is that I haven't been able to upload the epub books I buy for about a year now. I've contacted the developer about this and posted it in a review, to both of which I've received NO RESPONSE. I've been VERY DISAPPOINTED in Google about the production of this app for a long time now.

It’s good.

I highlighted information I needed to share at a meeting.It was all gone.This is supposed to be Google. Terrible,Terrible,Terrible.

When I leverage the accessibility feature in iOS of “speak screen” the app reads the current page but then becomes unresponsive at the end of the page. The only way to revive the App is by killing it first and then restarting it. This needs to work like other e-book applications like Kindle and iBooks work to speak screen should be able to turn pages and continue reading. Play books used to be my favorite app but no more.

Google play book is not working on iPhone 6s

This is adequately usable, but the reading experience is inferior to both of the major competitors. Also desperately needs a way to organize books.

My rating is back to 5 stars. Love the functionality. It’s not spartan by any means, and all its features work without any glitches. Thank you for helping a nearly fluent Spanish speaker read in his second language once again. It can’t be more appreciated.

I love you it!! Thank you 👌

Can do more on an android than an iPad... IPad doesn't support the ability to highlight of or add notes.

Has become useless recently, very disappointed.

I've used many different eBook readers. I'll be honest, each has its own pluses and minuses. This is a very user friendly interface. If you use more than one like I do, it's a good addition to the tool box.

There is no buy option within the app. It seems like a common sense thing to do to offer the easiest way possible for people to give you their money for a product.

This is adequately usable, but the reading experience is inferior to both of the major competitors.

I want to read my ebook in and app that is not google play and so far this is not possible want a refund can't auto read or import my paid for ebook elsewhere 😡😡

(TLDR: no page forward from left side of screen) Pros compared to native iBooks: - text size, font, spacing far more customizable - text fills to the edge of the screen (finally!) - navigation to the "bookstore" is hidden in the left toolbar (no more tapping 4 different bottom-row icons by accident when I just want to read books from my library) - interface just "feels" more updated/streamlined Cons: - NO OPTION TO PAGE FORWARD WHEN TAPPING THE LEFT SIDE OF THE SCREEN. This is my biggest issue with the app. If you don't mind, then you'll probably really like the app. It might make it almost unusable for me - no ability to sort books into folders (while convenient in iBooks, the fact that they force an "all books" main screen instead of just uncategorized books makes it worthless to me, so in that regards it's not a big issue that play books doesn't have it) I only use it to read uploaded epubs so I don't know how everything looks for purchased books. However, I would like the opportunity to customize the blank cover that shows up with uploaded books, with my own image or text. That alone would entice me to use this app even without the ability to page forward from the left of the screen.

1. We need a easy to make a purchase on iOS.

When switching between account the previous downloaded ebooks were all gone and required fresh download. Wasting data and totally cannot read offline if switch to other account/have multiple accounts. Google! Please fix it!

Ok

I was just about to give it one star, but then saw the latest update includes background downloads. I have ‘lost’ several nearly complete audio book downloads because of the lack of the app being able to resume downloads. This is highly annoying when you are on a slow and limited data connection. Download resuming is a basic function and should have been in the first version. Hope that background downloads includes this function, but it didn’t get a mention and I haven’t been able to try it yet.

I bought a book S.M Reine “PAS” got to page 91 of 175 an it won’t let me read the rest of the book I’ve tried everything I could think of but won’t switch pages past that one.

Deserve negative number of stars.Broke down after 3 days. Asks for sign in but after putting in e- mail and password only sends me back to the start asking again for sign in. There seems to be no way to break away and get to read the book. This happened more than a dozen time. Too bad because the book was interesting.

Can you please add a read aloud option on iOS. Android has the option

This app has potential but doesn’t seem to do what it’s supposed to. I downloaded the app on my iPad and purchased s book for school. I had no problem reading the book for a week, then it suddenly stopped working. It circles around as if to be loading but never loads. A tech representative suggested different troubleshoot methods but none of them worked. I am extremely frustrated as I would have purchased this book through a different source.

Lots of orientation bugs (e.g. switching to landscape sometimes gives you two columns, sometimes not) or text being formatting incorrectly after switching. Also: no keyboard shortcuts with the Smart Keyboard: arrows keys should control pages.

All my purchased books have no images. Anytime there is supposed to be an image, it just says “image not available”, including on all the covers and photo inserts. When I download a sample, it does display the image! Does not make sense to me, and this just started only two days ago. I will wait to purchase any more books on my list for google play books until this is fixed. Other than this, it is (was) the highest quality of all the ebook apps. UPDATE: I thought it was fixed as I was getting images there for awhile, tried downloading some more books and “image not available” is occurring again! Please fix so I can always see the images when I open the book, I wii wait until this is finally fixed before making amy more purchases. Other than this glitch, all is good.

I don’t know what the problem is, but whenever I open one of my comic books it says that the image is unavailable. It doesn’t show pictures either.

sadly it's bit slow

This app has many problems, for example, I hi-lighted a sentence and latter resume reading, a wrong text from other page is hilighted!! Also, you can bookmark the same page so many times!!

It’s horrible that I can download this app but can’t purchase books. And messages say the books can be played. :(

This is the best except when my mom wants to get a book she has to go to her computer and it takes more than 30 min!!! I will give you a 5/5 stars IF you can press that when it says “end of sample” so you can buy it and it’s really frustrating for my mom!!!

The app has been great for me up until the most recent update. For some reason I am only able to read the sample and it will no longer allow me to purchase the entire e-book. Instead I am getting an error stating “books already purchased are available to read in this app.” I have not purchased the e-book at this point, what is the meaning of this? I have tried reinstalling and using the troubleshooting info, however, nothing has worked and it is extremely difficult finding an alternate way to get support.

this app is awesome not just because there are so many cost effective buying to getting a particular book but also because it allows the ability to upload pdfs from the google play web portal and allow it to sync ios app for reading

For whatever reason, every time my screen locks my pauses and I can nolonger listen.

