iBooks stands for the Apple eBooks or eBook reader. Referring to the iBooks reader, it is the official integrated app for users to buy and read Apple eBooks, but until recently it is still only available for IOS 8.4 and Mac OSX 10.10 Yosemite or higher versions, this means only the Apple users with iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch or Mac computer can get access to the iBooks literally. Compared to the narrow screen IOS devices, many users prefer to read on bigger screen devices like Mac and Windows computers. It is notably comfortable to read iBooks on desktop for its high clarity and resolution screen, but you may not use Mac computers all the time, so what can you do if you want to read iBooks such as the ePub files on a Windows desktop? Generally speaking, you just need to transfer iBooks to your PC and find an alternative reader.
Google Play Books is the one app you need for enjoying audiobooks and ebooks purchased from Google Play. Choose from millions of best selling ebooks, comics, 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. GooReader provides a sweet interface for reading books and magazines from Google Books. Instead of awkward page scrolling in your browser you can get pleasure of reading on your desktop in the same way as you read hardcover books or paperback magazines. You can select one of the available reading views and browse books by TOC.
How to transfer iBooks to Windows Computers
There are many ways to transfer iBooks to Windows PC, following are the top three ones:
Transfer iBooks from Mac computer. For the iBooks which are already downloaded through iBooks app on a Mac computer, it is pretty easy to transfer. You can plug in an USB flash drive, then copy the iBooks from the Mac computer to the flash drive by simple drag & drop from iBooks app, after that you can do it in the similar way to copy the files from the flash drive to your Windows desktop.
Transfer iBooks from IOS devices. If you have already purchased and downloaded iBooks from the iPhone/iPad/iPod touch, you can directly connect your IOS device to the iTunes to sync the files to your Windows. It is not difficult at all. After connecting your IOS device to the iTunes like iPhone, you will see the devices tab menu from the right side of the iTunes. Please click menu 'File' -> 'Devices' -> 'Transfer Purchases from Administrator's iPhone' to transfer the iBooks to your Windows desktop. Or alternatively you can use a free IOS transferring tool called iTools which is more flexible to transfer the contents.
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Download iBooks by iTunes for Windows. What you need to do is to launch the iTunes on your Windows computer, then login with the iTunes account from which you have already purchased the iBooks and click 'Account'-> 'Purchased' to open the purchased content list, next you can go to 'Books' tab and pick up the iBooks you want to download. In this way, you don't need to connect any external devices but please make sure you have a good internet speed. Else it might take a long time to download.
How to Read DRM Free iBooks on PCs
As Apple doesn't have the official iBook reader for Windows, so you need to find other software. There are many kinds of iBooks files with different extensions like ePub and iBook etc. Take the ePub books for example, if you want to read ePub books on Windows, you can use eBook reader apps or plugins.
Adobe Digital Editions. Concerning the eBook software, the first one I will recommend is Adobe Digital Editions. It has the important features such as bookmarking, highlights & notes etc., making it simpler to enjoy eBooks. It Supports multiple formats including ePub, ePub3, PDF and so on. You can download it from the Adobe website for free and install it to your computer, then drag an ePub file to its main screen to start open an ePub file with ease. Besides this, you may use tools like Kobo, Nook, Kindle etc., the process is more or less the same.
Firefox with EPEBReader plugin. If you don't want to get extra software on your computers, you can also try to use your browser with eBook reader plugin like EPEBReader for Firefox, MagicScroll eBook Reader for Chrome etc. For instance, you can launch the firebox, then go to a search engine website like Google and search 'EPUBReader', you will find the plugin which usually shows as the first item. Then open it and click 'Add to Firefox' button. Finally, you can drag ePub files to the firebox to open and read. Likewise, you can do it in the similar way if you prefer the Chrome browser.
Additionally, if you get other formats of iBooks or you just prefer to read iBooks in other eBook reader, you may use a free eBook converter Calibre to help you convert iBooks to other formats of files. But please keep in mind that not all kinds of iBooks can be converted/read on Windows. For the Apple specific files with iBook extension, currently there is few third party software support it.
Tips about the DRM Protected iBooks
Above are the common ways to read iBooks on Windows. However, these methods only work for the standard DRM free files, not FairPlay DRM protected iBooks. For the iBooks which are DRM protected, you have to get rid of the DRM copy right protection first before you can read them on Windows. To check if your iBooks are DRM protected, you can right click on the book on iTunes and choose 'Get Info', after that go to the 'File' tab. If it shows the file kind as 'Protected book', then it is embedded with Digital Rights Management protection, which can only be opened from iBooks app currently.
Despite this, there are many kinds of DRM removal software such as Requiem or TunesKit iBook Copy for Mac can help. Requiem was used to be a great DRM removal freeware, but it was discounted in 2012 and the latest version only supports OSX 10.7 and iTunes 9 or lower versions. It is OK to use it on the old Mac computers. If you don't have such versions and want to downgrade OSX and iTunes, personally I don't think it is worthy spending such a long time to use it though Requiem is a totally free software. Instead you may use a tip-top software TunesKit iBook Copy for Mac to bypass all the DRM protection from your purchased iBooks to extract new DRM free books. It takes only three steps to do that, just add the iBook files, customize the output folder and then click 'Convert' to output the new iBook files. Fore more detailed tutorial, please see: Complete Guide to Remove DRM from iBooks.
