Name: Kobo Books - eBooks Audiobooks
Rating: 4.02 (20892 reviews)

Keisha Marie

1 year ago

This app has a lot of potential to be a great competitor for KU, but needs a lot of work. There is a glitch whenever I start a new chapter the previous chapters page will show up instead of the next one. Searching by genre, having a page for all authors works, and a page for each series. There is no cohesive organization. Highlighting does not always work, there needs to be an option to edit existing highlight in case of a misselect. The option to clear personal ratings from books.

Adie Muller

1 year ago

It's really annoying that the app doesn't save your place after you close the book. Even if I use a "bookmark" it keeps reverting back to earlier in the book and I have to flip forward pages until I get back to where I was. I also wish there were better settings for reading; I want to change the font size, but it makes the spacing look all crazy because it's only ever "justified" alignment. PS. Kobo, if you actually read this, please don't copy and paste the same generic reply as all the others

James Rogers

2 years ago

It's mostly good. Let's call it good enough. The lack of continuous scroll is a bit annoying. The inability to turn on a clock in one of the corners is disappointing. It is slow to format pages on chapter transitions, and produces some odd and off-putting visual chaos while it gets its layout sorted. However, it seems to be stable if a bit chonky feeling. I don't love it, but then i want it to display books, not walk down the aisle next to me. It's perfectly adequate.

Cathy Lewis

1 year ago

The app is clunky and not very responsive. After you add a book to your library you can't cleanly get back to where you were and often have to completely restart your search. It's not easy to nav from a book to the author or other books in the series. It needs a lot of attention on the UX. Unfortunately, the app experience is much better than navigating directly on the Kobo EReader. :( Also, I set up a Kobo Plus trial but the app and reader both constantly prompt me to upgrade to Plus anyway.

Beryl Nelson

1 year ago

Id given up on reading due to eye issues, audio books didn't interest me. I d/l this app 1/20/24 and for the first time in years I lost myself in reading a great book. App needs some tweaking though. There needs to be a bookmark option or actual page numbers instead of chapter page numbers. A bookmark will allow reader to pick up reading from last read page.

Joseph Torres (Avigor)

1 year ago

Desperately needs an option for proper vertical scroll. Also, the fact that it is missing two of the Discworld books (in the US) for no good reason (licensing is stupid) is less than impressive. Only opting for 2 instead of 1 cause of the options for creating your own Collections and the fact that they have several Series collections pre-set including one just for Tiffany Aching.

MRsun

1 year ago

Good prices! great alternative to competitors, but app needs work. It's very buggy. Whenever I am scrolling down to browse through audiobooks, the app locks up. I have to force stop it and clear cache to restart app. Some audiobooks won't download, so i delete and redownload to get it to work. Hopefully this is addressed by the KOBO team

Jay Rohde

1 year ago

Got the app for the discworld humble bundle. There's no option to scroll through text, and page turns lag despite the file being downloaded to my phone. Pop ups and emails suggesting new books to me as though I'm too stupid to find them without an algorithm's help. Privacy settings have to be adjusted from the website. As someone used to the unobtrusive layout of Ao3, I don't hate this app, but by god do I viciously resent it. If I think about your app at all while trying to read, you failed.

David Paulding

1 year ago

The app is functional, but slow. Long loading times for any function, from loading a book to altering the font. Thankfully turning the page isn't too long, though it is longer than in the Kindle app or other e-reader apps i use. The books I have read were formatted oddly with different sections of the book loaded in different chunks. Again, it all works... Just takes more time than other similar apps take.

Michele Fee

1 year ago

This app isn't bad. It could, however, fix a couple things that are bugging me. 1) The audiobooks randomly skip ahead a couple chapters when you close out of them and get back in. It is so frustrating to have to find your spot in the book when you only just turned it off for a couple minutes and you're wanting to get back into the story. 2) I wish the audiobooks and books synced together. I've checked out both a couple times to switch back and forth and it would help to have them sync together.

