Panels

What reviewers actually said

Built only from these 120 real reviews (foreign ones translated). Superscripts jump to the quote here. Apple has no per-review links, so [ref] opens that app's reviews on the App Store.

1. [R3] 5/5 · US Amazing for reading: I love to get books off of Anna’s archive but files on there always seemed to be different, I finally got this app and sent files to panels and instantly got tons of books!
2. [R10] 4/5 · US Best App For Reading Comics By Far: I’ve been reading the whole entire invincible comics, demon slayer manga, spider man comics, moon knight comics, etc. And surprisingly I haven’t got any ads and it’s also very easy to use, however my only flaw with it is that only takes a bit to load for the next page for me 🫩
3. [R19] 5/5 · US It really is a great app. Great work devs: This app just works. Everything syncs flawlessly. It’s made comic book reading so frictionless.
4. [R23] 5/5 · US Great App!: I switched to this app from a competitor because panels has an important feature the other one was lacking, namely the ability to group issues within a series into a folder of titles. This keeps the top level view of my collection easier to navigate. I also paid the $20 perpetual license in order to support the developer and their great work. However, panels has one annoying feature th
5. [R11] 5/5 · US Amazing: Great download and ui overall
6. [R22] 5/5 · US Me encanta: Literal desde el diseño hasta lo versátil que es me parece espectacular
7. [R24] 5/5 · US Minimalista y funcional: Tiene un diseño muy limpio y sencillo de manejar. Va muy bien con el diseño de Apple
8. [R26] 5/5 · US The Best comic reader on the app store: Everything works flawlessly and as advertised, theres no popup ads no subscriptions just a clean ui for reading comic book formatted files in any orientation that suits you. Love it
9. [R33] 5/5 · US Loads pdfs from downloads: Other comic apps needed me to put my pdfs in icloud before it would read them. This app just pulls them from my downloads folder with no hassle!
10. [R35] 5/5 · US The Best Comic Book Reader.: Easy to use and to keep up with your reading. Let you transfer your own .cbr with ease.
11. [R61] 5/5 · US 10/10 would recommend: Awesome reader. Handles my files great and I’ve had almost no trouble at all. (Side note: if you’re uploading files containing multipage pdf’s then make sure they are in a normal fine and not a zip. If they are zipped they won’t show up as pages. Unzipped works great, even splits the pdf’s for you.)
12. [R44] 5/5 · US Must have app best in class: There's really no other option if you’re a serious comics reader, with multiple devices. It keeps track of reading sessions between my iPhone, iPad and MacBook, and grabs my library from the cloud. It's my comic hub, easily the best app of it's kind by a mile.
13. [R39] 5/5 · US Free options are good: I like how the app is not horrible if you use it for free and Panels+ adds very good features too but are not crucial.
14. [R48] 2/5 · US Free version is basic: Free version is basic but usable. Would love to see more features move to the free tier
15. [R1] 1/5 · US Garbage: This worked for a while and then suddenly the Downloads section just broke. It won’t load anymore. I have 75GB of content downloaded. Now my options are to not have access to them or try to delete the app and redownload all of it. Spectacular. I have comic apps that haven’t been update in over 5 years that don’t screw up this bad. If you read locally avoid this app. Update: I ended up cl
16. [R18] 1/5 · US Pages taking forever to load: Ever since the last update, comic pages take forever to load, even after haven been downloaded. When I turn the page, the screen is black with only a gallery icon in the middle. The screen stays like this for like 5 seconds on every other page. Developers. Please fix this or I will be moving to another comics app.
17. [R25] 3/5 · US It got bad: Latest update broke the library, every single time I need to re-link the information
18. [R27] 1/5 · US App will no longer open: After the latest apple updates on iPad app just keeps crashing every time I open it never gets off the panels opening screen, deleted and reinstalled same thing is happening.
