“... I think this (MapleRead) is better than iBooks, or Apple Books ...”
Disclaimer: This user review of May 28, 2024 is not a paid promotion.
“I wanted a reader that would let me import epubs, read with font+layout+colors customizations, and provide good text to speech for when listening feels easier than actually reading. This app executes on these things solidly. I can't remember what I paid for this app, but it doesn't feel like I paid enough given its high quality.
One thing I didn't realize I wanted to have at the time, was the ability to easily import books from calibre. This app even auto-detects your local calibre server. Additionally, the app lets you turn your iphone library into a server to sync books to other services.
I'm not sure why this app doesn't get more 5 star reviews, but it should. Thanks for making such a great product.”
“Amazing application, thank you all so much for your hard work! After switching to MapleRead SE, I haven't felt a single itch or urge to switch ebook readers again. It makes tablet and phone reading a pleasure and feels like the natural companion to Calibre in the eReader ecosystem.
My eReader Journey: Bluefire Reader → (Apple) Books → Kindle → Marvin 3 → FBReader → MapleRead SE (for good!)”
“If ever there was an app that could hold a candle to the old (Apple) Books app, it would be this one. Incredibly advanced thinking and never losing sight of the reading experience. Thanks for that!!! [English translation]”
“I am so excited that I can now listen to my favorite books! Any EPUB book can now become an audio book. How amazing! Thanks for adding this feature! Now I am listening while driving, exercising, etc. Just so useful! I love that there are many high quality voices you can download through the System Settings (Accessibility | Spoken Content). I suggest you download the Enhanced or Premium voices whenever available. They are very good quality and often exceed expectations. (My favorite voices are Nathan Enhanced and Samantha Enhanced.) Compare to many costly subscription-based reader apps (with much less features), this pay-once-only app is really a great deal. I’ve seen reader apps come and gone, or become abandonware. This app has been around for years and still being actively maintained and improved. Highly recommend.”
“Been using this app for years to read epub and PDFs with all the features I could ever want and easy to connect to Calibre to transfer books. I literally can’t think of any suggestions for improvement other than the recent update has removed the smaller UI scaling size I had before. If that could be re-implemented I would be so grateful. Thank you for continuing to update and develop this app! 💗”
“I’ve tried a lot of different ebook apps. I’m very picky when it comes to being able to customize the way books are displayed and organized. MapleRead is the only one I’ve found that does everything I want!”
“I finally found a replacement to my favorite epub reader on Android, Moon+ reader! I was specifically looking for a reader that allows me to manually select highlighting colors. This app provides that. Had no idea such a feature existed when I was trying the CX app. I initially decided to buy the full version because of the beautiful font selection & the ability to add custom fonts. Thanks to the developer!”
“Superb flexible reading app. Also, developers are frequently adding new tweaks and are responsive to clients.”
“We share an iPad and I was looking for an app that allows syncing between multiple devices having different Apple IDs. MapleRead is just great and I gladly support the developers.”
“I am a huge fan of the app, after trying several e-readers on the app store I settled on Mapleread. Mainly due to the following features: - Being able to enable/disable the publisher's theme provides more flexibility over epubs that have not formatted correctly. This is quite a unique feature I have only seen in a couple of other apps. - Black theme - The tag feature is useful for organising books. - Book highlights/notes can be exported to CSV format The developers welcome feedback and are committed to adding new functionality on a regular basis. Keep up the good work!”
“Phenomenal app that has everything I need in an iBooks replacement. I self-host a Calibre content server and this works perfectly. The only thing the app was missing to me was the ability to have a custom background when using dark mode. So I emailed the developer and my feature request was implemented within a week. Thank you!”
“Works as promised! Pleasantly surprised!”
“I’ve tried a lot of epub readers for iOS over the years, and of the ones whose developers are still active, MapleRead is by far the best available.”
“I want to thank the developers very much for their quick reply and support ... it is greatly appreciated! May I also take the time to compliment them on a wonderfully done app! I love the many options they have included, especially being able to import and use my own chosen fonts... I use a font called Happy Monkey that imitates the written had, one that no ebook reader would ever use, so having the ability to import my own fonts is a heaven sent on these old eyes! When reading an ebook and looking at a screen the majority of the day, this ability becomes a true blessing ... a soothing background color and choice of font makes all the difference on one's ability to enjoy an ebook, so thank you for such a incredibly well thought out app! This old man's eyes truly appreciate it... I know developers probably only hear complaints, via support, and on the majority of their reviews, so I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you for such a well thought out app and design! I love and appreciate your app so much I purchased all versions to show that appreciation. I also try to tip the developers, as much as possible to show my appreciation , and as frequently as my wallet allows ... I believe it is one way we all can continue to support the development on this app!”