T Sumrall

1 year ago

No way to disable the "We think you'd enjoy these books next" panel that shows up when you near the end of a book, that is visually distracting and an interruption if you accidentally touch the middle of the reader, AND doesn't even suggest the correct next book in a series. Some marketing dolt is patting themselves on the back for this, and it sucks. Reply to dev reply: I HAD already contacted chat. How's chat supposed to change anything? Solution: activate Adobe DE and then read in OverDrive.

Jose

1 year ago

Kobo has a good library and the eReaders are great, however the app is not a highlight. Room for lots of improvementa, the app is not intuitive, searching for books is a frustrating experience, recommendations are off. One would like to see a well design homepage where to sort new books, recommended ones, trending, categories, ratings, top rated, etc, etc. You need to invest in UX experts...

Dave Richards

1 year ago

Doesn't work on airplane. Will not be purchasing any more books for this app. "No Internet Connection Available Kobo can't start because you are not connected to the Internet. Please check your connection and try again." Also missing many qol features such as multiple fonts (there's only 4), background (only black or white, nothing like sepia or paper), can't adjust bumper width for turning pages, footnotes are handled terribly, back button is whack. Easy to implement, so it's contempt.

Sunshine Schenekl

1 year ago

I used the trial period and let this app go and they charged me anyway. The app is ok, basic, needs some features but runs good. No bookmark and the chapter button is in a really bad spot so I will hit it and screw up my progress. Need a bookmark or to move the chapter button so not be touchy. They don't have a good selection of audio books in the kobo plus section so I let it go. Need a bigger selection of audio books in the subscription.

Acire Rene

1 year ago

One huge change I would request is with the playback speed adjustment, it's currently quite extreme. Speeding up to 1.05 to 1.10 & likewise down to 0.95 or 0.9 would be great. I'd never listen to anything at +3.0 speed... The app seems a little buggy, search results aren't the best. Standards are high & w/ continuous work it could be great. Membership read/listen library is awesome, hope that doesn't change.

Stephanie Walker

1 year ago

Was 5 stars in Oct 2017. April 2024: Price is great, but many standard features are lacking for audiobooks. (No bookmarks, many books don't have chapter titles, speed variations very limited, etc.) Mostly problematic because, esp. with very long books, there are occasionally sudden huge jumps backward with no warning or history to help find your real place. You get what you pay for, I suppose. Not a dealbreaker for me yet, but increasingly annoying as feature updates just don't ever happen.

J G

1 year ago

App cannot be spanned on MS surface duo. Pages are just blank. App might be fine on other devices, but dual screen device users should avoid. Reported the issue a few months ago but it persists. Probably not a priority as it's an uncommon device. Edit: I appreciate the developer's quick response, but unfortunately the issue persists. Still not fixed as of May 2024. Issue present going on 8+ months.

Irene Scott

1 year ago

This app needs a ton of improvement. It's clunky and unresponsive. Highlighting is a nightmare, it hardly will do it all. I don't like that you can't personalize your reading tracker to show book progress, time, or percentage. It only shows how many pages are left in that chapter. The store is difficult to navigate. If you purchase a book, it automatically downloads without a setting to change that. I would not recommend this for reading. Use the Kindle app or Nook instead.

Len Cham

1 year ago

I love this app but it is really frustrating when I start reading a book & set my phone down or exit the app & my book disappears! It's always the current book I'm reading, just gone. I have to go to the Kobo website & finish reading the book there. It has been doing it my frequently lately. I'll clear my cache & even my data, the book still won't reappear. I've even uninstalled the app w/ the same results. Also, sometimes the app won't save the last page I was on. Otherwise, best app for books.

Grand Canyon

1 year ago

downloaded this app to read some books I haven't read for quite some time - was working great for a while. I had bought the whole book series in hopes to read it, but when it came to the third book, the app would not download it. I tried reinstalling, restarting my phone, signing out and signing back in, repairing the account, and removing the book and putting it back in my inventory thing. nothing worked, and I'm considering uninstalling and looking elsewhere for this series.