19. [R16] 1/5 · US Broken: They seem to have broken the basic functionality of their app trying to find a way to monetize it. I redownloaded after a few months, now on a new phone, I can’t get anything to actually import, and now it makes my phone hotter than it does when running a 3D game. It’s clunkier in every way. But hey, at least there’s a store now. I get they need to make a living but their priorities are wa
20. [R73] 1/5 · US Highly Overrated: I thought I was going to try a new reader app after reading all the rave reviews but when folder selection doesn’t work right off the bat, I know I’m dealing with a loser. This app is terrible and unintuitive. Not usable from the start. Going back to my old app which was WAY better. I’m not naming it because I don’t want these guys to buy it and ruin it. ONE STAR!!
21. [R214] 3/5 · US Decent viewer, but import is broken: The viewer is fine, but only if I manually copy files to the local panels folder. Importing, such as from OneDrive, is broken and just gives endless spinning wheel.
22. [R246] 3/5 · US Can't import files from ipad air: I'm trying to import local files and it's not working. I go to select the files, click open, and nada. OK, I can just look at the manual or the help feature to figure this out, right? But where the heck are they? The app is not working and I don't see how do get help.
23. [R5] 1/5 · US get rid of the store: i remember when this app was cool
24. [R12] 2/5 · US Get rid of the store: There are enough markets. I just wanted a reader app, not another thing trying to sell me things. At least let us remove it from the main navigation. I promise you I will never spend a dollar there, and if it becomes unavailable I’ll have to switch to a new app.
25. [R13] 2/5 · US Only good for imports: No store search and it’s probably because the content. It’s all LGBT, antifa, and anti-capitalism stuff. There is nothing Japanese, it’s all westerner published things. You need to import manga if that’s what you want. I’m sure there are licensing issues but honestly, I’d rather just buy a physical manga instead. If other apps won’t let you keep it forever, it’s not worth u
26. [R7] 2/5 · US Awesome app but..: I like the with the seamless adding of some manga I have, my biggest gripe comes to light novels tho, I hate that I can’t even read them because they don’t really work with epub which I really love more than PDFs. Besides that the app is amazing would recommend it.
27. [R70] 1/5 · US Always crashes: I can’t use it to read anything in epub format because it crashes, then when I open the app again it goes back to the book I previously had open, which crashes it again. I can’t even open it to read anything else without restarting my entire iPad
28. [R82] 2/5 · US Not impressed: Doesn’t support epub and even for pdf it’s not better than Apple Books. Why bother installing this if it isn’t at least supporting all formats, let alone add value. Most my comics are in epub.
29. [R108] 1/5 · US Doesn’t open EPUB: Imported an epub without DRM that had been exported by Calibre. This app refused to open it, despite it being readable in others.
30. [R15] 1/5 · US Last Review Got Removed: I bought this for the panel by panel but there is a large pop up over each page loading but this will get removed again (because I updated this previously to mention another app that does panel by panel better for like 3 bucks) I will change this to 5 stars when they fix the panel by panel massive popup saying analyzing page on each page turn
31. [R76] 1/5 · US It was the best. Not anymore. [updated]: Update: This app has strayed far from its original purpose as a comic reader. It suffers from an identity crisis, while it’s called Panels, its panel view feature is unreliable. Not only is it disabled by default, but it’s also labeled as experimental, making it feel like an unstable beta feature. Beyond that, the developer’s response to issues is unprofe
32. [R106] 2/5 · US What happened?: I started using this app several years ago due to the panel-to-panel reading offered. The app is literally named “Panels”. I’ve paid for a sub since, but I came back to actually use the app after a long hiatus to find that panel-to-panel is now disabled by default (you have to enable it as an “experimental” setting) and panel-to-panel doesn’t work like it used to for the same c
33. [R166] 3/5 · US Panels View Needs Work: I wanted this app to have a guided view so that I can look at my comics section by section, but each one will have portions of the images or words cut out, leaving me to zoom out MOST of the time. I was expecting something similar to Kindle’s guided view. Hopefully they can fix it. As an example, I was reading Predator versus Wolverine and I just couldn’t rely on Panels Vi
34. [R17] 1/5 · US No metadata support: Does not support any kind of comic metadata. When importing manga, users need to manually switch reading direction. Comic "titles" are just the filename, and there is no way to sort or filter by any other data field, because they are not read by this app. Devs say they will implement this in an upcoming major version, but it's been 3 versions already without this feature.