I have written and written to Google Play Books about my issue, to no avail. Nobody answers my questions or addresses my issue, which is a MAJOR one!!! Often, in the books I buy, the words from one page to another do not correlate!! There are missing sentences, missing words!! I have to try to DECIPHER the meaning of pages that don’t have all the sentences on them that the author writes!! You make it impossible to contact you, and you don’t care to fix your issues!! Also, bought a sample, but the book won’t download. REFUND ME!!! Disgusted and fed up, having spent too much money on books I cannot read for you! Respond, or I will keep giving you awful reviews, which you deserve.

Ok so the app as a whole is pretty solid. But every time I try to play my audiobook aloud it doesn’t work, unless it is on mute. I find this annoying because it just stops me from having the luxury of listing to my book while eating or something. That is why i give this app 3 stars but otherwise, good.

I would give this app five stars if I could buy books inside the app but I can’t understand that that Apple and not Google but I still can’t buy them

I like very much this application. I am using on iOS as well as Android. I like very much the fact that highlighted text is stored in a Google document with all references, that I can review later. Nevertheless I would really appreciate to have possibility to create folders by Author or Theme or whatever in order to better organise my documents. Thanks.

I have always loved having the play books app. My library has grown as I am able to find more and more of my favorite books. However I go now to open and read and pages are full of nothing. All the pictures are gone and all it says is no image available. A lot of those images help tell the story. Or in some case it’s the story itself. My husband can’t even get his to open anymore. PLEASE FIX THIS!!!!!!!!!!

I am an avid reader & I love being able to pull up an app very easily & start right where I left off whenever I get the time. There is so many book choices to choose from, never have any problem finding what I need! Such a great app that I’ve had for years & I will always continue to use it!

The operation is not fluent, and there’s a lot of bug.

Bought it (I think), have a receipt for it but only get the sample that I’ve paid for twice!

Would be a nice feature to change it to pdf format or something....but I do enjoy it!

I have been using this app for years and it has always been a wonderful app. Till today when I got a ARC from a author and I tried downloading to put in google books says “something went wrong with the download” I have tried all day and it wouldn’t download. I love google play books because of the text to speech option and I can see all my books on all my devices and keep me on the page I am across all devices. But now it’s not working.

The app is fine, and while I do like it over the one I had before I still prefer this one over it. While I say that, I can't discount it's mistakes. The epubs that I mainly use Google play books for doesn't have a cover page to it, and I have to go by the names instead. There isn't any shelves to organize your stories by, at least not in the iPhone version which is something that the iBooks (apple's version) has over them, and I plead that they will change it in the near future. You also can't rename any of the epubs, another thing that iBooks let's you do.

This is a good app for books but not ideal in an iPad for people with visual challenges. Then reader function is bugged. It freezes the page after turning every time. This has gone in for a long time and has not been addressed in any of the updates. Instead they try to get you to spend money on an Android device for a better accessibility option.

I love this app. Love how the have a variety of free books.

This app is so limited. It does not allow you to maintain your reading place if you need to look back at another page. Secondly, the search option doesn’t work at all. Third, the highlight function is difficult to use. And lastly, there is no customer service agent to call for help. I don’t know how they get away with this.

If I could only give to this app a 0 start I would do that 😡. I bought an expensive book and when I opened it I could not see any of the images. The most important things of that book were the images. What I do? I decided to buy the physical book (much more expensive!!!!!!!) in another language that I do not understand!😡🤬😡😡🥵🥵😾😡😡😡😤😤😤

I love the app. And I love having all the abilities it does have BUT I do not love not being able to tell which books I’ve read, which I have not and other things. Having the ability to move them between folders would be pretty amazing. It would help out in so many ways that you can keep track of things. I use this app for my books, children’s books I read to my girls. And having to ability to sorta through them instead of having to browse SLOWLY would be very welcome.

Most books that are comics or pdf are now all “image not available”. Just started.

I have used this app for about three years and very pleased with it. The amount of material available through google book search is astounding. I am interested primarily in older history texts and documents and the app has been indispensable, basically bringing a major university library to my iPad. Since 4.1.x the text search function no longer works. For me this nearly kills its usefulness. It’s very cool that the pages now turn like actual pages but the price for this seems to be much slower downloads and NO working text search. I suspect this will get fixed at some point and when it does I’ll give it the full five stars it deserves. 05/13/2018

All my purchased books have no images. Anytime there is supposed to be an image, it just says “image not available”, including on all the covers and photo inserts. When I download a sample, it does display the image! Does not make sense to me, and this just started only two days ago. I will wait to purchase any more books on my list for google play books until this is fixed. Other than this, it is (was) the highest quality of all the ebook apps.

App will not download or display books comprised of images (comic books). The app will show the download is complete, but all pages will be “image not downloaded.” Until recently, deleting a bad download and trying again would sometimes fix this issue - but not anymore. Application has options “delete download” and “delete from library” right next to each other in the menu. If you accidentally delete from library, you lose the book - permanently. Google can’t restore the original purchase, they can only give you a refund - you have to contact support directly for this. Until the refund is processed, you cannot purchase the accidentally deleted book again, either. The app used to work for comics, but no longer. You are probably better off trying to purchase and read comics via the comic publishers own apps. Hopefully Google fixes this issue with either the content or the app soon.

I’m on my iPad Pro and the images don’t load in any of my books. How can I fix this

No dictionary. Cannot copy text. Highlight a word and search the web for a definition and you get a blank search page. Useless compared to the android app. I will be returning my play books and using the Kindle app instead. On the plus side, it displays text and the pages turn. E-readers should be more than that.

I'm giving it a three because this is a really great e-book app. It's much easier to use and I prefer it a lot better than the iPhone's iBook app for sure. But lately it keeps crashing on me, I tap on it and it goes to open but then crashes. I've uninstalled it a couple times, install it again and it's the same problem. And I'm getting extremely frustrated. It was working well until two weeks ago when it started doing this.

I would give this 3 stars. The app itself is about average for reading, but has no good features beyond the basics. But you can’t buy books in this App which makes it a real pain. Worse is if you go to google’s website it promotes this App... uh, ok.

Overall is good. But it is too annoying white splash screen when i flip a page in night mode. There were no issues like this in previous version.

