Since the popularity of tablets, and subsequently large-screen smartphones, digital book reading has gone mobile. But, reading on a computer is still a popular past time, and for some, it's the best way to digest the classics, bestsellers, and undiscovered gems. If you have a folder full of eBooks and want to know which reader is perfect for your needs, you'll find what you're looking for right now. I'd like to take a moment to clarify that this list is for apps that you can download onto your Mac. There are some great e-readers that are web-based, but I've decided not to include them on this list. If you have a favorite web browser e-reader, please feel free to add it to the comments section so others can find out about it. Every Mac comes with iBooks installed.
It is perfectly designed to work, not only on your computer but also across all of your mobile devices. So, you can read a chapter or two on your Mac, and pick up on your iPad or iPhone without missing a beat. There is a quick-access button that lets you browse the iBooks Store, where you can download content to iCloud and access on all your supported Apple devices.
You can also drag-and-drop PDFs to iTunes from your Mac, so if you've got a great book that isn't in ePub form, you can still read it in iBooks. As for the features, iBooks on the Mac has most of the same tools and themes as iBooks on iPhone and iPad, like color options, text size and style customizations, highlighting tools, dictionary lookup, notes, sharing, illustration rendering, voice over, and more. If you are knee-deep in the Apple ecosystem, iBooks is the best e-reader on your Mac. You'll love the ability to sync your eBooks and audiobooks across all of your devices. The Kindle reader on Mac is ideal for people that purchase, rent or borrow books from Amazon, which supplies the largest digital book collection.
When you sign in to your Amazon account, you can access all Amazon books in your library. You can't browse the Amazon books store from the Kindle app, but when you buy a book on Amazon, it will be added to your collection, which you can access from all your devices, whether they are Apple, Android, or Windows. Amazon supports borrowing books, renting textbooks, sampling books, and more.
It is especially beneficial to Prime subscribers. Prime reading offers hundreds of free ebooks, magazines, and more.
Kindle Unlimited, which is a subscription-based service, lets you read about a million titles (including magazines and newspapers) for a monthly price. Kindle on the Mac has plenty of customization features, too. You can change the theme to white, sepia, or black, and adjust the font size and style to tailor your reading experience. You can also add highlights and notes.
One of my favorite features is the ability to browse through popular highlights from others that have also read the book. If you have a collection of ebooks you've purchased from Amazon, or if you are a Prime subscriber, use Kindle for the Mac to read and sync your books across all of your devices. Free - OverDrive Read. OverDrive is the number one app for borrowing digital content from your local public library.
All you need is an active library card and a PIN. Just like borrowing physical books, you can browse your library's entire collection of digital content and check out multiple titles at the same time. When you borrow an ebook or another item, you can download it on your Mac and access it as much as you want during your loan period. When your ebook is due, you don't have to worry about returning it to the library on time, it will automatically be removed from your Mac when your time is up. The OverDrive Read app on Mac is actually a web browser supported software program, but it's on this list because it is the officially supported app for borrowing books from public libraries. Although you have to access the OverDrive Read on Mac from a web browser, you can download content for offline reading, listening, or watching.
You'll need to bookmark the page so you can access it without an internet connection, but if you remember to download the content while you're online, you can continue reading while offline. OverDrive Read includes tools for changing the color, adjusting the size and style of font, adding notes, highlighting, and voice over for some titles. Asus usb2.0 uvc vga drivers for mac. It also supports fixed-layout digital books (like comics and magazines) so your favorite illustrated content doesn't look weird on your Mac.
If you want to read digital books, but prefer borrowing from your local library, OverDrive Read is your go-to app for accessing your loans on Mac. Free - Adobe Digital Editions. Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) is an ePub reader that makes it super easy to read digital books on your Mac without having to drag them into an app or upload them to a cloud server. Once ADE is on your Mac, you can select it as the reader for any ePub file, so you can get started reading right away. I use ADE for ebooks that I get from HumbleBundle.
