Google Play Books - Books & Comics App Reviews

Its generally good. Needs improvements 1. Background color for sepia has been bad for a long time. I request Google fix this and introduce more background and font colors for pleasant reading of off and other formats. For ref please check iBook and kindle. I am sure Google is capable of doing things better.

Seems like a great app, but loads books very slowly. Also, when changing device orientation (landscape / portrait), it takes a long time to reorient. Dont think its a hardware speed problem; iPhone 6s Plus.

I read a lot of books... Google books are often cheaper but I cannot recall the last book I have read in this app that did NOT have section that just will not load. I am tired of skipping 10 - 20 pages in every book I read. I have an iPad 2 as well as the newest iPad mini and this issue is on both machines. I think I will simply switch to Amazon and kindle. It is also not as easy as it should be to search and purchase new books. No direct link from your bookcase and looking for the right link will often send you to another useless page and not the "shop" section.

I normally really like Google products, but this is an exception. I bought my biology textbook from Google Play because it was the cheapest place, but I very much regret it. The highlighting is very difficult to use even when it does work. The page-turning improved with the new update, but it is still temperamental and I often have to swipe several times in order to turn the page. Additionally, it may only be my book, but it is very hard to navigate because the page numbers printed in the book do not line up with the ones on the scroll bar. Overall, I would not recommend buying books from Google Play to read on an iPad.

This app is useless if you want to read a book somewhere without an Internet connection. You would assume that once downloaded, a book would actually be stored on the device. Instead it downloads the book each time I open it. Ill stick with iBooks.

I like google books because the pages are in full color so it works well for comics and art books. However, the highlight feature is so painful to use. Was this because of iOS9 and force touch? There seems to be a 2-3 second lag after you press on a word to use the highlight feature. Then for the next minute you have to struggle to get it to highlight your select set of sentences. Trying to drag the blue bar take 2-3 seconds to notice your movement. Ugh. I will say I like that my highlighted text is automatically sent to a document with the name of the book in my Google drive. Another issue is that when using this in the split screen side feature, the page turn feature turns two pages at once. So I have to flip back a page every time I flip the page forward (2 steps forward and 1 step back). Please fix. Thanks!

Cant browse or buy books. At all. Even after downloading a sample. Pretty wasteful if you ask me. Google doesnt wanna sell any books!! Ha!

I have this app on my iPad, and when Im reading at home, it works perfectly for what Im doing. I have a bunch of e-book PDFs sent to me by a friend, which I uploaded to my Play Books library through my PC and then downloaded through the app to my iPad. All of the books look great in the app. However, the minute I am out of wifi range, my books are nothing but a series of white pages, and my library page indicates that they need to be downloaded again. My iPad isnt data-equipped, so Im basically restricted to reading when Im in range of a wifi signal. This is infuriating, and Im strongly considering moving to another app if this problem isnt fixed.

I like the new feature Night Light feature. There is an acceptable level of control over font, font size, and spacing. If you leave the app and come back, you see it reload the book from the main menu rather than instantly opening to where I left off. This process takes about 5 seconds and is super super annoying.

I have been traveling overseas and I have had a ton of difficulties with this app. First of all when you get a blue checkmark as the book is synced, it isnt so. And if you go outside of internet range your book will disappear. The work around is to go where internet is available, go to the first page of the book and scroll "manually" page by page up to the end of the book so it syncs all pages. Only in that scenario, the book can be seen offline. Also if you have issues consider deleting the book, closing the app (double tap home key, and scroll background app to close) and then do the steps above.

I love the night reading light.

I was happy to find some of my textbooks on here for a pretty good price. However I come to find that really important diagrams and images are not even in the books I purchased. Additionally the app will shut down on me frequently when Im moving over from other apps or simply when I leave the screen by locking my tablet. I was happy to find the app was available but I find that its not easy to use.

The complaints people have made here about Google Play Books are correct. Highlighting is painful, the app becomes almost unusable when out of wifi range (I mean for just reading, not downloading), and it tends to be quirky and unreliable. This is a shame, because there is a lot to like about the Google Books concept (it works a lot better on a Mac through Safari). I hope they get it right.

I almost never get my devices to sync. I have to create a bookmark and then find the bookmark on the other device. But the page Im on only syncs up every so often. Kind of strange for Google to fall down on the cloud component but there you are.

VERY VERY Slow performing app, even if you download the book it still takes extremely long to load and then it needs to load on every page flip, on a quad core ipad 4 this should be the case.

I liked this app until it deleted all my notes! Dont use this app if youre doing serious work. The highlighting feature is also very difficult to use.

Ok, app seems good, but dont understand why I cant buy books within the app. Doesnt really make sense.

good night apple, after 20 downloads, the application is still unusable, it pulls an idiotic message box saying please wait for the books format to be upgraded, after about 5 minutes, the app dies. in a normal world you should not be allowed to manufacture and sell software.

New version more stable and faster. App now at least opens and does what its advertised to do. Time will tell.

Latest version wont finish installing. Cannot even delete and reinstall the app. What up?