I added a book to the library, I’ve activated “cellular downloads” yet my iPhone tells me it’s disabled every time I try to read or download it. I am disgusted. I’m deleting this app.

Absolutely love how it manages my personal ebooks.

Wish there were a Finished shelf, and also a Reference shelf. Glad I can read my uploaded PDFs as well.

Gr8

I like having my access to many different books & types of audiobook all day & night. Live concerts are also available too. Thank you!

I’m unable to immediately purchase the book after reading the sample ???

It crashes,high high lighted words missing.When you need them. Terrible.

Me encantaría que bajaran también clásicos de la literatura.

First you can’t even buy books on iOS. Second when you do have a book that you don’t want to read on the iPad it’s a pain. You have to use adobe DRM approved software and they all have terrible ratings. So unless you have no choice or the book is not shackled to DRM I would highly recommend getting it from another platform.

I don’t know what made my experience with this app so much different than everyone else’s, but I’m over it. I rented a textbook for school on this app, and I was excited that, if this worked out, I could start doing this for all my texts! No. I will never do this again. I’ll never put anyone I know through using this app. The table of contents and page numbers are totally messed up, and I often find myself flipping through the same pages over and over? In addition, I can’t get past page 32 using this app on my iPad. I wish I could get back the money I paid to rent this book on here, as well as the hours of my life I’ve spent sorting through this garbage.

I have a lot of ePub books. This is a great app. It would be perfect if there was a better landscape mode, stretching 1 page instead of split 2 pages, like kindle app.

Thank You So Much For the Books

I have used this app for months with all the books I have Purchased not to mention I pay for the app itself every month and now it will not open for no reason all I know is someone better fix this ASAP

My number 1 issue with Playbook is that highlighted text bleeds through to other pages. I did not have this issue with my Samsung tablet but I am having it with my Apple Air Tablet.

I really like the app, but it crashes constantly on my iPad Pro. Nearly every time I turn my device off and back on the app crashes.

Love this app! I use it everyday. I wish it had the 66 books along with the verses listed. Outside of that it’s PERFECT!!!

Pretty much every book in my library has margins that take up half my screen. The text is so small in all my books I can barely see it. They should have an option for a manual zoom setting for each book. I also should be able to search the contents of my books using OCR technology but I’m not able to.

Some pdf’s do not translate properly. When they are uploaded to play books using an IPhone, the docs freeze. They freeze to the point that you cannot even delete them. I have countless docs that are useless to me but I cannot get rid of them. If I could The rating would be a 5 star.

I can read their comic books on my iPad for free.

A big fan of this service.

I love this app

I love this app. I’ve tried the Books app that came on my iPhone and Google’s is much better. I especially appreciate that I can set the screen to black with white letters, which at night go to amber. It’s so much easier on the eyes. I also used to have a Kindle app on a tablet and I still preferred the Google Play Books over that, too.

Best and easiest app for reading my books

Calling my credit card company to get a refund!!!

Literally has been nothing but frustration for me... about a book at a discounted rate, and THATS how they get you... I want a refund on that book... I’ll pay the extra 15 for something that actually works...

It’s have lot better clarity rather than any other app and it’s also give sample book to find out that it’s interesting for you or not before you purchase

Every time I switch back to the app it just spins.

Still can be better.

Cannot search or purchase new ANYTHING. Only view what you already own. Pointless once you have red the books you already have which duh you read them THAT'S WHY YOU OWN THEM

Even free books are only read through free samples which I find ridiculous

Everything is fine except I cant use dictionary anymore!

The free sample is pretty much the index and introduction of the book. Maybe one chapter or half of a chapter might be apart of the free sample. You really cannot benefit from the free option. A free sample would start from the first chapter.

See I love this app, it’s great, the only issue I have with it, is that it apparently got rid of the option to create shelves for your books. I used to put my books in shelves by series, now if I want to read a series and I didn’t download it in order I have to scroll through all of my books to find them. Other then that I don’t have an issue with this app.

Warning: I’ve lost to expensive books. Google claims that they’re "hiding," whatever that means and demand that I perform all kinds of tests that I simply don’t have the equipment for. So I’m out two books. I have hundreds of books on Kindle and I’ve never "lost" a single one. So beware and don’t purchase expensive tomes here.

google play books 里面的highlight 功能太难使用啦

These updates on the audio player 🤨 it not work SMH.

When these are added, I'll change rating to 5 stars. A less cluttered interface will also be appreciated.

Can’t buy anything. I’m logged in but there are no options to buy anything all I can do is read samples

Scrap the 100, 120, 140, etc font and spacing sizes with a +/-; and offer more spacing choices. Needs more margin choices as well. Font selections are awful.

Keeps jumping, hard to highlight,I will try to hold on until adjustments are made,Because I enjoyed this app when In early years.When the issues are fix , I’d give it 5stars.

I love this app as depending on the system you use you can listen to your books which is a feature I love. I wish it read PDF books as well however, for some reason the latest update has every book regardless of form errors out. All I get is a message saying there was an error uploading the file. Just to be on the safe side I have tried to re-download one of my previously downloaded books from my IF app (Instafreebie) and I still get an upload error message. Outside of this first and only issue I have had with this app I would give it five stars however the fact that it’s not working for any new books I buy or books from the authors I review for I have to give it 1 star as I am now forced to use other reading apps rather than the one I want to use.

Can someone please tell me how to purchase books using this app? I could purchase them through my Android but when I bought this iPhone, it only lets me read them. What’s up with that? Can somebody help me? Until then you get a one star

I would enjoy the app if only it stop being unresponsive.I would love the ability to use Google play on iPhone.

I can’t even do anything, and it should not happened!

The latest update text highlights jump from place to place without any reason. Its very annoying must be fixed.

It was there and now it’s gone. It’s on my Android phone. Why not on my iPad?

Works great at home. Constantly stopped playing on a drive from SF to LA via I5 (and other times Internet wasn’t good) — which is pretty annoying. Would love it if it stored 5-10 mins (or more!) ahead, or if you could download a book ahead of time.

