Google Play Books & Audiobooks

All the books you love. On the page or out loud. Anywhere you are.

Google Play Books & Audiobooks - Read & Listen Anywhere

"Google Play Books & Audiobooks" is a versatile app that lets you buy and enjoy ebooks, audiobooks, comics, and manga without a subscription. With a vast selection and personalized recommendations, it provides an exceptional reading and listening experience on Android, iOS, and web. Customize your reading, track your progress, and more, while enjoying features like offline access and easy library organization.

App stats

Version: VARY (Last updated: 2024-12-03)
Creation date: 2010-12-06
Permissions
Identity: find accounts on the device, add or remove accounts
Contacts: find accounts on the device
Photos/Media/Files: read the contents of your USB storage, modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Storage: read the contents of your USB storage, modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Microphone: record audio
Other:
  • read subscribed feeds
  • write subscribed feeds
  • receive data from Internet
  • view network connections
  • measure app storage space
  • full network access
  • read sync settings
  • run at startup
  • use accounts on the device
  • prevent device from sleeping
  • toggle sync on and off
  • read Google service configuration

Other platforms

Not available on Chrome
Not available on Firefox
Not available on Edge
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App summary

Google Play Books is the one app you need to buy and enjoy ebooks, audiobooks, comics, and manga.

Choose from millions of best selling ebooks, comics, manga, textbooks, and audiobooks. Download your book to read or listen on the go. When you’re finished, find your next favorite from recommendations personalized just for you. Buy audiobooks and ebooks as you go - with no subscription required.


Choose from millions of popular ebooks, audiobooks, and comics
* Buy ebooks and audiobooks as you go - no subscription required.
* Preview samples before you buy.
* Get extra discounts on select bundles.
* Receive emails or notifications about new releases from your favorite authors and when your wishlisted books go on sale.
* Earn Google Play Points with every purchase, then exchange them for Google Play credit.
* Receive notifications or emails for price drops in your samples and new releases from your favorite authors and series.
* Discover new releases, best sellers, and personalized recommendations across genres like romance, science fiction, mystery & thrillers, self-help, religion, nonfiction, and more.

Best in class reading and listening experience.
* Read or listen on Android, iOS, or your web browser, even when you’re offline.
* Pick up where you left off on any device.
* Customize your reading experience. Adjust the text size, font type, margins, text alignment, brightness, and background colors.
* Track your reading progress. See what percent you’ve read and how many pages you have left.
* Organize your library into shelves. Use the new shelves tab to curate your library by theme or genre. View your shelves across Android, iOS, and the web.
* Save to SD card. Choose to save your books to the device or an SD card, so you never run out of space.
* Use reading tools in children's books to get kid-friendly word definitions, listen to specific words, or hear the book read aloud.
* Use Bubble Zoom for easier comic reading on a mobile device. Tap the page and watch your favorite comic or manga come to life.
* Take notes that sync with your Google Drive and share them with a group for easy collaboration.
* Look up definitions, get translations, save highlights, and bookmark your favorite pages while you read.
* Turn on Night Light to automatically adjust the background color and brightness or set the app to use the OS brightness.

User reviews

These summaries are automatically generated weekly using AI based on recent user reviews. Google Play Store does not verify user reviews, so some user reviews may be inaccurate, spammy, or outdated.
Pros
  • Good selection of free and discounted books
  • Easy to use interface
  • Ability to read books across multiple devices
  • Night mode and variety of fonts and text sizes
  • Integration with Google Home for audiobooks
Cons
  • Issues with saving and restoring highlights/notes
  • Problems with bookmarks not displaying correctly
  • Inconsistent audiobook playback, including crashes and stopping
  • Poor synchronization with books purchased on other devices
  • Limited features compared to other reading apps like Kindle
Most mentioned
  • Problems with annotations and highlights
  • Issues with audiobook playback
  • User interface concerns
  • Bookmark functionality not working properly
  • Annoying book recommendations that don't respect user preferences
User reviews
If I could give this app negative 5 stars, I would. It's complete garbage. Be very careful if you save any type of highlights or notes or any type of annotations. If anything happens you cannot get them back. It has an option to save your annotations to Google drive but there is no way to import them back into Google books. So Google books is a total piece of garbage be very careful. In fact just delete the whole damn thing and use a real book then your notes and highlights won't disappear.
by Jim Simon, 2024-11-24

First off, love the free books. I use this for productive use. Keeps my mine focus when I don't have anything else to run to. Consider this app for AI software. Still trying to tie the two for comprehension. I gave the app 3 stars because it still in process of being in human understanding. Rooting the software for a rich outcome for Google, Google developers, and Good software. Thank you third party!
by Rakeith Woodson, 2024-11-22

In the last six months, I've found that my highlights/notes are having problems. 1. In one case, suddenly the notes were simply gone. I have a backup in my Google Drive, but can't seem to restore them. 2. In another case, they did not export at all, and I don't know how to "manually trigger" that, if there is such a way. In this case, the page numbers have not been saved with the notes. "Cover" is somehow saved as the page number for all the notes/highlights. What gives?
by Vince Hancock, 2024-11-21
View all user reviews

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