Reviews for Kobo | eBooks & Audiobooks

I like this app for reading ebooks. But the app is terrible for audiobooks. My big issue is how often the audiobooks lose my place. I'll hit pause and the book will jump forward a few chapters. I'll try to go back 10 seconds; the book will go to a random chapter. If you touch anywhere on the screen, the chapter menu will pop up randomly and skip around. I've uninstalled and updated the app, but it's still a common problem. Also, you can't listen at increased speed through Android Auto.

recent app update is bad. it reset all my settings and i can't find a way to make some of them how they were before (like the pagination setting -- suddenly I can't set it as having a fun page turning animation). the contrast is different and I can't change it, and it's losing my place in my books. very bad. edit: gave up and uninstalled. not worth the time and trouble.

Kobo, as a service, is a very solid ebook option. However, with the recent update, they've completely changed the way the reader works in this app. Not only did it totally screw up the settings I was comfortable with (and I can't get them back) but it also removed things like the option to have a page turn animation. It's also significantly laggier than it was in the past. I am so sick of companies "fixing" what ain't broke...

The app constantly closes on me when I'm reading, and recently, when I get near the end of the chapter, unless my font setting is on the smallest one, it will cut off the last few pages of the chapter and start a new one. I have to backtrack one page, change the font to the smallest size, and then I can change the page and have it finish the chapter. It's annoying! Also, it doesn't sync the furthest page read on my devices until about 5 minutes into my reading. I have to manually sync the pages.

Please let us fine-tune the playback speed. The playback speed adjustment is currently extreme. Speeding up to 1.05 to 1.10 or down to 0.95 or 0.9 would be great. I'd never isten to anything at +3.0 speed... The search results aren't that easy to navigate, a minor gripe. Membership read/listen library is awesome! I hope that doesn't change.

Overall a good app for ebooks, although it can be annoyingly slow to open sometimes. In the most recent update, pages at the end of some of my book's chapters are missing, with the chapter ending in the middle of a sentence. I'll keep using Kobo because it's a decent alternative to Kindle, but I really hope the missing pages issue is fixed soon!

unfortunately, there is a flaw in the audiobook app. it doesn't keep your place in the book. It also doesn't allow for bookmarking it, so when it jumps around, you can't find where you last were. It's happened constantly to me and my husband. I contacted the company and told them the issue and that I'd need a refund for both credits since I couldn't save my place in the books and they refused. Said they would only give me credits for new audio books, which is useless to me. bad company policy.

I went with a Kobe e-reader for features for the price. It's still great, but this app is awful. It's stuck at loading the library and no books show up. I tried everything customer support said, multiple times. No luck. It's worked in times past and is okay then. But these sync issues happen often. When I check out or buy a new book it often doesn't appear. (I've tried repairing my account, repeatedly. It doesn't work).

I have reached out, spoken to a person, they don't seem to understand the words I say or type, and keep asking me things over and over., like they only read from a script and don't understand English. Very disappointed. having so many issues. Can't even download an audiobook to listen to it, so annoying. Can't download anything. Seems to be a consistent waste of money. MMaygo to another app. Not that great.

Works fine with regular ebooks, but I just got an eaudiobook and it keeps skipping chapters when I close and open the app sometimes. I don't know why, it's very frustrating having to remember what chapter I left off on when I close the app. I like that it works with overdrive ebooks from the library. I hope the eaudiobook problems are fixed soon!

Update 8/6: app is now working properly. Customer service was great with responding to my email & providing updates. 7/31: I love kobo for the audio book selection, but all of a sudden I can't download any audiobooks and the app doesn't offer a stream option. I reached out to customer service. I was told it was a known issue they were working on and to do troubleshooting things I had already done. That was on Wed and it is now Monday and I haven't heard anything back. I hope it gets fixed soon.

I mean it's decent. pretty bare bones for a reader and for some reason has to load every single time it opens, including when offline or with poor signal, which means sometimes it takes over a minute just to open a book I have downloaded. there's not much in the way of app settings, so you can't hide the top bar (time, battery, etc) and small stuff like that. overall it's not bad, but I expected better especially considering the quality of other ebook readers you can download.

it's a good reader, and books selection is great but the library manager is lacking working filters. also, the login screen is not user-friendly as you need to know that you have to go to the library link, remember which one you have and select it to be able to access your account and library. How about a Single Sign On, Kobo? or a drop-down field on the login page, instead of the hidden link, then new page etc... need to rework the flow into something not confusing and actually user-friendly.

App cannot start if you are not connected to the internet, which defeats the whole point of having offline book files. I have received tech support and it basically boiled down to "uninstall, reinstall, and sign out and in until it works." This did work eventually, but I can't reasonably uninstall and reinstall the app every month or so as this is a recurring problem.

Per the suggestion below, I have attempted to reinstall the app. This did not fix the problem. The app refuses to sync my audiobook listening to my current location in the book while on mobile data, instead frequently resetting me (every 15 minutes) to the last location it saved while I was on wifi. This makes my Kobo audiobooks useless as I'm spending more time trying to remember where I was than actually getting to listen. I will need to buy my audiobooks elsewhere unless this is fixed.

Used to be a great app. Since the last update though, it's very hard to use. The links for footnotes no longer appear to work. When you open a book, it automatically turns the screen brightness up to maximum, which makes it almost impossible to look at because it's so bright. You can't turn the brightness down either because it somehow overrides the phone settings. None of the settings seem to allow you to change any of this and re-installing it didn't do anything.

I use the app for audiobooks and want to love it, but the app has been very buggy lately. It was not saving where I left off in my audiobooks, just constantly restarting me at previous chapters. I had to write down or screenshot where I was pausing an audiobook. Today a tech helped me fix that issue, but I still don't have an option for bookmarks in my audiobooks. Their suggestion was that I uninstall and reinstall the app. I had already done that 3 times with no success. Hope they fix it soon!

I can't purchase books. If I click on one, the app flashes the splash screen, then brings up an empty screen with the title "Store". It's often been glitchy, but now it's unusable. And, how about you reach out to us, if you actually want to help, instead of just telling everybody to reach out to you after they bring up an issue. Like, it's not our job to be beta-testers for your unfinished software.

I love the kobo service, and really enjoy my kobo device. The phone app, however, leaves much to be desired. My biggest issue is that it sometimes overwrites my phone's brightness settings. Even on dark mode, it is way too bright, and it takes a moment for the brightness to go back to normal when I close out, blinding me. It's also inconsistent. It wasn't happening for awhile, but started again when I updated the app. Lately it's also losing my place in a book on occasion.

*I did that yesterday and now it's back to doing the same thing. I was just in the middle of re listening to one of my books and it crashed and skipped to the end of the book. Not very impressed... Every time I listen to my audiobooks after the initial listen, it never holds the audio in the right spot. It'll jump way back or way ahead. It also will just crash randomly after listening for a while and won't restart in the last spot you were at. It's also a pain to be able to buy the audiobooks.