How are you supposed to search for a book to read, without having to go though the pointless articles? I search for books and I’m only given the option to “play a sample”

The bookmark functionality for audiobooks is missing. The book I'm reading now does not have chapters; it has a 17 hr continuous section instead. It's hard to find anything whitin the book since the app does not support bookmarks set by the user. Otherwise, it's a good app. It lets me listen to my audiobooks on virtually any device (Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, or anything with a web browser).

Can you please add a read aloud option.

Love the new features! Smart resume, bookmarks, etc. I think audiobooks should come with the book version, and vice versa, for when you want to read or when you forgot you earphones and you are at public place.

I can not play it

I really count on this app ,recently the pages keep skipping, it take a while for the high lighted or under lined and notes to appear.Please fix app so I can add five stars .Thank you.

Google Play books has it all; night mode, font size and type adjustable for different size screens, and a massive library of books. Excellent app.

iBooks can , play books cannot....why since it’s the same pdf. You get blurry text.

Unusable. Keep getting the message that something’s wrong.

It is a shame that one of the most venerable tech companies made this garbage app. While 30sec FF works fine, 30 sec REW oftentimes makes it go back some minutes. Also just pausing and playing again goes back 10 to 40 secs randomly. A true garbage for a google made app.

This is a serviceable barebones e-reader if you have to read a documents that isn't available in PDF or on Amazon Kindle. However, basic note-taking functionality is always broken on the iPad app. It is sometimes difficult to make notes and highlights; other times it's impossible. It's never easy. The text display is often not aligned with where the app thinks your fingers / pencil is, so it highlights the incorrect word. Adjusting the highlight is miserable because you have to grab the tiny circle at one end of the highlight and pull it, but this is very hard to do because the circle is not displayed in the right place. In addition, the pop up display for highlights and notes only shows up sometimes, and in many cases appears on top of the circle you are trying to move to adjust the text. Usually the result is that you cancel your own highlight and have to start over. If you succeed in getting the touch screen to register that you are trying to make a note and then manage to type your note in and save it, there's no guarantee you'll ever see it again: sometimes it fails to sync, other times it appears to be saved in your list of notes but doesn't appear on the screen when you look at the text.

I really hope iOS support TTS for this App. I enjoyed a lot having the App reading articles for me on my android device but now I use iOS ones more frequently so I’m not used to the absence of TTS. Would’ve been wonderful if it does.

Would love to get a dark mode, also a way to keep audiobooks & ebooks in sync.

Won’t let me download books using data. Says I need to change my setting to enable cellular data and I did and still makes no difference

This application provides an incredible selection of public-domain works, but it crashes often and can be terribly frustrating.

One of the nicest reading apps in terms of design, but really needs a lists feature

Total trash

Esta genial no se puede poner ninguna pega

I’m now unable to upload books from my iPhone, to my Google Play Book library. This renders the entire app useless to me. It’s a shame, it’s been my favorite ebook app for years and now I will be forced to find another one. There’s no way to contact support either.

App keeps repeating the same pages over when trying to use the voiceover accessibility feature and also app keeps freezing up. Hopefully a update will fix the problem. Thank you.

The images are not loading and the texts are also not loading please fix ASAP!

Pretty decent ebook reader, although there is this annoying bug that doesn’t allow me to zoom in unless I rotate my screen and try again

Also, everytime I open the app I have to see lewd books that I assume represent the reading habits of people in Turkey with similarly lewd cover photos I find untasteful with no option to change recommendations

I much prefer this app over Kindle for PDF and Word docs.

Literally the worst app ever! it doesn’t highlight text at times and sometimes it’ll highlight text I never wanted. It so unusable and terrible. The actual website wasn’t that good either. I would give it zero stars if I could

If you want to read your google books, open them in Chrome. I don’t think Apple wants this app to work. It doesn’t load pictures within books, and it’s regularly unresponsive. The Apple brand app doesn’t have these problems, but their selection of classic literature is much worse and more expensive. Google is the superior service, and apparently Apple agrees or they wouldn’t be sabotaging their own apps.

I’ve been using 4 years this App my old Samsung, but at my new job I have to usé one IPad , and really miss many options, just like how to fix the letters, or some texts in second plan, this app its wonderful, and free... thanks google

I want all of my money back for book purchases, please. Can not download any of them. ???

There was one book I didn’t have and I wanted to have a good app that I could read the whole book on but I tried on this app and it just gave me a really short sample. Wouldn’t get unless you just want to get a taste of a book

Crashes every time when displaying books with only "original pages" available on my iPad mini 4 running iOS 11.2.6. Super annoying! Please fix!

But there’s a bug when playing audio from epub3

Google, are you kidding? I uploaded 54Mb pdf file and it turned to 1.4 Gigabytes in your app!!!

Highlights have to first be selected then chosen instead of a quick highlight feature as in kindle. Highlighting is also confined to only what can be seen on the page. Continuous highlighting across multiple pages needs to be added to make highlighting more practical. I've been requesting this feature within the app feedback for over six months with no improvement. Highlighting and notes also have various other bugs that keep getting overlooked.

I can read any books! I get an asinine error message that state “cellular data disabled” and states this should be enabled in settings but IT DOESN’T STATE WHERE!!! Stupid!!!!

Nice app. The newest update fixed my unreadable books. Old review: The app doesn't make it clear how to purchase books on Apple devices. You have to buy the books on the website, then read the books in the app. I like the night reading function. I can't view any of my purchased books in the app. It freezes whenever I attempt to open them. I have an iPhone 6. Ripoff.

The biggest problem with this app is that it doesn’t keep your place when it crashes. The words “network error” might not be the apps fault, but the fact that I can’t go back to where it left off is. Also, I cannot seem to get it to download the audiobook. The network error, I’m sure, would be resolved if it would just download the book, but it won’t. Even on my Wi-Fi doesn’t seem to want to download the book in the background, and gets continues network errors. Once these issues are solved, it’s a very nice looking app. But, it is currently barely functional.

You can only do one at a time unless you have two devices such as a desktop and cell phone. Annoying! Less devices being used the better!