35. [R31] 1/5 · US No cover art: Why have a comic app but not have cover art? I imported several comics from my own library, which was on another app that showed cover art, and not one single comic is showing cover art. Guess I’ll be using Chunky or YACReader instead. Zero stars.
36. [R78] 3/5 · US Issues on Mac OS 15.6: I love Panels on my iPad, so I was ecstatic when I saw it had finally come to Mac. While the interface is great, and it has dark mode unlike Simple Comic or YAC, I’ve run into some issues. First, it crashes. I’ve had the app freeze and crash on me while adjusting settings at least 3 times in the past 2 days. Finally, my biggest gripe: reversing reading order is finicky. I r
37. [R390] 3/5 · CA Slight issue but good overall.: Hoping there is a fix coming for the thumbnail not corresponding with the actual issue that opens, as well as having entire folders represented as blank outlines or white cover pages.
38. [R14] 3/5 · US Stop😭: Please stop giving me pops ups to review it (even when you actually do review it I will give you a pop up to review it every time you leave a book)
39. [R143] 1/5 · US Review solicitation: Pretty sure this app is breaking the apple guidelines, I got prompted to rate the app 6 times today
40. [R261] 3/5 · GB Great but…: I like the app but I’m giving it 3 stars because it constantly nags me to review it. Very annoying.
41. [R116] 1/5 · US Comics do not keep their place: Comics will reset to the very first page every time. Developer has been aware of this issue since October. Still no fix.
42. [R155] 3/5 · US Jumps to a random page: If I don’t close the manga first before locking the iPad, the next time I unlock it will jump to a random page.
43. [R218] 3/5 · US Battery usage: I like this app more than any other current comic reader. I miss the old cloud reader though. For panels. My only concern is, why does it use up so much battery life? My iPad Air is new and nothing else uses battery life like this app.
44. [R49] 1/5 · US Can’t read webp: Webp is a way to reduce cuz and car file size, and has been around for fifteen years, but this reader can only cope with thirty year old technology
45. [R296] 3/5 · GB Great reader, but download glitches: A great reader app, usually with useful ability to download from Google Drive and OneDrive. However, lately my downloads from the latter are frequently freezing at 98%, forcing me to reboot the app. I'm using a 2014 iPad Mini, but have not had problems until recently. A real shame, as otherwise this is my favourite comic reader. Tried tge app support button but
46. [R43] 1/5 · US SMB is Free: SMB is not a proprietary technology, the fact that you make us pay for SMB is a scam. I can literally use any other reader with smb flawlessly. FOR FREE. Youre not getting MY money bud. Stop scamming, your service isnt "premium" at all 😭
47. [R97] 3/5 · US Subscription Model is Stupid: App works very well but of course for some reason they feel the need to charge to read comic epub files. Not really sure why support for a common file format is locked behind a paywall. Very annoying and scummy practice.
48. [R133] 1/5 · US This Free app requires multiple subscriptions: After I download this app it because obvious this could not navigate to a file I had downloaded without paying for a subscription. Apple should make this clear prior to wasting time downloading. Curiously after I downloaded this app I discover I already had a much better app I had download for free.
49. [R94] 3/5 · US iCloud support lackluster: Love the interface but not sure why iCloud folder support doesn’t exist. Smart Comic does it for $2 for complete purchase (vs $1.49 a month here) and only option here is to build a server from iCloud folder. Maybe I’m missing something?