Leave a Review hoopla Digital
No question the 3-4 main apps get 5 stars
The reason is not because the 3-4 of them deserve it based on pure functionality like crashes, failing to sync your reading progress after you load up the book the next time, and limits that seem restrictive (Hoopla) for how many reading items you can borrow per month. Libby (Formerly Overdrive) is an extremely solid 5 star and is the clear leader in every aspect EXCEPT Hoopla offers the ability to borrow other content that others do not loan out or own. Ebooks & audiobooks I prefer Libby, Kanopy for borrowing videos, and Hoopla for comic books, TV shows sometimes and movies…oh yes music as well. The video content can and is different from Kanopy to Hoopla.
The fact that I can “borrow” books and magazines and choose digital copies to read or the audio version and I pay NOTHING EVER, not a single penny to billions of items….how can these 3-4 apps be anything less than a 5. We owe these teams recognition that the countries hand out for exemplar civilian service to communities.Show lessDarJohnSlayer-IPhone8
3.5 Stars
Overall, I love the app and glad that my library offers it. I use it mostly for audiobooks and often find that it has titles I’m looking for that Libby or Kindle Unlimited does not. However I have experienced several difficulties with the app:
1) When listening to an audiobook, if I pause it and then try to play again, it will either play with no sound or remain frozen. I will have to close the app, reopen and try to play again although this does not always solve the problem and will have to close and reopen again and again until it works.
2) Sometimes I will open the app and click to resume my audiobook and it starts the book completely over. If I close and reopen the app, at times it will find my place again but this has not always been the case.
3) When trying to submit a help/question for a book (at the bottom where it says “having trouble with this title?”) I can click that and click one of the issues listed and am able to type what I’m experiencing but don’t see an actual button to submit my request/concern.
4) I wish I could preview an audiobook before using up one of my borrows and disliking the narration or the book.Show lesskeisharanae
Developer Response
Our development team is aware of this issue and are currently working on correcting this. We hope to release an app update for this soon. Please feel free to reach out to us at feedback@hoopladigital.com if you have questions or concerns!Amazing app
I tried Hoopla a few years ago and wasn’t too impressed. Recently I picked it up again and wow, this app has improved and it’s amazing. It literally feels like getting away with something to have this much free content - not just books but also audiobooks, music, even tv shows and movies - for FREE at my fingertips. Between this and the Libby app it’s like having a huge library you can take with you anywhere. You can download anything you borrowed to your device with one tap. This means I can listen to music and audiobooks in the car without streaming! Yay! The only downside I have found to this app is the borrowing limit which, with my library, is 6 items per month. I have to ration my picks carefully! However, I believe this is specific to the library your account is linked with, not universal for the app. The only issues I have encountered are so slight they’re not even worth mentioning - an audiobook that skipped/lagged for a few seconds, and occasionally the app crashes or loses my place in my book. This app is so great!Show lessTess329
Awesome app but needs some improvements
I am so thankful for this resource from the Phoenix Public Library. It is great! However, it isn’t exactly user friendly yet. Why can’t we deliver books to our Kindles like with Libby(Overdrive)? So I could read books on my Kindle Paperwhite and not have to purchase a Kindle Fire just to use the app. Why can’t we copy and paste highlights? Also highlighting is a bit wonky and glitchy in the app. It is hard to select the passage desired as it jumps forward or backward on the page. We also can’t seem to export our highlights and notes either, which would be helpful. Also, is there some way of connecting our Hoopla account to our Goodreads? Kindle is connected to Goodreads and all my updates and highlights show up there as well.
It would be great if some of these issues could be addressed, but thankful for this resource as it seems to offer much better selection than Libby(Overdrive), at least the books I want to read. So, thank you, and I hope this app continues to grow! :)Show lessNoirAlice
Love it but has some problems.
