Not the worst
This app gives the books you need and works decently enough. However, this was proprietary to the textbook I needed to read and I would much prefer a different reader. Additionally, the read aloud feature is what I would expect from technology made 20 years ago. There’s no reason they can’t have better voice options today. Naturally, they make it impossible to export as an EPUB or PDF because they want you to use their app and not share those files with others, but that punishes those of us who just want our own digital content delivered in a better format. I do not plan to continue using this after the semester.
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Almost great
It’s user friendly and easy to highlight with an Apple Pencil on the iPad. I dislike the jump to next feature on the iPhone when Im trying to quickly scroll through pages. The feature lands on the screen where my thumb scrolls downward and upward (especially if I’m using it one handed) and I end up pressing it by accident.
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Worst!
There is a frustrating bug in the current version. When dealing with books that have small fonts, I need to pinch-to-zoom to read the lines properly. Unfortunately, once zoomed in, the markup feature stops working, preventing me from highlighting or annotating important words. I have to zoom back out to use markup, but then the text is too small to see what I'm highlighting. Please fix this conflict between zoom and markup!
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Unusable in its current state
I appreciate there is an app that makes it easier to access academic books digitally. But there are some aspects that *must* be fixed because the app is practically unusable right now! At least on iPad. The main two issues are:
1. Any time I interact with the book I am reading, it will skip ahead around 10 pages from where I was. Whether it be from highlighting, trying to bookmark a page, tapping the center to remove the peripheral menu, or sometimes just scrolling as usual, this happens so often that I have considered just getting the physical book to avoid this nonsense.
2. There needs to be similar options to customize and move through the book like with Kindle. The three options to get through the book are to scroll, a paginated swipe, or chapter scroll. Even with the paginated system, I have to actually swipe to change the page every time? I can’t just tap on the right or left of the screen to move forward or back, which aces no sense to me. Every other ereader app does this.
As for nice-to-haves, I would appreciate being able to write in the margins to take notes while I read the text. But the two issue above need to be addressed before I can even consider using this app for law school.
1. Any time I interact with the book I am reading, it will skip ahead around 10 pages from where I was. Whether it be from highlighting, trying to bookmark a page, tapping the center to remove the peripheral menu, or sometimes just scrolling as usual, this happens so often that I have considered just getting the physical book to avoid this nonsense.
2. There needs to be similar options to customize and move through the book like with Kindle. The three options to get through the book are to scroll, a paginated swipe, or chapter scroll. Even with the paginated system, I have to actually swipe to change the page every time? I can’t just tap on the right or left of the screen to move forward or back, which aces no sense to me. Every other ereader app does this.
As for nice-to-haves, I would appreciate being able to write in the margins to take notes while I read the text. But the two issue above need to be addressed before I can even consider using this app for law school.
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AI Voices
I just start taking courses again and am enjoying the ai feature very much. Hopefully it will be made for all books soon
Can’t annotate or screenshot
You can’t do handwritten annotations and if you try to screenshot a section to put in in a different t notes app, you can't. You're better off just buying the print version of a book.
Not for people who need accommodations
If you'd like to continually scroll, like a regular person reads from a tablet or phone (which, isn't that the point of having an app) you're not going to get what you need. As someone with dyslexia having the page reorient itself every time you touch or remove your finger from the screen isn't only frustrating it makes it impossible to refer to the previous page without completely reorienting. I'm a grad student, I don't have time for this mess and a used book is better than how frustrating the page layouts are, even when they say they offer "accommodations". As a textbook peddler, they've spent very little time assessing how people naturally read.
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Great but not
I love having this app to access all my textbooks on the go. However, being dyslexic and needing a good “read aloud” option (critical in order to retain information). The read aloud on this app it like talking to WALLI… extremely robotic with no option to change it to any other more natural sounding voice. Very frustrating since I can’t understand some of what the robot is trying to read.
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Stay away
Absolute cancer of an app. One of the worst UI I have seen in a while and you are only renting books you can’t print chapter of. Full on scam. All these 5 star must be bots. No one who reads a lot can enjoy this drudgery.
Don’t have text to speech
Not helping at all
AI Reader
Love the new AI reader voice. So much easier to listen to and tolerate boring text books. Only downside is it doesn’t work for all books yet. So I have one textbook that is great, and the other having the old robot voices…
Really hoping it can be applied to all of them very soon!!
Also hoping one day it can be smart enough (or have the option) to skip things like “Figure 16.45” and the (citations) that are at the end of the sentences.
Really hoping it can be applied to all of them very soon!!
Also hoping one day it can be smart enough (or have the option) to skip things like “Figure 16.45” and the (citations) that are at the end of the sentences.
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Sufficient
A little glitchy on some pages and not user-friendly for reading, but sufficient I guess
I just want to learn man
I’m trying to read my calculus textbook but some formulas just don’t show up in the text! Trying to get help is a nightmare. How am I supposed to pass this class when I can’t even read the textbook because some text just refuses to show up? If I can email someone, that would be sweet.
Terrible Read Aloud Voice
I use the app and pay for the ebooks specifically for the read aloud option and the robot voice is terrible. Is there really no other voice option?
Hopefully they adjust that asap bc I've spent the $$$.
On the website, vital source, there are other voice options, but not in the Bookshelf app apparently. Boo.
Hopefully they adjust that asap bc I've spent the $$$.
On the website, vital source, there are other voice options, but not in the Bookshelf app apparently. Boo.
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Needs Apple Pencil option
I would love to be able to highlight and make notes on my iPad with my Apple Pencil as this is how I learn. Will this be added any time soon?
Jumps if you touch it
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fix this app! Every time I touch the screen it jumps to another place in the book. It’s been happening for weeks now. I thought maybe it was an update compatibility problem with Apple, so I patiently waited, but the problem remains.
Difficult app
Difficult to navigate, hard to highlight, not intuitive, no instructions. What a terrible way to try to read a book.
Needs to integrate speechify
Needs to integrate speechify
Can’t shuffle flashcards, constant crashes
No good
Worst, useless
This is the absolute worst, most useless e-reader app I’ve ever used. The font is un-adjustable so there’s no practical way to read from it without a huge, book-sized screen! Please make a way to adjust font size.
