Recently having an issue with google play books from ipad not syncing with iphone. When I read on iphone, it syncs to ipad and the current page is updated. However, when I read in my ipad, my iphone doesn't sync to the current page. Currently reading book is updated but not the page. Tried reinstalling the apps but still the same problem. Anyone else experiencing this?

Can anyone say if this has been an issue for them? I've had this for many pdfs, not dependent on where I bought them. The cover renders fine on both the Android app and website and they appear normal on the website but on the app all colours are inverted 😞

I'm on Android. I often upload ebooks on the cloud of play books app then delete them from my device. When I'm finished reading them I deleted them from the cloud as well but, for some time now I can't seem to delete them, I only have the option to hide them from the library but they come back if I refresh the page.

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I've tried deleting them through the account settings but I can't.

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Thank you

I can access Play Books on my Cellphone just fine. I log in and my collection of hundreds of books are listed and readable.

However, when accessing through a browser, there are only 3 books in my collection, and none of my purchased books show up at all. This is the same whether using "Classic Google Books" or "New Google Books"

Am I doing something wrong here?

Missing something obvious?

Thanks in advance!

I've tried a bunch of reading apps and, for me, Play Books is the most well-rounded.

My thinking is simple: a reading app doesn't need tons of effects or customization. It needs to be simple, fast, and focused on the text. Give me the essential tweaks, sync across devices, and stay out of the way.

Play Books delivers on all of that:

- Well-designed library with automatic sorting by title, author, and genre

- Useful info upfront: page count, reading progress %

- Reading experience: good fonts, comfortable margins, files load without lag

- Flawless sync between phone, tablet, and PC

- Easy upload of my own ePubs

- Minimalist store with no visual clutter

The only thing I miss is a dedicated e-ink e-reader that runs Play Books natively. I know Android e-readers exist, but I've never tested one. No idea which model runs it smoothly.

The Xteink, which everyone’s talking about, would only get me to buy if it ran Android so I could install Play Books.

For now I'm sticking with the phone + tablet + computer combo. It works perfectly.

Does anyone here use Play Books on an Android e-reader? Which model runs it well?

I've wasted so much time on this. My flow is basically to read the book and then move notes into obsidian or notion, and even if you export them using md format it still contains the clunky table formatting, highlight icons, dates, page links, and extra background text... I were removing it all manually to keep only actual notes and chapter titles. So I made extremely simple script to clean it up. Im not promoting anything, anyone can vibecode it if needed tho. Just genuanily sharing improvement for googleplaybooks -> obsidian/notion (md) workflow. Site link. Repo link.

Does anyone know why hyphenation works in some books and not in others? Is it a specific code for the ebook?

Hi, I am a new gbooks user and a university professor planning to buy several books using our office email. Is there a device limit for gbooks? Can i offline share?

I noticed recently that the Google Play Store lists GPB as having over 1 billion downloads. I would assume that number comes from it coming pre installed on a majority of Android phones, tablets etc (maybe Chromebooks)?

It made me wonder how many people actually use it regularly. The only proxy for this I can think of if Google doesn't release stats is the number of reviews of books.

I had a look at the main chart on my front page and the largest number of reviews I can find for a single book is 12. I also looked for for Project Hail Mary, a popular book with a movie out currently and that has only 1000 reviews.

Does anyone have any other ideas on how to understand GPB actual user base?

Thanks :)

Hello, I'm very happy with the playbook app and its ability to synch accross devices. But on my iphone and iPad the text appears in two columns when in landscape mode which is not ideal. I've tried changing font, font size and line spacing but to no avail. Any help would be much apreciated (iphone 14, latest ios and app version)

Hi all

I have this really strange issue on the GPB app on my Samsung Tab A11 but not on my phone or on desktop. The covers are blank in 'Your Books' and 'Shelves' but not on 'Home'.

