Best 5 Free E-Reader Apps for Mac: Compare and Download

Top 5 Free eBook Readers for Mac OS X

Posted by Ada Wang on 11/30/2018 10:44:22 AM.

We like to read eBooks with tablets or e-ink eReaders a lot, but sometimes we will like or need to open a book on our Mac. So choosing which app to open the book is important for us. Here I guide you top 5 free ebook readers for Mac, the best apps to read ebooks on your Mac computer.

A lot of our purchased books from a particular store (iBooks, Kobo, Nook, Kindle) can only be opened with their dedicated reading app, while some books we find at open libraries can be read with a variety of free reading apps. No matter where your books come from, here I list some ebook readers for Mac, and put them together compared for you.

Apple’s iBooks–If You Love Apple Defaults

We are so happy when hearing the Apple’s announcement of iBooks coming to the Mac OS X. It’s bundled with Mavericks. It’s amazing that iBookstore provides us a beautiful and clean library interface than others (I think so). We can adjust type size and color of the pages, and add notes, highlights, the definitions. In fact there are more customization options as this screenshot shows below.

If you also own an iPad or iPhone, you can’t miss this reader app. It helps us sync the books between the Mac and the iPad and iPhone.

iBooks supports EPUB and PDF. We can purchase them directly from the store, and then put them together in one place. What’s more, iBooks keeps track of our PDF files, too. I like this function very much as I’ve collected many business proposals and project plans to read.

Kindle for Mac–If You Have a Kindle Account

I think there must be a lot of people think that Amazon shares the biggest market of eBooks industy. Except for its Kindle eReaders, Kindle store still has the largest array of eBook contents online. It is an eBook publishing powerhouse. If you have a Kindle content, I believe that you are a crazy eBook lover and must have collected a plenty of eBooks files at hand.

As the image shows, we can add manage Kindle collections in Kindle app itself. This is good for those people who have gathered many eBooks. Then we can sync the newly customized collections between devices that support Kindle. Whenever you close a book, the last page read is also automatically saved and synced across your devices, too.

But Kindle only supports its own eBook formats like AZW3, Mobi, AZW, PRC. Though it allows us transfer personal PDF to read, but it doesn’t support EPUB. So if you also read books purchased from other stores, you may want to check out another alternative.

Kobo or Nook–If You Own an eBook Reader

If you have a Kobo, Sony or Nook eReader, you’re probably best off using the offered reading software for Mac. Both Kobo for Mac and Nook for Mac allow us to browse, purchase and read eBooks in app. They support EPUB and PDF formats books.

The good news is that Kobo now lists their books’ DRM and formats types again before buying.

But these two readers for Mac don’t allow us to import books from outside stores. For example, if we bought one EPUB book from iBookstore, we are not able to open it with Kobo for Mac app.

Adobe Digital Editions–If You Buy From Public Library

Many public libraries including Kobo and Sony offer books protected with Adobe DRM, but Adobe create the Digital Editions for us to open those books. And we can also transfer such books between supported devices, such as Kobo, android, Nook, Sony. I can say a large number of online bookstores allow us open their contents with ADE.

ADE is the simplest ebook reader on Mac to open EPUB books. But I love it is because of its DRMed eBooks compatiblity. It opens books protected by Adobe DRM the one that most libraries with digital books use.

And here is my own suggestion, if you read books not only from rakuten Kobo but also Google Play books and even other more, there is no need to install the Kobo, or play books one by one. You just need this one app to open books you purchased from these stores.

But ADE can’t open books from Kindle store and iBookstore.

Conclusion

My opinion, if you really love reading ebooks you may have used these apps all. In other words, lovers who collected a lot of ebooks also need to install several apps. We can’t open all the books just with one app. Such as, if you just use Kindle for Mac, you can’t read your EPUB books. If you use iBooks, you can’t read Kindle books. If you are using ADE, you can’t open your Kindle contents.

But here I wil share you an easy way to resolve this problem. Just converting the eBooks formats between Kindle and common EPUB and PDF. But in fact the DRM limitation is also our obstruction that prevents us reading freely. Please install this fantastic tool Ultimate Converter , it helps remove DRM and convert formats pretty well. It’s an all-in-one eBook tool that allows you to read eBooks on various devices and share your own eBooks with your friends and family without sharing the personal account.

All you need to do is firstly run this tool, and then choose one app you like from the list of top 5 ebook readers for Mac. My personal preference is converting books to EPUB by the tool and using iBooks to read the EPUB books on Mac.

Tips: These apps can be downloaded from iTunes store on Mac.

Your picks?

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![author](https://www.epubor.com/images/uppic/1-22-2013 12-03-06 AM.png)

Ada Wang works for Epubor and writes articles for a collection of blogs such as ebookconverter.blogspot.com.

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1 Comments

Anthony

Re:Top 5 Free eBook Readers for Mac OS X

11/9/2022 08:44:00

None. Not one of those listed (especially Apple Books) or the tiny handful of applications I’ve found online are anywhere near suitable for use as a real e-books library and reader on a desktop or laptop. The real problem is how, since Catalina, Apple has disallowed the user from being able to store their library on an external HD once it begins to become too large. Something we are still able to do with all the music and movie files we store in Apple Music.

Instead, they’ve buried Apple Book’s library files deep in an invisible file on the internal HD. And they have made it impossible to change its location to an external drive should it begin to outgrow that HD space.

The only reason for this is not for some technical limitation. It instead seems to follow a trend Apple and others have been setting us up for quite some time now. What they want from us is to spend all our pennies and nickles on renting cloud space from them every month.

Now, think about this a minute.

Apple has also moved audiobooks from the music application to the e-book program. On the surface, that seems to make a world of sense, doesn’t it? Keep the books all together, and keep the music all together, yeah. . . So damn logical, man!

The problem is this.

A large and ever-growing Book library that cannot be moved off the internal drive before it takes over that drive’s space is meant for one purpose only. To create one more perpetual revenue stream for Apple by forcing their customers choices as to how and where they can manage their e-book files. Instead, creating a situation where we will have little choice but to buy a monthly subscription to iCloud, so we can offload that library up to Apple’s cloud servers. And as our libraries continue to grow, so will our need for larger amounts of iCloud space, which means increasing our monthly subscription rates over time.

Couple that with shoving audiobooks into the Book’s immovable, hidden library, you now have a situation that can get ugly ever so much faster. Because, face it, most e-books sizes are rather small as most people’s libraries. But toss in audiobook files. . . You have a much quicker growth factor to be concerned with. Thus, as your library expands, the space on your computer’s HD shrinks and shrinks. Get my drift?

So, these very few, tiny little trite suggestions as an alternative to Apple’s already anemic Books program, is useless at best and an insult at worse. Especially since, over the past year, I have not been able to find one single alternative to Apple’s Books that satisfactorily addresses the problem in any meaningful way.

It is for this reason, that within the next year when I reenter the market for a new computer, I will be leaving the Apple ecosystem. That is, if I discover that PC’s don’t have such a purposefully set up handicap to deal with, and/or there are a larger number of satisfactory alternatives to Apple’s farce of an ebook reader –– Books.

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Best 5 Free E-Reader Apps for Mac: Compare and Download