CloudLibrary Customer Service

Among walks, runs, rides, and long drives, I listen to days of audio books per month so Cloud Library and the access it gives to my Library’s material is invaluable to me. The app has also gotten far more stable for which I am grateful. However, there are two features that would make it MUCH better. 1. Full CarPlay support. If an audio book is started through the app on the phone, it will play through CarPlay and can be somewhat controlled (pause, resume, forward and back x seconds, track advance); nevertheless, if you are listening to something else first (perhaps a podcast) and then want to listen to a book, you have to find someplace safe to pull over and use the phone to start it (or do something foolish while driving). You should be able to start the app through CarPlay as you can with Audible, Libby, and many other audio book apps. 2. An “Undo” feature. As mentioned, once started, functions like “track advance” (in case of a book, chapter advance) do work. Unfortunately, in a lot of vehicles, that is a button on the back of the steering wheel all too easy to accidentally push, especially during turns, again resulting in pulling over to navigate back to where you were in the book through phone and fiddling. It would be great to have an “Undo” feature that would not take you back 10 sec in the book (though that feature is nice when you get distracted by something like “traffic” and miss something important to the plot), but back to where you were 10 seconds ago in realtime, wherever in the book that was. These two features would make it a definite “5 star”.

Great app for if you are looking for the best online library to use for ,long car rides, plane rides, and train rides, then this is the app for you! With its wide variety of selections, it creates the perfect substitute for a library! I really enjoy using this app for more than one reason so i am only going to rate a few. One, great tools! The bookmarks and start from where you left off on the other device are great tools! Two, you can download books to use whenever you aren’t connected to the internet. Three, they have audio versions of the majority of the books and that is great because for some people, they get nauseous whenever they read in the car or plane. So the audio is great for that too. Or if you just don’t want to read then you can use the audio version. Defiantly recommend this app if you are wanting an online free library. You do have to connect it to the local library and usually you just call them up and they have the majority of the US library’s listed so it should be fairly easy to find yours. The main glitches that i have found or experienced are fairly mild and tend to be the result of not enough storage so if you have already downloaded this app and are currently having trouble you might have to delete the app and redownload it. And trust me, that has never happened before and it won’t take long. Defiantly five star review!!!

I’ve been loving this app for several months. Recently I’ve become very frustrated by an apparently new glitch; almost every time I stop reading & bookmark a page, I discover that when I return to resume reading the book has frozen at the beginning of that chapter or on that page. I can’t continue reading unless I shut down my Apple phone, the quicker fix, or more time-consuming - delete the entire app & then download it again. That means going to my country & State & re-entering my Library card & also downloading the books again. Luckily, it does then take me back to the place in the book where I stopped reading. However it’s frustrating & time consuming. I love using an app to electronically borrow books from my library. And when I first started using Cloud Library it was so convenient & worked consistently well. Now, it’s just frustrating an unreliable. Please help. PS. I wish there was an easier way to send you feedback when a glitch exists. I talked to the reference librarian at my local library & he too has recently been having problems with this app as well, so at least I know there are 2 of us. Since there’s no way to send feedback beyond this review, I wonder if you even know there is a problem?

Overall, this is a terrific app for accessing electronic resources (I use it primarily for audiobooks) available from my local library. Even works well remembering where I left off across multiple devices. Kudos on the app, mostly. Couple of things. Possibly feature requests? 1) Please add to the sleep timer on audio books an ‘End of Chapter’ option. It’s nice to leave off at a chapter rather than just a specific amount of time. As it stands now I have to dive into the chapter list and figure out how much time is left in the chapter and then try and peg it just right at the right time in the sleep timer to be approximately at chapter end. To the end user, there is no reason I shouldn’t also have an end of chapter option. 2) How about a bug report / feature request button in the app itself. There is no way that I can find to report bugs or request enhancements except by writing a review. Plenty of FAQs and the like, but if I can’t find it there, then no other way to communicate with development team that I can tell. Thank you!

I think that cloud library is good because you can listen to audiobooks or you can read them off of your device that you’re using. The only thing I’m not saying that’s excellent because you only get a certain number of days you get to listen or read your audiobook and some people can’t finish those day And there’s no feature to renew your book that you’re reading or audiobook so you just have to wait until expires to renew it basically need to press it again and it gives you more 15 is something that I think like libraries appreciate it they should’ve put more kids options on it. There’s a lot of adoptions, but some kids really want to listen to audiobooks other three so the parents have to pay for it like my sister she wanted to be a kids book but it was not on CloudLibrary and she was what is sad about it because iPad library did not have what she wanted. I think there should be more varieties of books for kids if they like scary or fantasy or mystery any kind of books because there’s so many adult books not very much his books even if you cannot get mad, she couldn’t find what she wanted. Put more variety. That’s what I had to say about CloudLibrary

