Open Library Reader

Loomis House, LLC

About this app

Open Library is an online library with millions of books to browse or check out. You can track the books that you're reading, want to read, etc. and read many of them right there.

This app is one reader's effort to create the ideal portable experience for taking advantage of Open Library's amazing collection.

You'll get the best experience out of this app on an iPad, but you can use it on a smaller screen (if you don't mind squinting).

The moment you open the app and log in, any books you've already saved on the Open Library site are laid out on your screen. You can sort them by title, author, publication date, and date saved, see which books are available to read, and open them with a single tap.

Once you've opened a book in the familiar reading interface, a tap at the top of the screen will trigger the full screen mode, removing every distraction and expanding the book pages to the limits of your screen for the perfect reading experience.

Other features include:
- Built-in search: find and add books to your shelves from inside the app.
- Shelf management: move books between shelves, remove books, change the edition of a book.
- Related title search: choose a book on your shelf and quickly find more books like it.
- Checkout tracking: see at a glance how long you have left on limited-access books you've checked out.
- Customization: choose which shelves you want to see and manage the size of the books and their titles.

This app is essentially an alternative interface to the Open Library site — all of your data is stored there, and the books you read are hosted online, not in the app. As a result, an active internet connection is required when you are using this app.


Open Library is an initiative of the Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. The developer of this app has no legal or contractual relationship with Open Library or the Internet Archive, and bears no responsibility for the content found there.

Ratings and reviews

I've logged in this app thousand times but still it asks me to log in fresh everytime I opened it, I thought I will consume my time by reading books but instead of it it's wasting my time. I face problems in borrowing books and even I've added a book in my shelf still it won't come... and asks me to log in again and again, please fix this. I want to consume my time, don't want to waste it....

very good. it either provides you with what you want to read or tells you where you can get it (like from a local library or an Amazon link). my only complaint is that I want to read more but don't know what to read, I'm sort of a general purpose nerd and can get into anything but that simply leaves way too much for me to actually do. if there was some feature that gave you a random book then this would honestly be one of the best apps of all time for me.

This is disastrous!! Open library worked beautifully on all my devices until this app was forced onto us by Google. I can access my account, find my book lists, I just can't read the books, the app just hangs. I am NOT impressed. I can't even read using other browsers. Nice stuff up Google

What’s new

Welcome to the all new OL Reader! It looks the same, and your favorite features are still there, but it's all new under the hood and there are some great new features:

• More information on the shelf pages
• An expanded search interface allows you to find books both on your shelves and in Open Library
• Support for Open Library Lists (still a bit experimental)
• Poke around and see what else you can find!
• OL Reader is now an open source project — see the app help page for more information