How to create macos apps. In conclusion, reading iBooks on computers is a better experience when you are home or office, we highly recommend iBooks fans who use Windows computers often to try to transfer and read iBooks on their Windows computers. It takes only a little effort to accomplish the goal easily.
Adam Gorden is an experienced writer of TunesKit who is obsessed about tech, movie and software.
With a resolution of 2560*1600 for over 4 million pixels, the results are positively jaw dropping. Images take on a new level of detail and realism. Text is so sharp and clear you’ll feel like you’re reading documents, email, and websites on a printed page.
What an attractive advertisement! I bet some of you already have purchased this new Mac. As the development of technology, the screen of the tablet and smart phone is bigger and bigger. People choose to read eBooks on tablets are mostly enjoy the big screen feature. If you are really intending to dive into the ebook world because of the screen, MacBook Air will be a good option. Since you have your Mac ready, I will share you some tips and tricks of reading Google books on Mac. Why I choose google play books? Because you will never find any exclusive Google Play reader app named Google Play books for Mac like Kindle for Mac on your Mac computer.
Part 1. Read Google books online on Mac
Read Google books on mac with web browser
This is the universal known way to read Google books on mac. Do not want to download any apps on your computer? This way is what you want. Below is the detailed steps.
1Log in your Google account and go to My Books-->eBooks, and you will find all your purchased eBooks there.
2Just click the book cover, the book will be open with your web browser. Mine is Chrome.
According the above picture, you can see the table of content, font changing, search bar, help button and bookmark button. So if you are not planning to read Google books offline on mac, these features will satisfy your basic needs.
Part 2. Read Google books offline on Mac
If you are not satisfied with the online web reader, you can also read Google books offline on Mac. Here I will introduce two different ways to read Google books offline. You can practice the one you like best after knowing how it works. To read Google books offline on Mac, we have to download google play books to Mac at first.
Must-have stepDownload Google play books on Mac
Go to My Books-->>Ebooks, you will see all your purchased Google Play Books in your library. Find the book you want to download and click the three dots under the book cover and you will see that there some options as below picture.
Here you will encounter two possible scenarios at this process.
Scenario 1: When you click on 'Download EPUB' or 'Download PDF' , you will download the google books as epub file or PDF file directly. How to uninstall a downloaded app on mac.
Deleting apps on mac os x lion. In this situation, you can just open these epub or pdf file with your Adobe Digital Editions for reading.
Scenario 2: When you click on 'Download EPUB' or 'Download PDF' , you will get the acsm file instead of EPUB or PDF file.
But what is ACSM file? Generally speaking, ACSM file is not a real ebook but you can consider it as the link for you to download the real Google books. But you need to do more steps before downloading the real google play books which is authorizing your computer with your Adobe ID. If you do not have one, just create one at the official Adobe website. If you still have not installed the Adobe Digital Editions, please download it here.
Authorize Adobe ID as below instruction.
Run Adobe Digital Editions. At your Menu bar, click 'Help'-->>'Authorize Computer'. The authorize window will pop up. Just fill in your Adobe ID and passwords, and then click on 'Authorize' button to finish the authorization.
When you have successfully authorized your computer with Adobe ID, just drag and drop the .ACSM file to the main interface of Adobe Digital Editions. The google books will be downloaded automatically.
When the google book has been downloaded to your computer completely, it will open automatically at the Adobe Digital Editions as below picture.
Also, you can find this downloaded books at your computer at the folder at its default path: /user/user name/Documents/Digital Editions. In below picture, you can see that this book is not with the extension .acsm, but .pdf which means this book has been downloaded successfully.
If you are still confused of downloading Google book, you may find the answer in this article: How to Download Google Books to PDF.
Read Google books on mac with Adobe Digital Editions
Since Google Play does not develop its own reader apps, it allows you to download your google play books(.acsm file) on mac via Adobe Digital Editions. What's more, when Google books has been downloaded successfully with ADE, it will automatically open in ADE. That's why ADE is the first tool I want to share here for reading Google books on mac. It can open and read Adobe adept DRM protected eBooks, like Google play books.
Read Google books in iBooks or any other third party reader app
As the Mac user, I bet you must be very familiar with the iBooks, the built-in eBook reader on Mac computer. It is an amazing thing to read your books on mac in iBooks, right? It is universal known that Google books are protected by Adobe's DRM while the iBooks app can only open epub or pdf ebooks without DRM protection or purchased from iBooks store. To read Google books in iBooks, we have to remove DRM from Google play books.
Google Books Desktop App Mac Download
It is a very easy step with the help of one powerful tool--Epubor Ultimate which can remove DRM from eBooks purchased from Google play, Amazon Kindle and Kobo.
Download the tool for free:
Run Epubor Ultimate, you will see the downloaded book will automatically load under the Adobe tab at the left side bar. Just drag the book from left to right column and the book will be decrypted automatically. Easy like ABC, right?
When the the google play book has been decrypted, you can click on 'Decrypted' or the folder icon to open the output folder stored the decrypted google books.
2Read Google Books in iBooks or any third party reader apps easily
Desktop App Ipad
Just find the decrypted google books and drag & drop it to the main interface of iBooks on mac.
Double click the book cover to read google books in iBooks. You can see clearly the google play books display very well at the iBooks library.
Google Play Books Desktop App
Since you get the DRM-FREE Google books, you can also read this book at any other third party eBook reader apps. I know some ebook lovers prefer to managing all of their books at one reader apps for better management.
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Iris Yan joined Epubor since 2017. She always wants to share everything related to ebook reading and improve your reading journey.