I love how easy it is to search and borrow books from my library and save titles for later. However, as time goes on the app gets more and more glitchy and works less consistently. Most times it says I don’t have any saved titles though I know I do. Occasionally, my list will actually show up. I have no “history” despite having borrowed dozens of books. And if I don’t lock my screen orientation and I accidentally tip it (from portrait to landscape then back to portrait) I will have lost my place in the chapter and I have to figure out where I was. Or sometimes my scrolling will jump me to the next chapter. It’s getting very frustrating to use this app, which is unfortunate because it used to work better. Please do something to make it work more consistently! Also, I don’t know if this has to do with the app, or how a book is created for it, but I recently borrowed an audio book (it was the only available format for that title) and it had no chapter markings. I would have liked to be able to jump back and listen to certain sections again, but I couldn’t find a way to do that.

My old car had a CD player. I checked out audiobooks from the library all the time for long commutes and visits to friends in other states. After a while, I noticed my options were dwindling. When I got a new car, it didn’t have a CD player. I freaked out and bought a portable one so I could listen to my audiobooks. Then, I learned about Cloud Library. It’s amazing!! The selections are endless, including new releases. I just check out and download a book through the app on my phone, and it plays in my car! I don’t have to worry about changing CDs or remembering where I left off. It’s all right here on my phone! Sometimes I even listen when I’m not driving. Listening to audio books allows me to double or even triple the number of books I consume. The fact that I can listen for free with my library card is amazing. I’m so so grateful for Cloud Library and for all my local Columbia County (Florida) library branches and the wonderful people who work in them. (Special shoutout to the Ft. White branch. That place feels like home when I walk in.)

This app has helped me read books again. For a few years now I have been so busy and cannot find time to read. With this app I can! Now I download audio books (for free) to listen to while I drive in the car or in my headphones when I walk or if I am waiting at the doctor or for a meeting or out walking. This is great, because I have books on my mobile device that I always carry- I always have books with me. I also download books to just read on my mobil device and I don’t have to worry about late fees. My elderly mom who was an avid reader but has had eye problems of late is now able to “read” again too, because of the audio books. All this takes is a library card. So simple. The only downside is sometimes the audio versions of a book I want are not available, so I have to get the digital one and I have to stare at a screen to read & that I cannot do while I drive, workout or walk. More audio versions would be nice if possible, please!

I teach English Language Arts to students in the 4th grade of life. The reading theme, this lesson series, just happens to be about survival. O’Dell’s award winning novel of the coming from school age to a strong resilient young lady, “Kranna;”that was left on an island off the Santa Barbara coast of California to fend for herself is incredible! This Is truly a realistic nonfiction account that has my public charter students, in their own urban insular enthralled in reading a book. Sharing that if we can survive like Kranna nothing can stop us. CBS, 60 minutes, grants my class a text to text (media) reading comprehension connection. Finally what’s your island of spirit animals? My wife’s would be giraffes, she loves them. Mine are whales. Whenever I’m taking a certification test or something I close my eyes for a second and explain the question to the whale in his habitat, the ocean, the amusement peers when the orca reply’s “what’s a question?”

This app is not as good as Libby. Libby is just a bit more refined and user friendly. It’s easier to search for books and to see if you’ve already read a book in Libby. Sometimes I’ll find a book and want to see other books in the same series and I’ll click on the name of the series by a particular author but I get no results. If I search for the author then those books will show up. So they are there they only show up when I search by author. In Libby I can get all books in a particular series. This one is also not always great at keeping your bookmarks in a book. And there are some other minor things like that. However, it’s pretty good and there are a lot of books and audiobooks available. I use it all the time and I am happy with it I just wish it had some of the features available in Libby. My library uses both apps and I find that CloudLibrary has more content so I’m happy to use it. And it has improved in the last several years. So I do recommend it.

I would have given thus app a 5-star rating BEFORE the recent major update. My biggest complaint is about a feature I use constantly - bookmarks. They no longer appear at the top of the page unless you tap the center of the page first. Why that extra step??? Now if I go back a few pages to look something up, I can’t just easily navigate back to the bookmarked page. I have to tap in the center of every single page. So stupid. Even worse, when you tap on e page it frequently advances forward or backwards and you can’t tell where you are since there are no bookmarks anymore. And when I open the book I have no idea if I’m on the right page or not because I don’t see my bookmark. You used to be able to simply tap the top right corner to place a bookmark, and now you have to go through the extra step of tapping in the center and then tapping on top, and then, instead of being rewarded for your effort by a bookmark showing up, you still have to keep tapping the center to see it. And it just makes the icon black so it isn’t even an obvious bookmark like before. Please make it the way it used to be where you can just tap ONE TIME in the upper right corner, and then leave the darn bookmark there so we know it’s there!!! People who actually read books regularly on this app are the only ones who should be allowed to mess around with it. I also want the brightness adjustment within the app.