The app works but is barebones compared to audible.

I like the layout and the progress info and such, but it seems to be very buggy. Doesn't respond to Bluetooth-initiated pauses/restarts, nor lock screen sometimes. No options to change the skip amounts (30 seconds only), that would be nice. I'm only going to keep using it until I finish my free audiobook.

Getting better. Thank you for your time!

Dismal search ability. The program wants to corral you into looking at their own preferences, and pays very little attention to Giving you control. The pages or more promotional tool with the clear slant towards what they want to sell. But this is typical of Google

Good app overall but, in the iPad version at least, I have an issue. Whenever I follow a link there is no quick way to go back to the page I was reading, short of bookmarking it first. Annoying and counterproductive.

Biggest complaint, when clicking on a link to go to another page does not have a “go back” button so you have to remember what page you were on

If you love 2 read on the go, look no further than here friends.

Fair prices. Ease of use. I would recommend.

Maybe I’m an idiot but can’t find a sleep timer setting for audiobooks and app doesn’t sleep with iOS sleep timer.

The app works seemlessly for purchased and uploaded books. Simple interface that always keeps my place.

If there’s a sleep timer for audio books I can’t find it.

It’s a great language learning tool, but the translate feature stopped working and, 10 or so updates later, it’s STILL not working. Uninstalled and reinstalled. Cleared data, everything has been tried. Much to my frustration, I’ll just keep having to wait for updates so one day I can finally go back to the books I downloaded (and paid for) in Spanish.

I listen in my car and make deliveries multiple times a day. It never stars in the same place I left off and the connection buffers way too much. But hey there's no membership fee👍

I don’t own any e-books through Google Play. But as a stand-alone e-reader, Google Play Books works quite well—and may be one of the most accessible e-readers available. The Material design language works especially well here, providing a clean, intuitive interface. The app also has all of the features expected of an e-book reader, including the ability to highlight, annotate, bookmark, &c. Like Marvin (another excellent reader) it allows multiple colors of highlights, which is nice—though only one color of bookmark. For my purposes, the killer feature is the ability to synchronize highlights, annotations, and bookmarks across devices, via Google Drive, which is really handy. That said, Marvin provides a lot more settings and features. On the positive side, that makes it a far more flexible and configurable e-reader. On the negative side, it also likely provides a level of complexity that most users will never touch. Given that, if you’re casually reading books, Google Play Books is probably the best e-reader for iOS. If you want more customization options, or take a lot of notes, I’d also check out Marvin.

Google’s help docs indicate that a built-in dictionary (including offline) exists for the iOS version, but it is nowhere to be found in the current version of the Play Books app. It seems that this only exists for Android. Please implement into the iOS version.

Where's the snooze button? Come on please add a snooze button. And iPhone x support thanks.

I have an iPad Pro and bought a book for class on here. I can’t view it on the app whatsoever, and I can’t even look at a preview for other books. Garbage.

App completely freezes after touching the screen once.

Excellent application, wonderful layout i have adjusted to the application very fast. My opinion would be too download this application.

Every single time I try to search for something the app crashes. Every time, and the second I tap a letter to put into the search bar. App is broken

What do you geniuses assume will happen by leaving negative reviews in the App Store instead of emailing the developers!?!? DELETED FROM THE APP STORE LIKE THE OTHER APPS!!!! Some of us used real money to buy our books. Please stop being lazy and contact Google instead about your issues! Smh

Update 5.0.3 fixed my problem with misplacing highlights. Hope it also works in future updates.

I’ve been using this for my ePub books, and it has been working well. With the last update, the formatting is messed up and text runs right to the edge of the screen.

It's great to find a place where you can find all the interesting things you want to read about! And mostly for free. Did I say that out loud? Oops. Fantastic app!

Great app! Easy to use.

Cant access my books. Just shows that little spinning circle thing.

Reading experience is flawless on iPhone. Syncs reasonably well when I switch back and forth between reading on Android to conserve battery on the iPhone. Most of the books I buy are cheaper from Google than from Apple.

Why do you not offer infinite scroll (continuous vertical scrolling) for ePub? I’d love to replace Apple Books (iBooks), however without it, I’ll stay with Apple’s Books.

I just used this app because I had 5 bucks back to get a book on Google play. But Truth be told, the 5 dollars don't worth the lack of quality of this app. Highlighting text is very limited, and it does not sync properly when you are reading in multiple devices. Furthermore what you highlight in one device does not show in the other. Useless app

Please optimize for iPhone X screen!!

Some times it works other times it just fails and fails badly. Google still doesn’t seem to understand ePub or support what is possible. Interaction is clunky and slow or non responsive. Doesn’t always render correctly and swear they’ve been sending PDFs that don’t reflow and look horrible.

Th concept of being able to the read the book is great but when it comes to highlighting and clicking on words the system is very slow. I’m using on an iPad Pro that has all updates so not sure why the app is so slow and lags when you click it highlight words.

Worked wonderfully. Got an Apple phone. Worked well until last update now keeps crashing or will just open and not let you use. I buy books on this and now I cannot read them. Complete letdown. Hate it. Do not use it.

Please

Downloaded books get deleted after switching to another account. I have been using play books for years and personally it’s my favorite book reading aap . On previous versions of this aap the user could download books on different accounts and the books won’t get deleted after switching the accounts but this update deletes books after switching account . I will give 5 stars once this issue is fixed.

I'm so thankful that Google decided to digitize and preserve the writings that may have been lost in this digital era. Their work has been a treasure trove for people like me who feel that the only true way to have a complete picture of our past is to continue to read the writings of those who have preceded us. And if we don't know our history we are sure to repeat the worst parts of it. Thanks, Google. Now I can take thousands of interesting and thoughtful people with me in my relatively tiny purse.

I get to read books yay!

The updated app freezes after opening. Had to uninstall and re-download everything.