I have been enjoying "checking out" and reading books from my favorite authors for over a year now. I love the app, but I wish it had an option to make the page black and the text white. I read late at night and just lowering the brightness doesn't help in a dark room. I have also had problems with the app freezing when I open it. The slider slideshow continues at the top of the page, but none of my books will open and I cannot select any categories or menu icons. This is a problem and I am forced to restart my phone and then go back into the app. It doesn't happen with any other app, so it is not my phone causing the problem. For that reason I'm giving this app 3 stars, otherwise it would be 4. If they give us an a page color option in an update, I'll give them 5 stars since I always find a book that Overdrive doesn't offer.Show lessSoFloSoFawny
Buggy, but lots of great content
I use Hoopla for audiobooks mainly while driving and cleaning house. I am very grateful for the large selection available. The app itself is quite buggy, though, which has occasionally made me stop using it for periods of time. If a book isn’t playing, anytime you leave the app, you have to relaunch the app, choose your book again and press resume to play the book again. Overall, it’s only 10-15 seconds or so, but I don’t understand why I can’t pause the audiobook, send a quick text and go right back to listening to the audiobook. It often crashes if I’m using Maps and listening to an audiobook and a text comes through. Sometimes it doesn’t hold your place well when you pause an audiobook so you end up either relistening to 5 minutes or so, or else, trying to find where you stopped and getting frustrated with that. Overall, though, I’m grateful for free audiobooks (though I’m not sure how much my library has to pay), so I will continue to use it and just complain about my first world problems!Show lessChristyDawne
wonderful yet there are problems with content
Recently something odd appeared in the items to be borrowed and when I reached out to Hoopla support, I received an automated reply. I’m on round three of responding to automated replies in regards to a seemingly first-chapter rough draft that is being offered as a publication- and no longer do I have the energy to push forward. I only wanted to point out a non-technical problem however hoopla appears to only have support for technical issues. I will continue to enjoy the service; I am grateful for the borrows. hoopla certainly is a wonderful option to augment the digital borrows from my local library system. However Hoopla contains content which isn’t valid and does not have resources to accept that feedbck unfortunately. Luckily borrow count renews each month so the wasted borrows go away eventually. If they had support or any form of quality control at all this would be 5 stars.Show lessmackeystudio
Glitchiness dropped the rating
Please note that I have only used this app for reading e-books, so my rating is based on that. This app is fussy when it comes to turning the page. If you don’t do it just right, you either end up several pages ahead of where you were, or it freezes and crashes. I also don’t like that you can’t adjust the screen brightness. I read in bed a lot, and even using the low light filter on my iPad doesn’t dim things enough. I’ve used the gray background color, but it does not extend the full width of the screen, so there’s an annoying white frame around the gray page. (There is a white-on-black setting, but that bothers my eyes.) The search feature is okay, but it would be helpful if you could filter by language; some of the books I read have French, Italian or German translations, and it’s a pain to have to slog through those. Also, searching by author is somewhat hit or miss. With all the complaints, why do I still give this four stars? Because I can read books by some of my favorite authors, without having to purchase their books. So it’s worth that.Show lessA. Shure
Must have!
I am OBSESSED. I am a public library director so the I have helped the library make this possible for our community. If your library doesn’t offer it, ask!
Unlike other providers of digital content, though also amazing in their own right, Hoopla offers ebooks, audio books, comics, tv, music, and movies. All items in their catalog are instantly available- no wait! How many check outs a month is set by your library as its free to the user and paid for by the library but its a great compliment to other digital platforms! The app’s interface is easy to use and they are constantly improving it. You can download ebooks and audio books to your device for the 21 day check out so you can listen even when you cannot stream. If the item “falls off” after your checkout (because 50 hour audio books are a thing), you can re-borrow and it picks back up where you left off! You don’t have to start over. There are even more benefits I haven’t mentioned!
And from the backend as a director, working with the staff at MidWest Tape is awesome; quick to answer questions & reach out for support. It’s easy to access your portal and check stats, make changes to checkout limits and controls, and review spending.
I can’t say enough nor can my patrons!! We love it! CHECK IT OUT!Show lessLinds2286
Very good app
Hoopla is a very useful app and I’ve gotten a lot of books out of it: mostly audiobooks, quite a few ebooks, plus some music and graphic novels. It’s biggest problem is the very limited number of checkouts you have per months; occasionally I’ve run into limits on how many checkouts that my *library* is allowed. Because of this, I use Hoopla after I’ve exhausted all other options because, when ripping through a series of ebooks, it is very frustrating to have to wait for the next month to finish a set. I recall no standout problems with quality (every software can have bad moments) but for some silly reason Hoopla’s audiobook skip-backward function does not work with my vehicle’s sound system controls. It’s a long standing problem and very frustrating when you’ve missed something and, as you’re driving, there is nothing safe or legal to do about it but stop listening. Hoopla is one of five audiobook apps in my phone and it’s the only one with this problem, which suggests it should be a fairly easy fix <hint:>
On the plus side, it has a standout smart Lookup feature. It has the usual dictionaries but also connects into Wikipedia and if it finds a reference it shows a snapshot with pictures right up front. I’ve not noticed whether it’s good at language translations or not but perhaps I’ve not read that type of book yet on Hoopla.Show lessRbw43
Developer Response
The monthly borrow limit is something your library puts in place! Feel free to contact your library to see if they plan to increase their limit in the future. If you ever have any questions please contact us at feedback@hooplaldigital.com