I much prefer when my library used Libby. Right now it’s showing like 90% of the books on hold. There’s no way!! And they all (or mostly all) will be available in 2 days. Also, like others have said, it doesn’t remember where it left off and so I have to try to find where I last stopped. So many glitches over the past few years and changes to things that don’t need to be changed!! Please fix this hold thing!!! I’m going to uninstall and reinstall to see if that helps 🤷‍♀️. If I don’t change this, it didn’t work. BTW, I’m not at all a complainer, but I love my audiobooks!!! The fact that these are free to listen to is why I didn’t go below three stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️. Update: It didn’t help and I forgot to include that I have my search settings set to only show available titles, but it still also shows ones on hold. Unless that’s just a part of this glitch.

Compared to using Overdrive, kindle and Apple Books this app is the worst! I’ve tried getting info how to read in whole screen and can’t find info. I want to browse and topics too broad or not what I’m looking for. Browsing, I still have children’s books on screen I have to scroll past every time when all I want are books in certain genres for adults. Borrowing books is limited and often there are more audio books than to read. I don’t listen to audio books. There doesn’t seem to be large print which they used to offer. I know you can increase print size but it doesn’t show as much print as lg print books used to. The reading options are limited compared to the other apps. Granted, this is the app I have to use to read my library loans so I shouldn’t complain, but I wish they still used Libby. Please make it better!

This app was specifically designed for libraries at no charge to them or library patrons unlike Kjndle/Amazon which does charge libraries for the use of that app. This helps to reduce the cost of ebooks to public libraries enabling them to purchase more hard copy books and ebooks. No, I am not a librarian, just a huge book lover who reads anything of interest and have done so for many, many years. I have found this app very easy to use and I am 71 yes. old who still reads actual books but large print books in libraries do not include a large selection due to their higher cost. This app allows me to read new books via my tablet and still allows me to check out hard copy books, too. Unlike Overdrive, there is a far greater selection of books available through this app which I, for one, really appreciate! Thank you, 3M, for creating this app for our public libraries!

I have immensely enjoyed using Cloud Library. It helps me pass the time when I have things to do during which I am able to listen to something interesting- e.g. while driving, cleaning house, working on art, exercising, etc. While there are many titles, I would like to see many more. I enjoy mystery series, but often find that you do not offer the earliest installments. I don’t start a series halfway through, say, with book 5 out of 10. I also like biographies, but I am dismayed that there is not a balance between those about persons on the left and right of the societal mindsets. The bios about the more conservative persons are quite lacking, and those are the ones we hear the least about in ‘popular’ media. I would have more books to choose from if these suggestions were met with such books.

I have been using this app for the past year or so and loving it! Especially during Covid when our library has been closed. But a new update just came out which had a lot of promise. But it’s been glitchy and it’s driving me crazy! I’ll be reading or listening to a book and it interrupts me with “we’ve book marked where you left off, want to go there?” I say “no” because obviously I’m reading or listening where I want to be. But today it kept interrupting and giving me this same message over and over. Also, it switches between “scroll” mode and “flip/turn pages” mode on its own while i’m reading and then freezes. I have to close the app altogether and reload in order for it to correct. Then it does it again a bit later. Please developers correct these glitches!

I love the vast selection of books and seeing some of my favorite series on here, however I constantly have issues with this app crashing immediately on launch, not letting me borrow books due to system errors, and it not keeping the proper page when reading. I often find that if I leave a book and come back, even for a short second, it will lose my page and move to the beginning of the chapter(sometimes even doing so when I accidentally tilt my phone to landscape mode) and sometimes it will skip pages when I try to turn them, moving to the next chapter instead. However, this app is a great system that has a good variety of books, and once they work past these errors, you will have an app on your hands that competes well with any e reader programs.

Cloud library is a must have for any reader or audio book listener !! You can get any book that your local library has !!! I haven’t ever had any issues over 5 years ! The selection of audio books is amazing ! You can get so many of the Great courses lecture in Audi0 and free !!! I have 12-14 hours a day and always have an audio book or course going . Even when I sleep ! This app is priceless !!! You can just learn all day for free ! There is plenty of mindless fiction to listen to or read as well . I can’t devote full attention to read so these audio books are everything to me !! Like there are some books I wish it had but there’s plenty to keep me busy for the rest of my life ! That’s the only thing I’d change but it’s still practically perfect!!