I occasionally use it for ebooks I download from my public library, too. It supports all ePub formats and PDF files. You can add a bookmark and highlight text.
You can also add notes to pages and passages. Searching a book for a specific word or phrase is as easy as using the Find feature on your Mac. If you download and store a lot of ePub files, and don't want to upload them to iCloud for reading in iBooks, ADE is the next best thing. Free - BookReader. BookReader is the e-reader for all files.
It supports EPUB, MOBI, PRC, AZW, FB2, Microsoft DOC, RTF, RTFd, xHTML, Webarchive and TXT. No matter what type of ebook you have on file, you can read it on BookReader. It only supports DRM-free files, though, so make sure your digital books don't have digital rights protections before you try to use it.
You can store all of your books in one bookshelf for easy access. It also has a few features that make book reading on the Mac a pleasant experience, like realistic page flipping, hypertext support, Text to Speech, and a fully customizable color option. You can make the font, background, and book border any color available on the spectrum. If you tend to download a lot of different types of eBook files, you'll be happy with the level of support BookReader has. You can download a free, to decide whether you want to invest further. $9.99 - Your favorites? Do you use a specific e-reader as your go-to app on Mac?
Let us know what it is in the comments and tell us why it's your favorite.
I’ve purchased an ebook and have received in return a web page, or some kind of pointer in email, that I’m supposed to do something with. It tells me the ebook is a “”, whatever that is. For the life of me, I can’t figure out the instructions. How am I supposed to get my book? Ebooks, which is short for “electronic books”, are books that you download and read on your computer. The “download” part is fairly straightforward, but it’s difficult to give one set of instructions that works for all users. And, to be fair, sometimes publishers make it harder than they need to as well.
Let’s see if we can’t cut through some of the confusion. Become a and go ad-free!
First Things First In order to be able to read a PDF file, you must have a PDF reading program installed on your computer. Depending on your machine, you may already have one:. In Windows 8 the “Reader” app is included. On most Macs the “Preview” application is included In addition, there are several third party PDF reading programs that you can download and install:. is the most “official” PDF reading program available on most platforms. is a small, fast Adobe alternative for Windows.
In all cases, beware of and avoid additional offerings that you do not need; you only need the free PDF reading application. In my personal experience, the applications that are included with the operating system are minimal, and I almost always end up installing a more fully-featured application. In recent years that’s the Adobe product. Web Page Downloads In this scenario, the publisher has directed you to a web page that has a link to a PDF. They may have sent you an email, but in this scenario, the information in that email is simply a link to a web page.
More commonly, after you’ve purchased your ebook, the publisher’s shopping cart will simply take you to a page with something that says “click here to download”. Here’s an example from my own online store, after purchasing a copy of: Now, depending on where you’re purchasing your ebook, your link may look different – it may look like a normal text link that says “click here”, it may be a graphic button, or it may look like a full beginning with “I recommend you don’t just click – I know it sounds backwards, but rather than just clicking on that button or link, you should right-click – that is, click with the right mouse button instead of the normal left button. (Mac users shift+click instead). This will bring up a popup menu: Don’t worry if your menu looks a little different – it varies, depending on the internet browser you’re using, and possibly on other software you have installed. The thing to look for is “ Save Target As“, “ Save Link As“, or similar terminology.
Click on Save Target As. That will bring up a dialog much like this: If you know the folder that you want to keep your ebook in, then simply navigate there and press Save. If you’re not sure where to put the ebook, I recommend your My Documents folder, or perhaps the Downloads folder as shown above. In most browsers, you’ll then get some kind of completion message.
In Internet Explorer you’ll see something like this: At this point, you can click on Open, and your PDF reader will open and display your ebook on screen. Email Links This is the case where the publisher sends you a simple link directly to the ebook’s PDF file somewhere on the web: What happens next depends on how you access your email. In many, if not most email programs the right click and “Save Target As” approach we used above just works. Try that first.
