One library, your way in
Home shows what you're reading and listening to right now; Library holds everything — books and audiobooks together — with shelves, collections, series and authors. Books get in seven different ways, and everything you do with them syncs through your own iCloud.
Home: pick up where you left off
Continue Reading at the top, then Now Reading and Now Listening with covers and progress, words due for review today, Recently Added, and your daily goal. Statistics is one tap away.
Library: everything, filtered your way
All, Books or Audiobooks. List or grid, sorting by title, author, series, date added or progress, search by title, author and series, and an alphabetical index down the side for big libraries. Authors are grouped by last name; series keep their order. Touch and hold any book or audiobook for one menu: read or listen, details, favorite, finished, open in a new window on iPad. Swipe left to delete; select several to move or delete at once.
Shelves and collections
Make collections for anything — a course, a series you’re following, “beach” — and put books and audiobooks in them together. Favorites and Finished are always there. The book card shows cover, description, series and your progress; edit the title, author or cover, or share the file.
Seven ways in
From the Files app — single books or whole folders. From the Share menu of Mail, Safari, Files or a messenger, and by AirDrop. Over Wi-Fi from a computer, through a page in the browser. From a WebDAV server such as Nextcloud or Synology — a book or a whole folder. From a direct link. From OPDS catalogs. And on iPad and Mac, by dragging from Files or Finder. Each way has its own short guide.
Free books and your own server: OPDS
Project Gutenberg is built in — tens of thousands of public-domain books with covers and descriptions, searchable, one tap to download. Add your own catalog by entering the address of the site: Calibre, Calibre-Web, Kavita, Komga and other OPDS servers, at home on your Wi-Fi or on the web, with a user name and password for private ones. Audiobooks from catalogs go straight to the Audio tab.
Your iCloud, your backup
Reading and listening positions, bookmarks, highlights, notes, words, collections and settings sync through your own iCloud — on by default, no account to create. Turn on Store Books in iCloud and the files follow too, so a book added on the iPhone opens on the iPad. Lexory keeps backups of your library data on the device, and deleted books wait in Recently Deleted for 30 days.
Good to know
- View, sorting and filters are remembered per device; they don’t sync.
- Search looks at title, author and series, not at descriptions.
- Books in iCloud count toward your iCloud storage; a book whose file is only in iCloud downloads when you open it.
- Wi-Fi transfer works only inside your local network and while its screen is open; links must point straight to the file. Details are on How to add books.
- Lexory has no bookstore and no account; OPDS catalogs show what their owners publish.
Free for 7 days with every feature, then one purchase for life.