“Excellent app. I use it every day. I’m very happy they increased the size of the Description Edit box!!”
“MapleRead is the kitchen-sink ebook reader. It does more than any other reader to accommodate my preferences: set white font on black background then adjust system brightness to achieve desired contrast, use minimal side margins but add paragraph spacing, organize in three dimensions (sort type, tags, sets), note categorization, share books between devices without having to involve cloud storage… etc etc. It does have some rough edges — you can’t have all those features available without that — but every feature, even the ones I never use, appear well thought out. And, after years of use, the app continues to improve. If you want an ebook reader that you control, this is your choice.”
“This is the BEST ePub reading app on here! It has a plethora of amazing features that others don’t have. It’s incredibly easy to use. I’m so grateful to the Developers for creating this beautiful, highly functional progressive app! I positively LOVE LOVE LOVE it! 💗💗”
“After the version 3.6 this has become the best Reading App. Now Pdf too can be scrolled vertically. I was waiting for this update. Thanks Developers.”
“This is my favorite non Apple ebook reader. The developer is super responsive too.”
“So many great features. Thanks for the timely updates!”
“Love this app. I finally found an ebook reader and server that has cloud syncing options. Great reading options, and has allowed me to put my calibre catalog on my iPad and sync for my iPhone for reading.”
“I have just got version 3.5.2 and the developer has fixed a bug with user fonts that I reported to them a couple of weeks ago. This is great support for a great reading app.”
“In Summe bin ich mit dieser Kombination sehr zufrieden, und gebe daher fünf Sternchen.”
“Developer is responsive! Split column view in portrait mode, syncing to various clouds, Vocab collection, notes sync, keyboard shortcut to move pages and use entire app, superb search which mirrors kindle X-ray, custom fonts phew!!! Highly recommended.”
“J’ai testé des dizaines d’applications de lecture. Celle-ci les surpasse haut la main, toutes.”
“It has all features of all ebook reader in the market that I know. Developer proactively listen to your feedback to improve the experience:
- Have all the reading feature of iBooks and Google Play
- Support dual page reading, with feature to adjust dual page based on book paging (iBooks and Google Play don’t have)
- Have ‘unCategorized’ and other features to help you manage big library.
- Note and highlights are bookmark/index and can be accessed from library view. No need to search page by page.
- Work flawlessly with native dictionaries
”
“Ótimo aplicativo. Um dos melhores.”
“MapleRead SE is a very convenient app to use and read eBooks and PDFs. It’s Secure Sync makes it a snap to manage reading locations, bookmarks, notes, and word definitions (vocabulary) between all of my iOS devices.”
“I have a very large library of ~19,000 ePub and pdf books and articles. I used the PC Upload and Calibre integration features to import them, and it works wonderfully! I absolutely LOVE this app. iBooks/Apple Books is simply unusable at this point for a large collection of books. Your app lets me do everything l wanted to be able to do in managing my library. I am really thankful I found your app!”
“So far the best all-around reader for Epub books. Regularly maintained, supports custom fonts, custom actions (like invocation of Lingvo dictionary), split view, etc.”
“对css支持很完善。Apple Books 的缺点之一，即不能调用欧路词典 (EuDic) 查词，也可以完美解决。可以调边距、行距、字体，自定义背景，真的很完美了，而且开发者回复问题速度很快，会根据用户建议进行修改，这么好的app必须五星！”
“MapleRead has incredible flexibility, customability and power; most importantly, it is actively supported when many similar apps have fallen by the wayside. Highly recommended.”
“I've used a lot of ebook apps. It seems like all ebook apps break down into 2 types: the ones tied to a big ebook store like Amazon or Kobo, or the ones by small independent developers, like this app. What you usually get with the ones of the second type is more features, and MapleRead does not disappoint. It has a very rich set of features for reading and annotating ebook files and PDFs. Despite the large feature set, it maintains a clean intuitive user interface. And I love the fact I can connect to my Onedrive where my files are kept. With this app for my epub and PDF files, I feel like I have the best app in the store.”
“Being an avid reader, I routinely look for newer and better software to enhance the experience, but I keep coming back to Maple. Using Calibre’s opds server function, the link up between my laptop where the ebooks arrive and my phone where the ebooks are read is smooth and fast. There are enough options for font, size, layout, background, overall look of the app, how pages are turned, etc. to please anyone and the controls for them are quick and easy. There are lots of options for sorting and viewing multiple books so I can quickly find whatever I want from 3000+ titles. Navigation within books is easy and you can set bookmarks. Good, responsive support from the developer. Both thumbs up!”
