The Palace Project

Lyrasis

About this app

Palace is a free, easy-to-use e-reader app that lets you find, check out, and read or listen to books from your local library.

It’s been said that libraries are “palaces for the people” and the Palace app gives you instant access to your local “palace” any time, right from the palm of your hand.

All you need to sign up is your library card! And even if your library isn’t using Palace yet, you can still read more than 10,000 books--from children’s books to classics to foreign language books--for free from our Palace Bookshelf.

The Palace app is built and maintained by The Palace Project, a not-for-profit division of LYRASIS working in partnership with Digital Public Library of America with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. For more, visit https://thepalaceproject.org.

Ratings and reviews

App is very buggy. Locks up a lot. Asked for card number just to return a book. Have to reinstall it to get it to function properly. Edit: no longer makes me enter my card number to return but still locks up numerous times during each book. I need to close the app, clear the cache and reopen. Upon restarting it loses the spot where it locked up and returns to the previous location it was upon opening. Not good for driving because of this and just plain frustrating even when not driving.

It's a big step backwards in terms of epub delivery. It's incredibly slow, doesn't appear to download the book to the device, does not format the publication properly, does not allow the reader to zoom in on pictures or diagrams (which sucks for crafters), does not offer a truly immersive reading environment, and doesn't appear to have any subtlety in terms of brightness options. I expect a ton more from Lyrasis. I will not be giving up Libby any time soon.

Audiobooks are not compatible with Android auto. When plugged into my car, if I change the volume, it pauses the audiobook. This makes the app useless when driving. Audiobooks only show time remaining. Adding a percentage to audiobooks would make this more user friendly, especially for book lovers that keep reading logs based on the amount completed rather than the amount remaining.

What’s new

* Fixed dark mode visual issues in the EPUB reader
* Audiobooks now pause when phone calls are received or Bluetooth audio devices are disconnected

For the full list of changes in this release, visit https://github.com/ThePalaceProject/android-core/releases/tag/palace-1.23.1.