Kobo Books & Audiobooks

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. [R8] 5/5 · US Love this: I have the Kobo reader but I also so the app which I use more than the reader. The selection of books and audiobooks are vast and I love the many options I have.
2. [R22] 5/5 · US Highly Recommend!: Throughly enjoy Kobo. Has everything I want in a read app and many good selections.
3. [R36] 5/5 · US Love this app: Has everything I need and want, always adding new title.
4. [R351] 3/5 · GB Not the best app. Working fine but not much more: There is a large choice of title and books to read. That’s a great point. Also price is really good especially with a Kobo membership. Now the app in itself is about okay. There is problem of synchronisation between my IPad and IPhone. Then it is really difficult to highlight a part of text, the pages are turning too easily. The other thing really
5. [R2] 4/5 · US Great app but confusing payment system: The app is great! Runs nicely, dark mode, nice UI, and also has a dictionary option to look up unknown words! The only thing is the payment system. From what I can tell, a subscription only covers some books, and not all in its collection. Some ebooks and audiobooks you just have to purchase.
6. [R29] 4/5 · US Good for reading, but: The reading experience with this app is good. You can sideload books as well as read books from Kobo. You can read with offline. The dictionary works well. I like that you can look up a word in the dictionary and also Wikipedia and Google if you are online. The Library management could use some work. You cannot sort you books by author, title or category. Kobo seems t
7. [R50] 5/5 · US Great app for reading!: I love reading from my IPad Mini with the Kobo app the most. It has wonderful features that makes reading a joy.
8. [R51] 5/5 · US love the customization: this app is way better than the kindle mobile app imo
9. [R3] 4/5 · US Kobo audiobooks: I like just paying a flat monthly fee and listen to as much as I’d like. The type of books I like are limited but still worth price compared to others. Wouldn’t pay more than current fee but I will continue to use for now.
10. [R39] 4/5 · US The service is great: The idea for the service is awesome and I love the competitive pricing against audible and kindle. The app is often glitchy though and a bit more difficult to browse on. Using the website to add books solves that issue though.
11. [R327] 3/5 · GB Helpful and speedy support but …: I had an initial problem with purchases showing up on my iPad but not on my iPhone. However, I got a response from Kobo support by return which fixed it. However, I find the inaccurate synching between tablet and phone infuriating.
12. [R330] 3/5 · GB Three stars for now: Discovered you can contact Kobo on facebook with an issue and get an immediate response. It'll go back up to five stars if my problem has gone away.
13. [R339] 3/5 · GB Impossible to log in: I have spent 4 days trying to log in. It says to log in with FNAC but won't accept the FNAC password and won't let me log in as a new user either. Going round in circles. Poor experience. Update: they reached out to me and even they can't understand it. So they have now escalated to a developer. I've upped my rating to 3 stars because their chat service was open and very h
14. [R4] 1/5 · US Book Doesn’t Open: Your ebook app fails to open books that have been purchased, and downloaded. I cannot justify to myself the use of something whose purported utility is gravely wanting.
15. [R46] 1/5 · US Only One Book in My Library Downloads: For whatever reason, this app refuses to download all but one of my books. I’ve deleted it, reinstalled it, etc and I still have the same issue.
16. [R58] 1/5 · US My books won’t open: Starting 2-3 days ago, the app won’t show whatever book I’ve chosen, let alone open it so I can read it. Very frustrating.
17. [R101] 1/5 · US Bought a book and can’t open it: Bought a book and can’t read it on the app. It flashes for a second then a blank screen. Please fix now.
18. [R60] 3/5 · US App not ready for prime time: It would be good if the phone app synced seamlessly with my Kobo, or vice versa. It currently doesn’t without multiple restarts of the Kobo, and forget the app syncing regularly.
19. [R192] 2/5 · US Reading adaptability issues: Pulling down the tools and returning to the book page causes it to refresh and flicker. Also, the "Sync to last read page" prompt repeatedly appears after resuming reading. · translated
20. [R263] 1/5 · GB Glitchy: I’ll close my book on my Kobo at 54%. Manually sync. Then I’ll open it on my phone and it will flip to a random page i don’t recognise. It’s pushed me back to 46%. Tech support say they plan on fixing it in a future update. Now i’m having other issues with the app. Considering using my UK Consumer Rights Act 2015 to get a return on the e-reader as this software is defective and does not f
21. [R272] 2/5 · GB It was perfect…: Lately it keeps asking if I want to be taken on the last page read ( on other devices). Unfortunately it doesn’t do it well anymore. It takes me somewhere I don’t recognise. So I have to keep hit NO, instead so at least I can continue reading. Waiting my Canadian friends to fix this
22. [R28] 4/5 · US App crashes on launch on iOS 27 developer beta version.: Could you please please fix it
23. [R41] 2/5 · US Very buggy: If they want to compete with Kindle, they’ve got a long way to go. So many bugs…where to even start? Slow, stuttering render when opening a book. Sometimes randomly deciding to ask if I want to sync to the latest page every time I turn a page…even when I’m at the latest page. Trying to tap a link (like a footnote) near the edge or bottom of a page is an exercise in frustration, it
24. [R107] 2/5 · US Should be better: Glitches sometimes
25. [R128] 1/5 · US Barely works: Keeps freezing, pages won’t load. Astounding how buggy this app is
26. [R13] 2/5 · US Terrible Accessibility: I love Kobo as a company and think they do most things well, but I can’t use their apps for ebooks because I heavily rely on screen readers and their app stops on every single page. I have to flip to the next page manually and then re-listen to the last sentence on the previous page before it will read more. It’s excruciating. My policy is to only buy ebooks on Amazon or Ap
27. [R14] 3/5 · US Eh: I like the app but don’t like that when I want to get a book you can’t buy it in the app it takes you online and you have to sign in every single time
28. [R21] 3/5 · US Over all good: I’ve NEVER been able to use my credits purchasing on my iPhone… Have to use computer to use credits. Additionally, have trouble downloading purchased books to iPhone. Have double checked to make sure there’s enough storage memory left on phone, have signed out and then signed in to app, and have restarted the iPhone… And then without me doing anything it will download. Frustrating.