I was so disappointed when our library chose this app to offer its members. It was not user friendly, was unwieldy and no where near as enjoyable read as Libby, the previously used app. But lately this app has gotten to be so awful it’s almost to the point of me giving up. 2 out of every 3 books I download ends with an “error in downloading” and I don’t even get the book I had been waitlisted for. Sometimes the pages won’t turn or they turn but return to the same page over and over. I’m trying to read a book now where every time I get to one particular page the app just shuts down. I’ve tried powering down and reopening and sometimes that helps, other times it makes no difference. I read 2-5 books a week so to not be able to use this app is highly frustrating.

I absolutely loved this app and would have given it five stars until about a month ago. I would try to borrow a book, but it would either say “error” or load for so long that I would just quit trying. And by the way, it’s not that I already had three books and hit my max, but I had ZERO books already checked out. And if I managed to get a book to download into my library, it would just be loading forever until I made it stop. So I tried deleting the app and redownloading, but when I opened it I had to go through the login process again. I put in my language, country, state, and library, hit next… the terms and conditions came up as a blank page, with no next button or anything. I have been trying and trying to even login, but that’s kinda hard to do when you can’t get past terms and conditions.

I employ this app often as I am passionate about audiobooks. I listen to one to three books a week. Availability of books is dependent on the library of course but I do like the ease in bookmarking books while listening. I have learned how to program my preferences in browsing and have them remembered-note: you have to hit “star” icon. This app used to be a little buggy but it has improved dramatically. I do like that there are no extra steps between borrowing and downloading books. I can find out that a book is available to download and just immediately download the book, I don’t have to go to the web based account to connect a loan to the app (which is required by another app). There is a drawback to this app in adjusting listening location mid chapter but this is a pretty minimal issue. Glad to be able to use this app through my library.

A decent enough reading app but it’s wildly unreliable. Recent updates actually took away functionality that I was using - like the ability to lock rotation. Why on earth would you take that away? Also the Library Message section now always had an exclamation point/notification, even though there aren’t any library messages. Also the fun new thing it started doing with the last update is not returning to the last page you were on and instead returning to the beginning of the chapter you’re on. Every now and again, it un-downloads my books, won’t actually return or renew items after I tap on the option to do so. It’s buggy and I really wish the library I paid taxes to used Libby bc that app isn’t nearly this unreliable.

I listen to books while I walk. Not especially happy to exercise, but I want to listen to the next chapter, so I walk. Before I know it, 30 minutes is gone and my walk is over. I never thought I would like to “listen” to books being read, but love it now. I can sew or cook and still listen. Love holding a book until I used this app. Being able to adjust the font size and having it lit up makes it so easy to read at night in bed. No more heavy books on my lap. Best of all the books are FREE from the library. Some books may not be available right away, but placing a book on hold is easy. It doesn’t take long before the book is available. I always suggest the app to friends in hopes they will enjoy it as much as I do.

So, I don’t usually write reviews, but this is bothering me a bit. CloudLibrary is a great app, it’s free (yay!😌), and easy to use. There are a few glitches that have occurred recently, like where when I first download the book and start reading, the first few pages are normal, but then the pages after them are blank. Luckily, if you click out of the book, and click back in, it works. There’s another glitch where some books only have the option to suggest and save for later. It made me very disappointed when this happened with a book I had really been looking forward to reading. Please fix, if possible! 🙃✌🏻 EDIT: For some reason, it’s now working, sooo...🤷🏻‍♀️ Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Otherwise, this is a great app!👍🏻

I love the library app. I have read at least 100 books over the 5 or 6 years that I have been using this app. The new way of finding that a book you have on hold is now available.

Good books !

Reader used to have an in app brightness control in addition to iPhone general brightness. This was great for dimming the text while reading before sleep. Now that feature has been removed and text is too bright for nighttime reading before sleep.

The loading is to slow I want to be able to read my books!

It’s a good ap but can be annoying some times if you want a specific title

Free the books!

This app is amazing!This app has every ebook in your nearest library.Hope your nearest library has good ebooks.

Good selection of books but the app still has issues with fast forwarding or reversing

I have never listened to audiobooks before I had cloud library but it provided awesome sound which worked well with AirPods . I felt totally immersed and the tracks could also change themselves.

Great app for reading books online definitely recommend getting if you have a library card

Easily connect to your local library and gain access to electric books and more!

Cloud library is amazing. It is the library in the palm of your hand! I recommend this app to everyone. If you like to read this app is a must. You can borrow books, magazines, audiobooks from your phone for free. They give you notices when a hold becomes available. You can borrow multiple books at a time. This is my most used app!

Having read/heard dozens of novels over two years now, I have had very good success with both e-books and audiobooks. The only two failings I see are (A) sometimes, I cannot get the book I’ve downloaded to work on flights or overseas when I do not have an Internet connection; and (B) the titles offered are far too Ameri-centric, with too few authors and books from other English-speaking countries such as the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Really happy to always have my favourite authors and narrators available for listening.

I love Cloud Library. It has so many books. My favourite is the audio books.