In some reason some books shows spinning wheel for a long time after page flip. Device: ipad air 2. Isbn of ‘bad book’ 9785496029513

I think this is the problem with that book because this same problem comes in my google playbook app also . The book is Indian store " Indian Polity - M Laxmikant fifth edition "

I have had an Android Samsung tablet for a few years now and been using google play books ever since I got the tablet. So I have a lot of books in my library that I accumulated over the years. Books that I bought from google store as ePub file formats and, ones I uploaded my self as PDFs. I personally became fond of the app for organization and style! So when I bought a new iPad and set it up I, was glad to see the google play books app on apple App Store so I immediately downloaded the app to retrieve my books, as I am not a fan of the iBooks app. Sorry for the irrelevant introduction; for me the app looks nice and familiar and it works just fine with no issues but, the reason I gave the app two stars is because I noticed that when I downloaded a pdf book that is only 38 Mb in size, it took 1.5 Gb of storage while ePub books didn’t take much. There probably is a conversion factor however, as far as I know that apple devices are able to read PDFs even though ePubs are the most popular nowadays! So if there is a conversion factor, why convert a pdf in the first place if an iPad is able to read it? Why not just download it as it is to read? And if a pdf is not being converted, why is it taking 1.5Gb of storage for a book that is only 38Mb in size to download? I don’t know if this is a fault on playbooks app side or apple side! Either way it is ridiculous and I hope it gets addressed somehow.

Wished the highlighter feature worked better !!!! And that I could see the a full list of books a could purchase right from the app. I hate the recommended section and the articles.

Nothing was explained when I purchased the book, it almost looked like only available for Androids. Finally googled something to find out what to do to get the whole book, not just the preview.

The app is completely frozen. I’ve closed it out multiple times and turned off my phone but it still won’t respond.

The updated app freezes after opening. boo

I used to love this app, but since the new version of iOS I can’t read anything on it anymore.

This app is terrible. The text in some of my books is blurry. Some of my books are clearly scanned in and I am not talking public domain books these are recently released. I am done purchasing books in the Play Store. There are also times when books disappear from my library and need to be downloaded again. You would think they would put a little more effort in user interface too. Google needs to focus on what they do best SEARCH ENGINES !

App is simple and easy to use. Downloaded it because I can go cross platform with it. Weirdly enough, it's always synced right on my phone, but doesn't sync page properly on my android phone. Does keep notes and bookmarks though.

Constantly crashes and freezes on iPad Pro 2015

The app keeps getting stuck on home page and does not let me open it.

Used to be great. Have read lots of books on the app. Now it freezes upon opening. It will only work in airplane mode. No update yet. 😒

I have purchased about a dozen books through this app and it has become completely frozen. I can open the app but nothing responds. The app is currently worse than useless. It has my money and I have nothing.

It’s easy to navigate to download a free sample of a book. Unfortunately, it’s insanely difficult to find out how to buy the full version. I used their forum and it was useless. There is not a way to ask for help or report a problem. If there is, it’s not easily visible. I’ll be using iBooks.

I've had this on both android and iPhone. Excellent experiences on both.

Have Play Books on all my devices. A must have.

Minus a few glitches that happens every so often: 1when I remove a downloaded book and the app doesn't open until I uninstall and redownlaod the app (rarely) 2. Doesn't handle embedded footnotes well. (75% had issues) It works great for reading books on the go. Would like to be able to buy books from the app but I guess that's a limitation of running on an iPhone instead of a google phone.

While the app offers 3D page turn animations for books and PDFs, the app does not seem to support feature for comic books like the Android version. It’s my favorite feature and I wish it was supported. Until then, I just can’t give it five stars.

I have this app on my iPhone cause I used to have a Samsung and I didn’t want to lose my books. Now I can’t even read any of them. I go into the app and it’s completely frozen. I waited for a while to see if it would pass, I closed the app and opened it up again several times, I even restarted my phone but none of it worked. Please fix it cause it’s really annoying

After purchasing two text books on Google Play Books for the current semester, I’ve come to realize that this is not a good app for students. There are good things: the search is powerful, as one would expect from a Google product, and the navigation is easy. Unfortunately, problems make the app unusable. The syncing of those highlights from the web version shifted by a word or two. The highlighting process is slow and resets the view to the top of the page after each highlight. But most frustratingly, the app regularly freezes and shuts down when navigating notes and highlights. This particularly frustrating when attempting to reference notes that have already been taken. This is a well-reviewed app, and I’m sure it’s great for casual reading, but if you would like to have your textbooks on your iPad, don’t rely on it. You’ll only be left angry and wanting to throw your iPad out the window.

Robust and versatile app.

Pretty amazing.

Wish you could rotate the page on IPhone

Doesn't work at all for iPhone or iPad...please fix asap thanks

I’m a iOS user and I only get samples of free books I don’t understand why is that

I can’t access any of my books since I updated. This update needs to be fixed soon. I need my reference books. Please help. Dissatisfied customer.

Staying one star til it’s optimized for iPhone X. Been a month, no excuse.

App doesn’t save my place where I left off in the book when I exited out of the book. The highlighting feature works like c*** and they don’t even have yellow highlighting. Amazon Kindle app is much better.

I am not able to use this app after the app update

better than iBooks, especially for scientific books.

App refuses to respond on my iPad.

The text is not clear on iPhone. It's fine on Android. the experience on iPhone is just awful.

Getting better. Thank you for your time!

Crashes every time I try to use it

Most of my reading is on my tablet which has a larger screen than my phone. I think the tablet is just mix of size and weight. The google books app is well set up for that usage. I recommend it. I use it for textbooks, novels, and the occasional graphic novel. I've had no problems with any of those formats.

Freezes and can't search my uploads. But the freezing is the worst. All my other apps are working fine. I am on iPhone 7, ios 12.1

Update 5.0.3 fixed my problem with misplaying highlights. Hope it also works in future updates.

I love the format it displays the books and pages with many good features

This was my preferred book app but I’ll need to move on if it can’t be fixed. It freezes on startup.

Text highlights totally broken. When text highlighted going back to the highlighted text jumps to wrong location and pervious text is no longer highlighted. Shame on Google for a broken app. Waited for several updates still not fixed.

This used to be a great app until these latest update. Now it won’t do anything. I can’t read any books of even see my library. It just locks up.