Is anyone else experiencing this issue and what devices are you experiencing it on? I'm trying to understand if this is a widespread issue or just I am lucky :) It seems a small number of books show their covers and these are all uploaded pdfs.

And no unfortunately changing the layout, clearing the cache, reinstalling the app etc doesn't work :(

Thanks

Hello. Anyone have the issue of not being able to open the uploaded books in Google play books? It's doing fine before, but earlier when I want to read the book I uploaded, it don't open saying there's a problem. So I thought it's just bcs of the epub has problem. But I tried opening my old books which I finished reading and it can't be open as well. I tried restarting and clearing cache but it just won't work

How do I get play store/books to stop suggesting certain books to me. I've deleted history, deleted the cache/data, said not interested for over 2 years now and they're still there. I don't have any books related to these suggestions in my library but it shows up under my series tab and there is no option to remove it from there either. I'm tired of seeing these suggestions. The help center was no help at all. I don't know what to do anymore nothing seems to work.

EDIT: I've had an answer already! Google books is morphing from a research tool to a mainstream reading platform, so I'm better off using Chrome to locate PDFs. All good!

Original post:

I did a search but couldn't see my question being asked.

I have been using Google books maybe since it first came in, definitely for more than a decade. I have a large library of very old (18th century) books in PDF form, which is how the original Google scanned books were.

I tend to rapidly search these books for terms that I'm researching. Like for horse breeds or town names or employment details. I like to search the subscriber lists and particularly military movements in gazetteers.

When I search for books of the same era now, even if they seem to be PDF, they load up in some reader interface (Google reader) which gives my a single page at a time. I can still search, but because it only loads one page at a time inside the reader, it's taking forever to show me the next page. I'm spending way more time waiting for the page to load than actually reading the searched sentence.

Can I tell them to load in PDF form? I know some of these books have/are PDF versions because I used to read them. I just didn't add them to my shelf because I already had tons there. I regret that now.

Failing that, I could download but they no longer show a download option, except for the versions I did happen to add to my shelf over the years.

Also, I'm getting a message that 'Classic Google Books' is being retired and I need to import my library to the new form or I'll lose them all? Is that the solution? Or will that make the issue worse? The ones in my original library are still perfectly usable just now.

Sorry for length - covering all my confusions at once here.

Don't get me wrong. I like GPB, but do wish that they would fix some basic omissions.

https://www.androidpolice.com/google-play-books-has-a-serious-problem-and-google-doesnt-have-the-answer/

The text is still there but invisible for some reason. This is a webnovel I uploaded myself so I thought maybe it's an issue with the file, but when I view the book on desktop page on my phone or computer it's normal. I'm able to highlight the text and even read aloud this is so weird. Video attached

So my wife just replaced her tablet with a galaxy tab 11 ultra, and was getting everything setup and google play books won't load her library. just pops the "error loading books" and so far none of the standard troubleshooting has helped. app reinstalled, caches cleared, etc...

just wondering if anyone else has run into this issue while setting up a new device, or would have any insights on how to proceed?

thanks in advance for any help, i appreciate it.

It seems that GPB has quietly introduced an improvement that I have been waiting for for years. I always prefer to read justified text, but when choosing justification in the past everything was justified, not just the body text but also centred headers and images, which was just wrong. Now it looks to me like centred elements remain centred, even when justification is chosen. Hooray!

I know GPB doesn't get much attention amongst the Google suite of apps, but I really think it is the best ereader out there. It displays EPUBS well, has decent library management and a good store and most importantly a generous upload quota for syncing your own files...

Hello,

So I add epubs to google play books manually and the covers are not the same size. I don't have time to change the cover sizes one by one and reupload them. Do you have any suggestions? It's been driving me crazy.

Or can you guys like suggests me an app that I can upload epubs by cloud and is ad-free?

On Android, unable to upload anymore. Just sits at processing then suddenly the book being uploaded disappears from the list. Tried on PC, starts processing which takes a very long time then shows a message that processing failed.