If not, simply click the link in the email. Chances are the email program will then ask you if you want to Open or Save (or Save As) the file. Always choose Save, and save the file to a folder on your machine. Again, where you save them is up to you – your My Documents or Downloads folders are always candidates. In the off chance that the email program doesn’t ask you, and simply downloads the document and then immediately opens it in your PDF reader, you have a couple of options:.
Look for a “Save Copy As” option in the PDF reader that opened – typically in the File menu. Not all readers have this, but it’s a convenient way to quickly save a copy in a location you choose. Close the reading program, determine where your email program downloads things – often a temporary folder of some sort – and then use Windows Explorer to copy the file to your desired location. Email Attachments Sometimes ebook sellers will send you your ebook in an email, as an attachment. There are several problems with this approach. Often books are large enough that they trigger size limits along the way and fail to get delivered to you at all. Even if they do, filters will often prevent the mail from showing up in your inbox.
If you don’t get the email that you were promised, check your filtered spam – it may be there. If the email didn’t even make it that far, your only recourse is to contact the publisher. Assuming you do get the email, you should see your ebook presented as an attachment: Once again, exactly what you see will vary depending on what email program you are using. What to do next will also depend on that program.
Options include:. Clicking (or CTRL+Clicking) on the attachment may up a “Save As” dialog that will allow you to specify where the file is to be placed. Clicking on the attachment may open the file in your PDF reader. There may be a separate “Save Attachments” option on a menu – often the File menu. There may be an option to view the file online, as shown above. (Outlook.com uses Word Online to view PDFs, Gmail displays the PDF in a floating window, other email services may have other options.).
There may be additional download options. Returning to your ebook Most all of the examples above download your PDF ebook to a specific folder on your machine, often your My Documents folder, or your Downloads folder. Generally, you can choose any folder you like, depending on how you want to organize the documents you intend to save. When the time comes that you want to open and read your downloaded ebook, simply open Windows Explorer (aka File Explorer in Windows 8), and navigate to that folder: Then just double-click on the file to open it in your PDF reading program: Happy Reading!. We're often given the opportunity to download a file from the internet, be it pictures, music, ebooks, programs, and more. The assumption is that you know how. If you don't, I'll show you.
'.mobi' format is the native format for books used on Amazon Kindle reading devices. I'll show you how to get that '.mobi' book you just downloaded from your PC to your Kindle. Downloading a file from the internet is easy - typically just a click or two. But knowing and controlling where downloads go takes a little more effort. You can Run a download or you can Save it, or you can even Save and Run it.
I'll review what Run and Save each really mean. Posted: June 6, 2014 in: Shortlink: TAGS:,. I have tried, and tried, to download e-books in adobe format. All I keep getting asked is whether my computer is registered to allow this. I have Adobe Reader 9 already installaed but I just keep going in loops to try to access anything that allows me to download. I even contacted Adobe customer service – the person was in Mumbai, India and suggested I go to the Adobe chat room to see how I can do it – they didn’;t have any technical services there! Boy, what a frustration but thank goodness for Sony Reader – that’s a cinch!
This will depend on the security that is in place on the ebooks. If they do not have security on the books then the solution is as easy as opening the ebook and saving it to your computer to be read later. More than likely, however, the ebooks are protected and it is intended that you read them in only on campus. In that case saving it to your computer is much more difficult, and would be an infringement of copyright laws. Can’t help ya there. Best is simply to ask your librarian for assistance. He/she would know both the rules in place on the ebooks, and the methods of accessing them.
Before commenting please:. Read the article.
Comments indicating you've not read the article will be removed. Comment on the article. New question? Start with search, at the top of the page.
Off-topic comments will be removed. No personal information. Email addresses, phone numbers and such will be removed.
Add to the discussion. Comments that do not — typically off-topic or content-free comments — will be removed. All comments containing links will be moderated before publication.
Anything that looks the least bit like spam will be removed. I want comments to be valuable for everyone, including those who come later and take the time to read.