Not enough audiobooks

Just because our public library decided to move from overdrive (libby), I can’t borrow books directly from my kobo anymore. Very sad, but cloudlibrary is fine until I found out it needs all these extra step on a pc or Mac to transfer epub to my kobo. I don’t read on my phone, it’s ridiculous to read it on that screen. It drains my eyes. Now I can’t find both the cloud library app on mac nor the ADE to do the transfer. For ppl don’t have a pc or mac, how are they gonna do? Why can’t you guys develop something that make life easier. So dump.

Great app, easy to use, BUT needs a search filter to separate written books from audio books. Searches for one format could be cut in half if this filter were available. App supervisor, please note and fix!!!

What a wonderful place

This is an amazing app. I love audiobooks so this was great for me. They have a great selection of books to chose from. I am really enjoying the app.

Best app for audiobooks but long wait time to borrow your favourite literature.

I love using the app but in app there was some errors that kept popping up when I returned books or looked up a book in the search bar. I re-installed the app to see if it would work again. Now I can’t get back in, I’ve even tried 2 library cards for different libraries and nothing is working. (Both my cards are renewed and work on the libraries website.)

This app is a great app but the ebooks never load 🙁

I would provide a higher rating if there could be a method to identify on the Front Cover- Vol 1, 2, 3 etc for multiple story lines. ie or Book 1,2,3 etc.

Absolutely amazing selection of Reese’s, Oprah, and other book clubs. And all FREE!! the best discovery made to date. Highly recommend.

Love the audiobooks! 😊👍😊 cloud library is my go to place I totally enjoy listening to great books!

I listen to audio books and constantly have an issue, nearly if not every time I pause the story, that it skips way forward or way back, and I have to spend half my time trying to find where I left off. The options to go forward or back for a larger amount of time are too few and far between, so it is not helpful what so ever. My library went from Overdrive to this app, and I wish I had the other app back. Another complaint that I have is that the selection here was said to have been larger, but I’m not finding that to be the case. The search option requires specific spelling and complete titles, often I’m not sure of. The overdrive app had suggestions that helped me find what I was looking for. Also, this app doesn’t have a full collection of books in series. I could understand not having the lastest book in a series, but often I can ONLY find the latest of a series, which I can’t read bc I can’t find the previous books. It’s very frustrating and I’m disappointed in the app. I don’t have a CD player or tape player in my vehicle at work, so I can’t just checkout from the library. I’m very fed up and frustrated with this app, but I don’t have any other option from my library, so unfortunately I’m stuck with it. If updates become available with fixes to these issues, or if there is another way I can have some of these issues addressed, I’d be glad to receive that info and take it up with anyone who could help. Thanks.

First of all it regularly tries to change the spot to where I ““ have been listening which means said it changes it backwards the spot I’m actually at. It also does not connect well with Bluetooth headphones, so each time I try to stop or start the story from my headphones it doesn’t register whatsoever. Not only that it causes the story randomly without any initiation from me. Also there is very little information about the books themselves, after check out if I’m curious about the year or a book was published or anything about the author I have to look elsewhere. the audiobooks are displayed in a way that shows the time frame at the base of the screen, however instead of showing the time for the current chapter, it shows the entire time for the entire book. for example it will show a full 10 hours at the base of the screen, so when the app jumps me to the wrong spot it is very difficult to scan through and get back to the correct spot in the book. Recently I also experienced a glitch where a book I was listening to started from the beginning every time I tried to reach to begin at my last point of reading. So, I had to go into the chapter list and find the chapter,. However after doing this it would stop playing after each individual chapter so I would have to go in and play the next chapter manually. This was very frustrating as the book I was listening to had very short chapters that were only 2 to 10 minutes!

Update: I’m lowering my rating from 3 stars to 2 because I see that the issue I complained about previously has still not been fixed. When I am scrolling from page to page through a chapter, the book will suddenly scroll forward several pages, like to the end of a chapter even though I have ten pages still left to read before the next chapter. I described the same problem below, and it still hasn’t been fixed. This is really annoying!!! I have been using CloudLibrary for a few years now, and I was pretty satisfied with it until the latest update a few months ago. When you turned the page in the previous version, it actually looked like a page turning, like on a Kindle, and I really liked that feature. Now it just changes from one screen to another, pretty boring. Far, far worse than that, however, is the way the app randomly skips pages when I am turning a page. I will turn from, say, page 22 to page 23, and all of a sudden, I am on page 35 for no apparent reason. Then, I have to go back and search for the page I was actually on. This keeps happening no matter what book I read. I truly appreciate the convenience of being able to read books for free whenever I want to through my library’s subscription to CloudLibrary, but this weird bug is basically the only reason I am leaving this review. I wish it would be fixed.

