# Cambridge Spiral — user reviews > 19 indexed App Store user reviews of Cambridge Spiral by Cambridge University Press & Assessment (App), rated 1.00/5 from 11 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/cambridge-spiral/id1526644662/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/cambridge-spiral/id1526644662.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 0 · 4★ 0 · 3★ 0 · 2★ 0 · 1★ 11 ## Newest reviews (4 of 19) ### 1/5 — Awful new in-housed ebook reader *2024-01-19* Cambridge University Press switched from a perfectly decent third-party ebook reader that they used for the previous edition of a textbook I teach from to this app for the new edition (a racket in itself, of course). This reader doesn’t support the most basic features of an ebook reader or an iPad app. It appears to have no support for iPad multitasking, so I can’t have my notetaking app or the app I work problems in up while reading the book. The text rendering is incredibly ugly, especially for equations, rather than using the typesetting in the paper version of the textbook. This is the worst of all worlds, especially given that they used the perfectly decent Bookshelf by VitalSource for previous editions. A serious downgrade — though of course now they won’t sell the old edition of the textbook that uses the much-better reader. ### 1/5 — Offline reading expired after a day *2023-04-09* Can’t read the ebooks I purchased via this app. Offline reading expiry date not coherent to that on my account online. Should have purchased these ebooks in Amazon, or somewhere else. ### 1/5 — Awful, awful, awful *2023-03-18* This is a horrifyingly bad eReader. I cannot believe Cambridge University Press produced such a poor piece of software. On an iPad, you can only read in landscape orientation, and each chapter of the book I’m reading is one long, long, long vertical scroll. The typography of the mathematics is fuzzy and ugly… it’s apparently just a bitmap. After accidentally creating a bookmark in the wrong spot, I gave up after trying fifteen times to remove it because the popup menu disappears as soon as it appears. A PDF would be 10,000% better, but CUP doesn’t care about that because this garbage reader lets them lock up the book that I paid $70 for. I will never buy another book that uses Cambridge Spiral. ### 1/5 — Terrible app to use *2023-03-06* Will forcibly make you download app when trying to use ereader online but won’t let you annotate and is a clunky app. My least favourite study app I’ve ever encountered. Incredibly irritating ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Scam *2026-06-08* DO NOT BUY AN E-TEXTBOOK THAT OPERATES THROUGH THIS APP. I purchased a $140 textbook for university through this app. I was able to open it exactly ONCE, not a single line was able to be copy-pasted for the sake of note keeping, nothing can be printed or even highlighted, so you just have to absorb every word and internalise it. And the cherry on top is that every time since my first time attempting to open the textbook the app has ‘quit unexpectedly’ before I even was able to open it. This has happened to multiple other people in my course too. So I have been able to read 13 pages of a 1000 page textbook, spent a significant amount of my savings on this, and am now too far progressed in the semester to order a physical copy. Disappointed doesn’t come close to covering how I feel. Please save yourself the stress, money and frustration and just buy a physical textbook or go through a different ebook provider. **Developer response:** Thank you for the review.  We are sorry to hear that you are not happy with the experience you have been getting from the Cambridge Spiral application.  Please use the "Contact Us" button on the application itself to discuss your issue with one of our support agents. ### 1/5 — Redirection cycle *2026-02-05* Can’t open anything. You are directed to the App Store even if you have the app already. And then when you click open, it opens the app but gets stuck saying “redirecting”. Would rather just open the book as a pdf. No hassle that way. **Developer response:** Thank you for your feedback. We are sorry to hear that your experience with the App has not been the best. Please use the Contact Us button within the App so we can provide assistance to this problem. ### 1/5 — Poor *2026-01-28* Literally unusable. Cannot even sign in to use. **Developer response:** Thank you for the review. We are sorry to hear that you are not happy with the experience you have been getting from the Cambridge Spiral application. Please us the "Contact Us" button on the application itself to discuss your issue with one of our support agents. ### 1/5 — Has the privilege of being the most depressing e-reader app ever made. *2025-11-13* You try to download a book. Access is only through this app. You try to open the app. It takes you to the app store. You have already downloaded the app. It still takes you to the app store. You open the app at last. Redirecting. Will it ever stop redirecting? Unlikely. It has never directed me anywhere. The only way in which you