I can’t turn the page. Also the read aloud will only read one page and then I have to turn the page and activate it all over again. Which is impossible because the pages won’t turn unless I close the app all the way and reopen it. That’s unacceptable! I can’t even enjoy the new book I bought. I never had a problem with my android so maybe the app isn’t comparable with apple but still it’s so annoying.

Tenho livros e não abre o app mesmo deixando no wifi de 100mbps não baixa os livros e não deixa nem escolher os livros

I loved using Play Books to read as it has all of my books in one place, but the lack of iPhone X support has me looking for better alternatives.

I enjoy the Google Play Books selection, variety, and prices. More specifically, I enjoy being able to save my notes and highlights in my Google Drive for future referencing. The Google experience is simply the best.

This app is amazing

The app freezes at start. Tried restarting it and even the phone and I can’t use it at all. Can’t access all the paid books I have.

My only complain is that it doesn't have all the features that it has on the Android platform. I would love to have the option to organize the books that I'm currently reading and the ones that I've read and the ones that I haven't started to read as I can do on Android. Please Google, give us that option too.

I can't access any of my books because the app crashes as soon as it launches. Help!

I just wanted to read books on my phone. The entire process of this app is easy to use: searching for a book, purchasing a book, accessing a book offline no problem!

I had a few books purchased on my phone. However, I have recently went to use them and they are no longer there. I paid for them, so I’m extremely upset.

It’s impossible to search and download books unless they are suggested.

The app doesn't have the same options as the one on Android. You can't even browse books by genre.

I’m giving this four stars because in some cases it seems to work well. My biggest complaint is getting samples of books. I like the ability to view a sample... but once a sample, always a sample... in the app anyway. I purchased the full book and can read the entire book on the browser but as soon as I go back to the app it’s a sample again. I’ve tried deleting the download and even removing the title and then going back to the full book on the web browser and clicking “view in app”. Even if I’m in chapter one on the browser when I click to view in app, it goes back to the introduction and says none of the chapters are able to be viewed. Like it’s still a sample. So I’m annoyed with that but otherwise the app seems okay.

I have never ever ever once been able to read a book i’ve downloaded to Google Play. I downloaded a few free ones (just to make sure it works before I pay for any e-books). The app just spends and spends and spends and never loads. I go back to the app days later there is an image of the book I click on it and it spins and spins and spins and never opens. Each time there’s an app update I update the app in hopes then I can read in the book in Google play but no I click on a book and it spins and spins and spins and spins and never opens. You would think it being Google, you could trust it would be a top notch product, but this app has taken Google down a few notches in my estimation. 😡

Some e books wont load you stay waiting forever and downloading it doesn’t help. Please fix or refund

Pro 1) for someone with an android phone and an iPad it's heaven. I start reading any book anywhere and can simply pick up from any device. Even from my desktop computer. 2) they safe all the notes and high lights in a separate Google doc file. I can simply imagine making a book report by simply marking up and adding notes on the go. Cons 1) a bit slow on ipad 2) the upload feature is very moody

Google Play now only works (doesn't freeze completely) in airplane mode. Iphone and two ipads with different ios versions. This happened at the same time for all three devices. Clearly Google is at fault here, but they refuse to provide support. Use Kindle, Audible, Nook over this failed app. Should be Zero stars. There is no need to go through a long updating books every time you start this app. It should open up in my library instead of trying to sell books. No more Google book purchases until they get back to the previous level of functionality.

I downloaded Play Books on my iPhone and used to love it. Now since it has updated, as soon as you open the app it freezes up. Tried several times restarting my phone with no luck. Can’t even unfreeze the app long enough to log out. Please fix the issue.

I have an android phone and an iphone, and this app does not function properly on iphone. The books show in the Library but never open when selecting them. I’ve tried reinstalling the app, logging out and in multiple times — and I get the spinning wheel indicating “loading” for hours and hours. My device is connected to internet and all other apps are working. Kindle is a far better app, never once given me an issue.

Crashes about 5 secs on opening, consistently. Help.

Thanks apple

Love it

From the last update, the app freezes when started. Tried restarting app, restarting iPad, etc with no success. Using iPad with iOS 12.01. iPhone 8+ with iOS 12.01 appears to function. Please update to work on iPads. Thanks

I use to own an android but I switched to iPhone. And I use this app to read my books 😕 but the app doesn’t open on my iPhone anymore. It opens for 2 seconds then turns off. I updated the app and phone, so I’m not sure what’s the problem.

Books take an insane amount of time to load up the first time :(

I try to read one of the books that I’ve purchased, but the app stops to respond after 20th page. Awful. I’m disappointed. On the Android everything works fine, though.

Your recent update just messed up the App, now it doesn’t work 😡

Купила книгу в Google Books, а читать невозможно, приложение зависло на одной странице, перезагрузка не помогает, книга не листается, так и висит на одной странице. Использую на IPhone. (((

iPhone 7+ won’t download books to library or open books.

Great reading app. Night option is priceless

and an option to make the page turning animation less obnoxious.

I started using this app 4 years ago, and I switched to Apple 2 years ago. I kept using Google Play because 1) I already purchased books 2) They have ebooks great for school and 3) it's a good app. I give it a 4 because the books are sometimes wacko or the free books don't have all the content so you have download another free version of the book. But the app never crashes, and it's easy to use.

It lets you sync your google play books to your phone using DRM-free ePub. What more can a man ask for?

I thoroughly enjoy Play Books. I love reading, so the accessibility of each book in my library is an absolute plus!

Worked flawlessly until this most recent update.

App working fine but no option for dictionary it just seems to have disappeared

The whole reason I enjoy audio books is because I travel A LOT! They keep me awake. Most apps allow you to download the book and play it at your convenience. With this app, you purchase the book but can't download. You have to stream it. That works fine if you are driving around town, except I don't need it then. Most of the time, I am driving in the middle of nowhere with no cell service. There are gaps of 30 - 45 minutes where I can't listen to my book. Quite frustrating. Will not buy anymore books from here.

Cannot say anything but it doesn’t work.

Best reader I've s we used

I open it and it hangs after a couple seconds. I sometimes can click a button before it does but freezes immediately.

