Reading iBooks
The most basic aspects of reading books in Apple Books are simple. Tapping a book in your library (the bookshelf interface that appears when you open the app) opens it. Tap the right side of the page, or swipe from right to left, to turn to the next page. Tap on the left side or swipe left to right to go back a page. Those may be the basics, but there are a number of options that can make your reading experience more pleasurable.
How to Change the Font in Apple Books
You may prefer a font other than the default that iBooks uses. iBooks’ default typeface is Palatino, while Apple Books uses San Francisco. You can also choose from several other choices. To change the font you read a book in: You can also change the size of the font to make reading easier or to fit more text on the page. Here’s how:
Colors
Some people find that reading using iBooks’ default white background is difficult or can cause eye strain. If you’re one of these people, give your books a more pleasing background with the options available in Apple Books.
Brightness
Reading in different locations, with varying light levels, calls for different screen brightnesses. You may already use auto-brightness on your iPhone, but Apple Books has independent controls. Here’s how to adjust screen brightness without going to the Settings app:
White: default; black text on a white page.Sepia: black text on a sepia page. This option is ideal for fighting eye strain.Gray: white text on a 50% gray background.Night Theme: white text on a black background.
Table of Contents, Search & Bookmark
You can navigate through your books in three ways: by the table of contents, search, or bookmarks. Access any book’s table of contents by tapping the icon in the top left corner that looks like three parallel lines. At the table of contents, tap any chapter to jump to it. Tap Resume to return to reading where you left off. If you’re looking for specific text within your book, use the search function. Tap the magnifying glass icon in the top right and enter the text you’re seeking. Tap Search to pull up the results (if any exist). Tap each result to jump to it. Even though iBooks keeps track of your reading and returns you to where you left off, you may want to bookmark interesting pages to return to later. To do this, tap the bookmark icon in the top right corner. It will turn red. To remove the bookmark, tap it again. To view all of your bookmarks, go to the table of contents and tap the Bookmarks option. Tap each one to jump to that bookmark.
Other Features
When you tap and hold a word in the document you’re reading, you can choose the following from the pop-up menu:
DictionaryHighlight - View your list of highlights from the bookmarks section of the table of contentsNote - Add a note to a word or passage. Read the notes either from the table of contents (a yellow post-in note appears next to them) or by tapping the post-it note icon on the page where the note is.
iBooks Formats
Even though the iBookstore is the main way to get ebooks to read in the iBooks app, it’s not the only place. You have lots of options for good reading in iBooks, including public domain sources like Project Gutenberg and PDFs. Before you buy an ebook from a store other than iBooks, though, you need to know it will work with your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. To do that, check out the list of ebook formats that iBooks can use.
Adding Downloaded Files to iBooks
If you’ve downloaded an iBooks-compatible document (especially a PDF or ePUB) from another website, adding it to your iOS device is easy.
How to Create Collections in Apple Books
If you have more than a few books in your iBooks library, things can get crowded pretty quickly. The solution to neatening up your digital books is Collections. The Collections feature in iBooks lets you group similar books together to make browsing your library easier.
Adding Books to Collections
To add books to collections:
iBooks Settings
There aren’t many other settings for you to control in iBooks, but there are a few that you may want to learn how to use. To access them tap on the Settings app on your device’s home screen, scroll down to Books, and tap it.
Full Justification - By default, iBooks have a ragged right-hand edge. If you prefer that the edge is smooth and the text is one uniform column, you prefer full justification. Move this slider to On to enable that.Auto-hyphenation - To fully justify text, some hyphenation is required. If you’re running iOS 4.2 or higher, slide to this On to hyphenate words rather than forcing them to a new line.Tap Left Margin - Choose what happens when you tap the left side of the screen in iBooks - move forward or back in the bookSync Bookmarks - Automatically sync your bookmarks to all of your devices running iBooksSync Collections - The same, but with collections.