I use this app almost every day, and with my library’s selection, I’m pretty happy, but the lack of otherwise common features, it can be incredibly frustration. To start, the saved list only sorts by author name or title, meaning books that you just saved get buried somewhere in the list. There should be a sort by date added at a minimum, and even better, let you make lists of your own, so people can sort books they’ve saved and want to check out later. Being able to sort by length would also be incredible convenient. They have that data on every book already (audio length, and pages). Another incredibly annoying feature that should exist is an option to stop the book at the end of the chapter/section when listening to an audiobook. This is literally the only app that doesn’t have that built in already. Oh, you’re cleaning and want to listen to one chapter, better run to your phone and pause it. Oh, you’re in bed going to sleep and want to just finish up a section, too bad. The only option is to pause at a specific set time (5, 10 minutes, etc), which could stop the book one paragraph into a new chapter, a few words before the chapter ends, or mid sentence, you never know. Otherwise, great app, just lacking in common features that make it feel like I’m using something from decades ago that’s not been updated since.

My local library announced they are moving from Libby to CloudLibrary. I’ve been using Libby for 4 years and luckily I can still use it with a second library card I have because it’s far superior to CloudLibrary. I use it almost exclusively for audiobooks though I have borrowed an ebook or two. So here’s what I’ve learned trying to use CloudLibrary that Libby does exponentially better: 1. The search feature. Not only is is super fast, but it isn’t stingy on what you can and cannot type in the search box. 2. As you’re reading, Libby tells you what your progress is as a percentage. So when I’m updating my reading trackers it’s a simple task. With CL you have to calculate your own progress. 3. Libby lets you tag books. I can have multiple wish lists, tag whether I liked a book or not, etc. your CL lists are Saved, Holds, Borrowed. Super helpful. 4. The sleep timer in Libby has an option to stop at the end of a chapter. CL doesn’t. 5. Libby let’s you send ebooks to your Kindle. CL makes you read the ebook on your phone. Or an iPad I suppose but most use Kindle for ebooks. 6. The overall user experience and interface is just better. Feels like a modern app instead of something you would’ve seen 15 years ago. CL is dated. At this point, I will now use my secondary library exclusively. CL is too frustrating and clunky. It has a loooooong way to go before it becomes a contender for a Libby alternative.

I recently had a situation where the books on AI that I had saved to download were not available and the Auburn Maine library could do nothing about helping me. In all fairness I think quite highly of the Cloud library and wanted to let you know the following: It would be nice books would be available sooner. Particularly, nonfiction. Many of the books, particularly the technical nonfiction books are in smaller print which is more difficult to read, particularly for an older person. I really like to read the books on electronic devices because the print can be increased in size, back lighted, listened to as well as read and displayed on a TV screen that is really excellent when you want to exercise on an stationary bike or elliptical. The ability to read, listen and copy specific memorable phrases or sentences help enable the memorization of certain facts. I would like to see an approach with the cloud reader similar to the samples offered in the Kindle software. I usually same a book on the Kindle and then download it using the Cloud Library. I can’t afford to pay for all of the Kindle versions or I would probably do that. Anyway, I love the Cloud Library and think that the Auburn Library does an excellent job of selecting newer books. Appreciate much. Regards, Terry Johnson

While I enjoy checking out books without needing to travel to the library, the frustrations with this app come very close to negating the convenience. After checking out a book and then trying to download it to begin reading, I often most try many times to get the download to begin. Usually it requires quitting and relaunching the app multiple times and still it takes repeated attempts to download. This is on WiFi or full strength 5G. The search function is horrid. I literally just now searched for a book that I currently have checked out and it says no results found. Advanced search does no better. I can search for an author whose book I have checked out and it can’t find the author, either. If you want to just browse instead of searching and you’re okay with five minutes of frustrating clicking and relaunching to download one book, you might be okay with this app. Trying to quickly select a new book and begin reading or searching for books by a favorite author and this app will have you reaching for your car keys to drive across town to the library instead. More than a year later, searching is still horrible. Searching a database is nothing new. Programmers have been doing it since the 1950’s. It’s a shame that this app is still so bad at it.

Instead of improved performance we got new branding? Thanks for nothing. This app is the slowest piece of junk I’ve ever used. Takes 30 seconds to a full minute to save a book for later, borrow a title, put a hold on a title, or return a title. Takes even longer to load your Saved, Hold, and My Books lists. It’s 2025, nothing takes this long to respond anymore. Does this app run on dial-up? The 4.7 rating is bull and clearly fabricated if you actually look at the five star reviews. This app is a piece of hot, stinking, mid-summer, humid day, full of rotten meat garbage. Much prefer Libby to Cloud Library. The functionality here is severely lacking. Interface feels outdated and is missing basic things like being able to see that I already checked a book out either from the list when searching or on the details page once you click in to read the blurb about the book. If I hadn’t moved and been forced to use this app instead of Libby by my local library I never would have changed. Wish I could go back to Libby, so much so in fact I’ve started researching where the nearest library that uses Libby is so I can go there to see if I can somehow pay for a guest card or something.

