Working with Books in your Library

In this lesson for the Books app on the Mac, I look at the library in the Books app. The library is where you will find all the books that you’ve added to the Books app as well as any books you have in iCloud. It’s also where you can download books from iCloud, update your books, and view them in collections or by the author.

All Books
Across the top, in the toolbar, are a number of tabs. When you select the first tab, All Books, you will see all of your books in your library.

Sorting your Books
To sort how your books are shown, select the ‘Sort By’ link on the right side of the window. You can then select to sort them by most recent, title, and manually. To sort them manually, you just drag the books around in your library.

Hiding Title and Author
To show only the book cover and hide the title and author that is shown below each book cover, go back to the ‘Sort By’ link and select the option to hide the title and author.

Books in iCloud
If a book is in your library but not downloaded to your Mac, you will see a cloud in the upper right corner of the cover. Click on the book to download it to your Mac. To remove a book from your Mac, select it and tap the ‘delete’ key. You will see a dialog confirming that you want to remove the book from your Mac. The book will still be in iCloud.

Hiding Books stored in iCloud
To hide any book that is not on your Mac but is in iCloud, select the ‘Sort By’ link on the right side of the window. One of the options is to hide your books stored in iCloud. When you do this, the only books you will see are the book that is on your Mac.

Viewing by Collection
You can keep your books in different collections. To view your collections, select Collections as a tab option in the toolbar.

Viewing by Author
Similar to collections, you can view your books by the author as well by click on Authors in the tab bar.

Viewing by Category
Similar to collections and authors, you can view your books by category as well by click on categories in the tab bar.

Viewing your Books by List
If you’d rather view your books by list instead of cover, click on List in the toolbar. When viewing by list, you will also see when the last time you read it and the size of the books.

Search
To search for a book, just start typing in the search field in the toolbar.

Downloads and Updates
To view the download progress of any books you are downloading or to see if any books have an update, click on the download icon to the far right of the toolbar. You’ll see the progress of any books you are downloading, and you can update any individual book that has an update, or update all your books.

Opening Books
Double click any book to open it. When you open it, the library closes. Close your book to open the library again. You can also click on the book icon while reading a book to open the library without closing your book.

See this Lesson Action
To see this lesson in action, take a look at the video above.

Lesson tags: Mac Tutorials
Back to: Tutor for Books for the Mac > Lessons