can read anything on this app is by fighting it tooth and nail. Click the side arrows? Instantly teleported to the next chapter, page abandoned. Try to access your bookmarks? Laggy loading that's more trouble than scrolling through manually. It's all heartbreaking. Reading is now a chore. **Developer response:** Thank you for the review. We are sorry to hear that you are not happy with the experience you have been getting from the Cambridge Spiral application. Please us the "Contact Us" button on the application itself or via the Cambridge Aspire "Contact and Help" page to discuss your issue with one of our support agents. ### 1/5 — Worse than Nothing *2025-08-17* As others notice, this proprietary app has no purpose other than frustrating any attempt to use it. Bad on a laptop, worse on an iPad. We recommend using you own PDF screenshots, which won’t need a 5 second delay to load per page. Making notes is a multi step process nobody wants. Cambridge seems to underestimate the capabilities of every user to bypass its authoritarian corporate barriers. Here’s an example of a corporation doing something sleazy to save a penny and ruin its entire lineup of products. Authors beware of publishing with Cambridge. ### 1/5 — Please let me use a proper e-reader instead *2025-05-26* Make no mistake, this app exists not to satisfy user needs but so your access to textbooks can be managed (and withdrawn after you leave education). Which would be disappointing even were the app of good quality. It is not. It is dismal. No dark mode, not even the most rudimentary controls over reading - font, line spacing, alignment. Really feels phoned in. A bare minimum. The experience is so much worse than either Books or Kindle - neither of which, frankly, sets a high bar - it is shamerful. **Developer response:** We appreciate the provided review. We are sorry to hear that you have not had the best experience from the Cambridge Spiral application. To discuss your issue with one of our support agents, please click the "Contact Us" button within the application. ### 1/5 — Useless *2025-04-07* Cambridge is meant to be home of the smartest people in this country and they cant even make an app that works properly 🤬 **Developer response:** Thank you for the review. We are sorry to hear that you are unhappy with the experience you have been getting from the Cambridge Spiral application. Please us the "Contact Us" button on the application itself if you wish to discuss your issue with one of our support agents. ### 1/5 — frustrating to use *2024-12-26, version 281.2* When I click to borrow a title, it redirects me to the App Store to download the app instead of taking me to the app itself which is already installed on my phone. So then I click open and it opens the app but just gets stuck on a page saying “Redirecting”. ### 1/5 — Be better, Cambridge *2024-04-27* I don’t think a reader can be worse than this. Massively frustrating to use. Thanks for nothing, guys. ### 1/5 — Featureless and Horrible *2024-02-27* This reader doesn’t have any basic functions or features that the most basic readers have. The text to speech option is absolutely horrible. Go back to the drawing board and develop a better app! It’s absolutely pathetic that we have to use this for school. ## Most praised reviews (5 highest-rated) ### 4/5 — App *2024-11-25* Good app, works well ### 4/5 — Good Reading App *2022-02-07* Pros: Reading, highlighting, editing are all good and books are easy to access with Apple Pencil functionality. Cons: Aspect ratio and resolution are not perfect on all devices. ### 3/5 — The lack of split screen support is criminal *2022-04-09* Please ### 2/5 — OK but out of date and not well implemented *2026-03-13* This app is fine; it allows reading textbooks. But it’s clunky and feels out of date. The windowing is not really compatible with iPadOS 26, not filling the screen and resizing itself awkwardly. Scrolling between pages is awkward. When I leave the app it forgets which page I was on, so I have to find the page again. All in all disappointing. **Developer response:** Thank you for the review. We are sorry to hear that you are not happy with the experience you have been getting from the Cambridge Spiral application. Please us the "Contact Us" button on the application itself to discuss your issue with one of our support agents. ### 2/5 — Problematic for texts including Formulars *2025-11-30* Reading texts in which formulas are an important component is not pleasant. Formulas are often displayed much larger than the main text, which causes the formatting of the book to be lost. This is unfortunate. I would prefer to read a PDF file or, for that matter, photos of a physical edition in which the typesetting is the same as in a physical book. **Developer response:** Thank you for the review. We are sorry to hear that you are not happy with the experience you have been getting from the Cambridge Spiral application. Please us the "Contact Us" button on the application itself to discuss your issue with one of our support agents. --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-29.*