I was forced by my library to switch from Overdrive to Cloud Library. It's just not the same or as good. I can't find as many books as I used to. The search results are awkward and take up too much space to scroll through efficiently. And if I look at a book and go back, it puts me back to the beginning of the list and then I have to scroll back through to see where I left off - very time consuming. The sleep timer does not work anymore - it used to but something happened (a bad upgrade perhaps?) and now it never works. With the old app (Overdrive), I could easily -- EASILY -- scroll back 30 minutes by touch because you scrolled through chapters. This app, that scroll is for the whole book so you scroll back a little by swipe and you've going way too far. Forget going to the chapters and finding where you were. So finding your spot again is a difficult, near-impossible, colossal waste of time, so much so that I often find myself buying audio books rather than listening to them on here, even if they're available -- for free, mind you. This app is so non-user friendly that I prefer to pay for books rather than get them for free. Read that sentence again.

I just started to read a borrowed library book in the app, but have paused my reading to come here and give it a one-star rating. I find the interface confusing, buggy, and (compared to the far superior Kindle app), also less attractive (though the difference is subtle). It took me a few tries to figure out how to simply highlight a passage, and another few tries to figure out how to delete the one I highlighted incorrectly. Once I did that and returned to the page, the “deleted” highlight was still there, until I closed and reopened the book. I have memberships with a few local libraries, and I ALWAYS look for the ones that work with the Kindle app, and only use CloudLibrary when I have no other option. It’s a frustrating program. 8/7/19 update: The app is *slightly* less frustrating than it was when I wrote my original review in 2018. Some of the glitches I reported to their tech support over a year ago are still there (e.g., highlighting text is confusing, often difficult, and the interface for doing it is ugly and breaks conventions). It’s still far inferior to the Kindle app and I still will try to avoid library books which require using this app.

I have used this app religiously for years; I use it on one of my devices daily. I usually love this app, especially because at least for my library, there are no monthly limits on borrows. However, in the past 1-2 months, I’ve had more problems than not! It won’t recognize that I have books checked out, when I know I do. I’ll check the history, and it’s blank; I check for my saved books (easily over 200 of them) and it will tell me there are none. Generally I have uninstalled/reinstalled (annoying but simple) the app, and it’s fine. Today I kept getting a (new to me) error that I wasn’t connected to the internet when I can see my WiFi signal has full bars and other devices (tv) are clearly connected. I disconnected WiFi to run off 5G and had the same “no internet connection” error. I even deleted and reinstalled the app, and when I tried to sign in with my card number and PIN, got told it was “unable to log me in”. Why has this app been so unstable lately? PLEASE fix this as this is my primary distraction during “stay at home” orders!

I previously said the app was barely acceptable and gave it two stars. But the more I’ve used it the worse it gets. I now give it 1 star and would give it zero stars if I could. It frequently has the extremely annoying habit of opening to the first page of a chapter or several pages before the point I left off rather than the page on which I left off, forcing me to page through the chapter to find my place. This requires me to highlight a portion of the last text I read or bookmark the page to ease finding my place. To make matters worse, when clicking on highlighted text to delete the highlighting, the trash can icon, which is black, is invisible when the iPad is in night mode because the background of the trash icon is also black. If the highlighted text is at the very top of the screen, it is impossible to delete the highlighting until you change to scroll mode and move the highlighted text away from the top. Also, occasionally turning pages (back or forth) jumps several pages rather than just one. Changing between portrait and landscape mode screws up pagination.

I’ve been using this app for a few years. Only recently, the app gets quite glitchy. It shuts down in middle of the book. It skips pages, some time, the entire chapter. When I turn the page backward to re-read a name or place, it would jump to a different section/page entirely, so I have to search for current page. Last but not least, when I click on footnotes to read, there’s no way to go back to the page I was reading, so I have to either bookmark (or do the old fashion way of remembering which page I was on) before checking out the footnote. This gets quite cumbersome when there are a lot of footnotes. Grrrh. Very frustrating. I wish this app would link with the kindle app, so I can borrow books then read on my Kindle. Reading on kindle is less distracting than reading on the phone. Some libraries use the Libby reading app, and the Libby app link with Kindle app, so I’m able to borrow and read with my Kindle. Very convenient. Highly recommend Libby app, instead of this glitchy Cloud Library. I’ll have to report to my current library to see if they can change platform!