“We’ve been waiting ages for a competent and well-designed iPad e-reader which handles both EPUBs and PDFs. MapleRead SE finally ended this wait. By far the best and most elegant e-reading app available. Developer is active on the app’s mobileread forum thread and responds to bugs and feature requests promptly... Worth $20 easy in my opinion.”
“With the new update to version 3.0 and the implementation of PDF text operations and the addition of multicolor highlighting my ebook reading needs are fulfilled, no ebook app can beat MapleRead’s ePub rendering and with theses new features, this definitely is my number one ebook application. Thanks to the developers.”
“MapleRead is by far the best Epub app for reading on iOS. It has many customizable settings and can sync between devices.”
“I never thought I would find anything better than Marvin, but this app had made me change my mind. The more I use MapleRead, the more I love it.”
“Highly recommended! Syncs with Calibre. Updated regularly (unlike Marvin), sync vocab on devices.”
“It's the most beautiful reader app! Miles ahead of its competitors. Love its themes and scenes. It makes reading a joy. Thanks!”
“This is my favorite reading app. I love the customization options, especially the parchment white background setting. It has the extra dimming for night reading. There are several options for night. It provides a very comfortable reading experience. I can use my iPad mini as the server to copy books to my other Apple devices. I love the option to display my books on a wood bookshelf. I had a question and the developers got back to me quickly.”
“I love this app on my iPhone. I sync the book between my iPad and iPhone. It has great customization options. I love the wood bookshelf. The developers got back to me quickly when I had a question. I highly recommend this app.”
“Thank you for new improvements. New Fonts, solved bugs, great e-mail support. Excellent application performance! Great ebook reader! Regards!”
“Over the years I have used many reading apps and a few Kindle e-readers... If I had to choose one app that comes to providing nearly every detail I wish to see in an e-reader, Bookmaster has the others beat hands down... The app allows you to customize the backgrounds of your shelves (even render the shelves invisible if you wish). So I have had a lot of fun organizing shelves with backgrounds that reflect the themes of the books—an old Arthurian manuscript, or a 21 Baker St, or an old library. Of course these are details of aesthetics, but they make the use all the more pleasurable. The synching to ebook app CALIBRE is flawless... I have found that this app also delivers more font size options with a pinch and zoom that covers every reading size conceivable to these eyes (no more reading glasses)... You can change the backgrounds for text to a variety of shades including sepia tones, night-time reads and font colors for improved contrast... All in all, a wonderful reading app, one that is now my goto app for the moment if the developments continue with this depth of detail. unlike other apps, the developers are truly paying close attention to user's feedback. This app is only going to get better. Highly recommended!”
“Great Calibre integration. This app can even be its own server to share books. My favorite feature of this app is customizable picture backgrounds for reading. You can add a layer of color over an image to have your text easily legible while being able to read over any picture. Very fun to read sci fi over a picture of galaxies! I usually read over an ocean sunset. You can put any picture you want. It's my favorite app and biggest recommendation to iPad book readers out there. The developers are super kind and responsive 🙂 ! ”
“This has taken over from Marvin as my iPad EPub reader, as it not only has a very configurable reading display (fonts/layout, etc) but has a number of ways of importing the books in the first place, including OPDS catalogs, HTML pages, iTunes and even the ability to run as a web-server on the iPad, allowing you to browse to it from your desktop then drop the files to have your browser upload them to the iPad. Once there, you can view them in various ways - title/author/series/date added/date read - as well as being able to filter/search for particular strings. It’s also under active development, with the devs having a presence on the MobileRead forums, so I’ve no hesitation in recommending a purchase.”
“I got referred to this app while trying to fix some problems with Marvin; in the comments on a post someone suggested trying this 'new' iPad-only ereader. I did, and couldn't be happier. It instantly found my calibre library on my Windows PC (something Marvin was never able to reliably do). The organizational abilities make even my 700+ library easy to manage. Customizing the reading page format is easy and intuitive. There really is no downside. I don't usually review apps, but this one easily earns all five of its stars!”
“An excellent app with a responsive development team. One of my pet peeves with reading on my iPad, and even my Kindle, has always been that I would accidentally select text while reading because my thumb would lightly rest on the screen. This was very distracting. The developers hang out in the Mobileread forum so I mentioned this issue. When their new version was recently released, there was a new option to suppress the long press gesture. This completely resolved the issue.”
“My favorite ereading app for iPad (and I've tried pretty much all of them)...”
“Thank you for new improvements on IOS 9.1.2 update. New Fonts, solved bugs, great e-mail support. Excellent application performance! Great ebook reader! Regards !”