29. [R306] 2/5 · GB Not Great: The app itself is great for reading books. I think it is poor that you cannot see the prices of books in the store, purchase books from the store or write reviews on books you have read. Logging into the web site seems to be the only way of doing this.
30. [R67] 3/5 · US Must use app for digital ownership: The app has some quirks that need to be worked out. Like any other audiobook app it gives an option for speed adjustment. Unlike other apps that I have used, that function is broken. The time ticks faster or slower based on the setting, but audio playback cuts out for anything other than the 1x setting. When I submitted a ticket for this issue, the support perso
31. [R158] 3/5 · US Missing key features: I am using the app mainly for audiobooks. The title details do not list the names of the narrators. Also, there is inconsistency in whether or not titles are grouped correctly in series; I have to go to another app or website to figure out which book comes next. A listen log would be helpful for when you need to go back to a previous place. Back button goes back to the beginn
32. [R297] 3/5 · GB Okay, but could be better: While I like that Kobo allows me to listen to more audiobooks, not found in the Audible library, it only allows 2x speed maximum, which is so annoying (as a 2.8-3x listener), that I may not continue using the app soon. I also had some issues with book series not showing in order in menus, and issues with books not having any kind of way to read them (which led to a lot
33. [R391] 3/5 · GB Lacks features in audiobook: Audiobooks lack ability of bookmarks. Timer doesn’t pause when the audiobook is paused. Otherwise a nice audiobook interface, shame it lacks bookmarks.
34. [R25] 1/5 · US Organizational nightmare: Purchases can’t be exported to a preferred e-reader. Unfortunately, details such as author, series, series order, etc. cannot be edited, even if they’re incorrect. No manual sorting available. You can create a collection, but that can’t be sorted properly either. How is anyone supposed to use this platform with any kind of sizeable library? I’m assuming the service actual
35. [R30] 2/5 · US Doesn’t sync: I hate that Kobo doesn’t sync books you loaded externally. I loaded a bunch of free (legal) epubs onto my Libra Coloyr but they don’t appear in this app. I wouldn’t have bought the device if I knew about this limitation. Even Amazon supports this for Kindle devices.
36. [R568] 3/5 · CA Love my Kobo, don’t love the software: I love reading on my Kobo e reader. But, I’d like to be able to see my purchases easier on the website. I’d also like more options to sort books into collections and sort them for view on my reader, or in the app. On other ebook sites I’m able to see the titles I’ve purchased from any search level on their website. With Kobo I have to click on each individua
37. [R17] 2/5 · US Buggy and unpleasant to use: I really want to like this app. I strongly support kobo’s storefront model as opposed to their… competitor. I have a Kobo Libra that I use about half the time. However, this app is a very notable step behind its main competitor from a reliability and stability standpoint. The main issues are: highlights flash on and off and disappear entirely; search works *maybe* half
38. [R266] 2/5 · GB Not so good after all: I’ve been using Kobo for several months now, thinking it’s quite good, but the last couple of times I’ve tried to find books by specific authors, I’ve been shown books by any other author than the one requested. Just now, I even requested a book by both author name and title. What I got was an endless list of CHRISTMAS BOOKS that I would never ever order. This is totally
39. [R341] 3/5 · GB Good but needs better search functions: Really needs better functions for searching for books & seeing similar book recommendations. Also that authors don’t have a page with their books easily listed is annoying. Has so much potential but is just a bit clunky. Still using though as once downloaded the book reading experience is good.
40. [R244] 3/5 · US App is over 3 times larger than it needs to be: Response to the developer: You want me to contact support over the app size? The size hasn’t changed, It’s clearly right here on the app page, 600+ MB. It’s ridiculous! The app is functionally fine, but kindle, Apple, nook, they all manage to be fully functional using a fraction of the app file size of kobo. You can do better!
41. [R79] 1/5 · US Still Trash: Don’t bother with this app. They will “upgrade” it and lock you out of your purchases if you want to use an older device. After all a lot of keep older iPads and iPhones to use as readers and for other basic apps. Why toss a perfectly good device? An older device that still runs Apple Books and Kindle without a problem by the way. Yet Rakuten can’t figure that out. They will respon
42. [R103] 2/5 · US Credits lost value: Doesn’t have the value it did when I joined when one credit would get you the book you wanted
43. [R233] 1/5 · US Entire reading app: Absolutely the worst reading app. I had purchased several books (5 in the series) many years ago. All of the sudden these books are no longer in my “collections” even though there’s a name for the specific series. These books are no longer on their website so they’re not available for me to download. The person I spoke with couldn’t find them in my purchases…. I don’t believe s
44. [R5] 5/5 · US Love it: I really enjoy using the Kobo app. It’s really easy and convenient to use.
45. [R23] 5/5 · US Easy reading: Out of 5 book apps I have tried my Kobo ebook library is the easiest to use. I Love to read and Kobo ebooks make it very simple for this Senior to navigate.
46. [R268] 2/5 · GB Internet connection and app refresh: I want to love this so badly as I have been hunting for a non Amazon audiobook service. But unfortunately, the iPhone app seems pretty buggy. It will not download audiobooks, tells me there is a connection issue (there is not, all my other internet based apps are working fine and downloading files when asked). Worse is the app closes itself down, refreshing