I recently switched from Android but I’m still a play books fan. I only found one issue using play books in iOS. When using speak screen the pages don’t turn automatically like in iBooks and it only reads one page and then the app freezes. You can’t turn the page after speak screen stops. Get these bugs fixed and I definitely have to g** it 5 stars.

One of the best apps for reading ebooks with only one problem and that is when highlighting a word there is no share button to use third party dictionaries and translators(offline and online)

This app does not work after the latest update.

Works great on my Samsung phone but it’s terrible on my iPad mini. Crashes frequently and randomly stops responding when on-screen buttons are pressed. What gives?!

The app works perfectly and does what you'd expect.

No margins around text. Looks awful on single and double page layout. It makes reading very uncomfortable, terrible experience. They put the minimum amount of effort into this app. I like using Google for reading on my iPhone, but if i can't read on my iPad too, I'll switch to Kindle or iBooks as my go to app.

If a highlight is created in “flowing text” view, when switching to “original pages” view, the highlight doesn’t show up. Using the Get Help feature to try and find a solution to this comes up with nothing, and trying to find an email address or a way to directly contact an actual support representative or a support forum or message board seems impossible. I like using the app, it’s quite useful and well thought out. But there’s inconsistency in the way creating highlights works. I thought it would be pretty simple to contact Google support about this to see if there is a way to fix the problem, but the get help function in the app and on the Google Play website is about as helpful as talking to an employee at a retail store who simply tells you to read the package if you have a question, and if you have questions about what you’re reading, then they just read the package to you as if that would help. From a mega company like Google I think this is a pretty sad example of what “Help” looks like for an iOS App. It’s pretty clear that they don’t want anyone to ask questions or point out design flaws. Therefore, here’s One Star. Yes, it’s a “Free” app, but after spending over $100 on books in the Google Play Store, I think it’s reasonable to expect a much better way of actually getting a real person to help if things aren’t working the way they are supposed to. Compare this to the Amazon Kindle App where you can actually start a chat support session within minutes about problems with the app or with the books, and they try to work it out immediately and will even process a refund in the same moment if things don’t work out.

iPhone X support please. I love Google Play books, but I would love it even more if the app supported the iPhone X’s display.

"Speak Screen" support is terrible. It does one screen at a time. It doesn't turn the page. After it shuts off the book can't turn a page forward at all. iBooks is much better. It even turns the page for you when the screen is off.

As title states this app only works sometimes I try opening a book to just get the spinning wheel as it try’s to load my book

... that though I PURCHASE a book, I can’t even loan the dang thing to anyone. Would be 5 Stars if I could loan something I own. Quite ridiculous if you ask me, or anyone I’ve talked to about it. I get you can’t let people turn into book dispensaries, but come on.

The app keeps crashing on me so it’s very hard for me to really sit dow and enjoy a good book!

The book reader does fine, however the display often messes up. I do a lot of highlighting, in various colors. When reading a chapter I previously used some highlighting on, sometimes I’ll turn the page and the entire page is highlighted one color, turn the page the entire page is highlighted another color, turn the page and things are back to normal. If I click anywhere on the page that’s completely highlighted, and hit delete the entire page’s highlighting disappears, but I don’t know if what I wanted to be highlighted also disappears. I hope they fix this bug.

Ever since I updated the app, it won’t let me open my books and when I click on the “read” button it removes the download. Eventually the books open but it takes a very long time. Very disappointed because I’ve used Google books for years and never had a problem before.

Every time I open the app it and press read under my book it won’t open it. FIX IT!

This is such an intuitive and useful app. It is worlds better than iBooks, but that is nothing new when comparing Google products to Apple products.

It shouldn’t be this hard to contact someone about the app. My books were working fine until the update. Now they say they are downloaded but won’t open.

Normally, I love this app, but for about a week it has been buggy. It started out not being able to download the images for a book. I signed out of the app, and now can’t sign in. I press the “sign in” button and it simply does nothing. Deleted and reloaded the app, restarted my iPad and still, selecting the “sign in” button does nothing. Very frustrating bug.

I appreciate the X support, and the app makes much better use of screen real estate than iBooks or Kindle. But, unlike in iBooks, Instapaper etc, the indicator bar at the bottom is persistent in full screen.

It’s been a few months now google!!

Way too many restrictions.... big mistake that I “bought” an expensive book that you really do not own.

I love my collection I have accumulated....when I can read them. Without fail, I can begin to read and suddenly the app will freeze. So I move off my iPad to my iPhone and it does the same thing. It’s only certain books. Please fix this. I already prefer Nook but I enjoy using both. I may have to drop Play Books all together.

I’ve had this app for years now and every 3 updates it stops working then fixes its self! As of this moment it won’t even open! Please fix this! I’ve paid for my books and I’d like to read them.

Would be much better for reading

It doesn’t support iPhone X which is a real pain

I just feel like if I can’t highlight stuff, this is kinda trash lol. Am I wrong though?

Screen size is still formatted for previous model iPhones

W.....T............F...........

Since iBooks started shifting parts of my library to the cloud by some means I can’t control, I’m never confident of my access when traveling. Play Books is the answer. Easy to use and fast. Best of all, I control which books are available on my device

App is ok but missing some key features. 1. Not able to change page style when on landscape. Will only do 2 page instead of 1 page. 2. No auto night mode 3. Would like scrolling feature instead of just page turn. Will have to go back to Apple’s iBook until these features are addressed...

Why do no e-readers allow sorting by series and book number. FAIL

This is the best cloud book app ever.

Downloaded app selected some books. Error messages, crashed, app a mess. Deleted app. Joke. Waste of time.

Be careful when deleting books.

Trying to use highlights over multiple words on a textbook using free-flowing layout is astoundingly difficult. ‘Grabbing’ the bar to drag it across is hit-and-miss; it catches maybe 1 out of 10 times. The highlight itself is disjointed and not uniform across the text.

This software does the job, though I don’t like the interface as much as Apple Books. I use this one almost exclusively though because I can open my books on almost any tablet or phone, not just Apple ones.