“My favorite ereading app for iPad, and I've tried them all.”
“I've been using bookmaster on my ipad air for several months now and it has become my go to reading app bumping out ibooks and marvin. It does pretty much everything I want: opds import, 2 column landscape view, dictionary and several others...”
“I used to use the now discontinued Stanza. This is my favorite now. There is also a CE version that seems much the same. I have both and like them very much.”
“My favorite feature is being able to create custom themes with any images as backgrounds (you can also fade any color over the image, making it easy to make any picture read-on-able). This feature works with PDFs as well, something I'd never seen any other app do. It's also very easy to connect to my calibre server and browse/transfer my books. I am in love with this app! I've already read four books more than I would have had I not had the ability to theme my reading experience with pictures. It's really fun to read space operas with galaxies behind the text!”
“I just switched to this app for reading my epubs and really love it. It has a lot of customization settings for fonts, backgrounds, layout, shelves, sets, etc.”
“Me encanta. Muy útil para leer epub”
“I waited so long for an ereader app on iOS that would let me have an image as a background. Not only does this app let me do that for epubs, it lets me use image backgrounds for PDFs. I didn't know that was possible. I am grateful.”
“Just what I wanted in an ebook app. Lots of options to change things and, as I am a fan of the ‘book’ look this was just the ticket.”
“I really like the Classic Book theme and page-curl animation. There's something about it that makes me ridiculously happy. The page formatting options also suit me well. After I've set everything to my liking, the page-look is more pleasing to me than any other iPad app (which is a little weird because the other apps have similar options, and yet the end result is somehow not the same).”
“Thanks for this great app! Have downloaded it yesterday and found it very useful and user friendly.”
“I've tried Marvin and it is pretty good, but Bookmaster looks better so far. Keep up the good work!”
“Thanks for the great update! The new sync feature works smoothly. Besides using your cloud to sync between my two iPad's, I've also used it to "backup" the reading progress. For example, if I delete a book for whatever reason, and later I re-download it again, I can restore the progress easily. I've also discovered that I can "undo" the sync by using the "jump" button if I want to, which is nice. Keep up the good work!”
“Synching works great for me. It was easy to set up an account and I'm now in the habit of uploading my last read position whenever I quit reading, so it's always ready to download to my other iPad. Worth that bit of effort for the convenience. Thanks!”
“Wow! I'm truly impressed by the diligent reply and the level of attention given to users. I have followed your instructions and it works beautifully—even nicer than Marvin in that I can view my Calibre library in its catalogic glory.”
“Just updated both of my iPads. The new option to sort by author and series is so useful! I love seeing my library organized this way. You made my day.”
“Just a quick/early review to anyone who may be on the fence about purchasing Bookmaster. After purchasing Bookmaster SE today and playing around with the settings, here are my thoughts:
Bottom line, if you are looking for an E-reader app I would highly suggest Bookmaster. I am not a guy who has tried every e-reader app but I have tried a few and I can say that this app is the best out of the ones I have used. This app is so good that I actually signed up just so I can leave a review which I never do...and which you can probably tell by reading this ramble
I tried looking for things to complain about but I can't find any. My one suggestion would be having support for .cbz files so I can read my online comics using Bookmaster but I understand I may be in the minority.”
“I switched to Bookmaster earlier this year and find it the best reader I have used so far for iOS (on iPad mini). I have been reading about Marvin 3 and took a look, but will stay with Bookmaster. In my opinion it is cleaner, more elegant, suits my needs well.”
“I bought the MapleRead SE 1.5 for my ipad and use CX 1.5 for the iphone. Loading books and syncing between devices is working very well. Looking forward to exploring the many features of this app.”
“I downloaded MapleRead 1.6 early this morning and have played around with the new sync features since then. It's marvelous!
I've tried sync on my two iPads and two iPhones, each with a different set of hundreds of books in its MR library. It indeed works very well as claimed, whether I sync one book, multiple books or all books in a batch. The synced results (notes and vocab) look correct to me. I feel now that I can freely and reliably pick up my reading with the associated notes on any of my iOS devices. I really like the fact that I can control precisely what and when I want to sync and know for sure right away that the sync completes or fails (e.g. when the network is down). This is in sharp contrast with some other apps which often make me wait for a non-deterministic amount of time between the changes on one device propagate to another device.
Last but not least, I really appreciate the fact that I can now browse my highlights/notes, one book at a time on its own web page stored on the cloud, when I'm using my Mac. (I do take a lot of highlights/notes when I read non-fiction books for study and research.) It feels so liberating!”