I’ve only tried to read two books on Cloud Library and gave up on both. I can see why it has a shorter wait list for downloading a title. The first book had problems with turning the pages. It would look like the page was turned, but it would still be the page I had just read. If I used the table of contents, I could jump to a new chapter, but on short order, if not immediately, that would lock up. I tried opening and closing the book, removing and downloading it again, but nothing worked. On the second book, I had much less trouble with freezing. It had a problem that is becoming increasingly common in various apps. A lot of different things are activated by tapping the screen, and it’s hard to predict what will happen. On the second book, when I swiped the page to turn it, as often as not, what happened is that the gray top and bottom menus appeared and cut off most of the page. I got so sick and tired of constantly having to get them out of the way, that I returned the book when I was about 20% finished. I removed the app. I’m going to get hard copy when my only other option is Cloud Library.

This app is great for kids books from the local library, but many other of them are formatted such that they would require adjustments. Sadly, the controls are mostly unresponsive - moving pixels at a time... needs major help... Updated - still a mess for many kids books and adjustments majorly lacking. Trying to get to the “hidden menus” are painful at best. Put a button on there, geez... Also, please put a restart button or auto rewind after finishing the book - anyone remember VHS? Yeah, try explaining it to a toddler and that “we can’t read that book anymore because you can’t get to menu to go back to the beginning” - even after returning and reborrowing it keeps its place... App also regularly crashes on books over 20 or so pages and it can’t ever keep track of preview thumbnails. I mean seriously, 6 books all labeled differently and have the same book cover and content as the one that is opened first when app is launched. Only way to fix it is to return and redownload the book. Wouldn’t use this app if it were a paid app, only use it because I haven’t found another app to access local library content. Downgraded to 1 star.

I’m someone who’s willing to pay foe good apps, so maybe the fact this one is free tells you how little support there will be. The recent update (September 2020) has made this almost unusable on the IPad. It switches back and forth between light and dark background. It routinely loses track of the last read location, meaning the reader has to recall and move around each time the book is closed. And an annoying popup window appears every 3 to 8 minutes asking if I want to go to the “last read position” . Bad bad update. As of 1/3/21, I learned NEVER to update this app and without reading what happened to others. The new update apparently causes lots of people to lose their history or otherwise render the app useless. Not sure how the developer gets paid (maybe library license fees), but they’re clearly not a shop with a good testing protocol. Though my old version still has the September bugs and annoyances, at least it still works. NEVER update this app until you check to see how what havoc the newest release has created.

I have been using the Cloud Library app for quite a while and found it pretty user friendly. This latest update, however, has removed some of the features that I found most useful. With the listings of current, history, holds, and saved books now side-by-side, when there are three options for what to do with the book, the third one is no longer directly accessible. Takes longer to get things done. The number of books on hold or checked out is no longer at the top of the list. You have to count them individually. Also, the history of books previously checked out is now very limited instead of a complete history. This very much defeats the way in which I use the history in conjunction with the saved list. Seems like the programmers don’t actually use this app. Lastly, the new “kids mode “ is really annoying for those of us who have no children using this app. There should be a way to easily hide or turn it off.

I have used this app for over a year and had been completely satisfied with it. However recently I’ve experienced an issue with moving from page to page. Sometimes the last line or two are missing from the bottom of the page and I have to fool around with it before it shows up. At other times I flip to the next page and it’s clearly not a continuation of the previous page so then I have to go back several pages and subsequently move forward to try to resync the pages. It’s very annoying and it goes without saying that this is basic functionality that is key to a reading app. Please please fix this!!! I have an updated iPhone 6. Update: several months later I continue to periodically have problems with this app. Right now I experienced an issue where I cannot turn the page in the book I’m currently reading. After trying different workarounds I deleted the app and am going to reinstall it. Why does this continue to happen with this app? I understand that it’s free, but I expect better if I’m going to use it and recommend to others.

There are only 3 background options. I need a darker shade of the sepia tone and the app doesn't offer custom shades nor does it offer brightness adjustment. The daytime background is too bright, hurting my eyes. The nightime background is black and because I have astigmatism the white letters on black read blurry. The sepia is not dark enough to read in a dark room. Being elderly my eyes do not accomodate well when faced with dark room and light background. Using the app to read makes my eyes hurt because of how light the screen is in relation to the being in a dark room. I read in bed for a bit after my husband falls asleep so turning on bedside lamps is not an option. Neither is reading in a different room which just keeps me awake. Reading in my bed in our dark bedroom helps me to become drowsy so I can fall asleep. Other reading apps like Kindle and Libby have darker sepia tones or built in brightless level adjustments or custom color options. Being as this is a library book app and no other app can be used to read books the library books on loan, it should have features to promote eye comfort such as more background adjustment options. Another feature missing is not having a dictionary built in. It took a long time to figure out how to space things. It's under Advanced. I couldn't get the words to space evenly across the lines until I switched form Auto Margins to increase Margins. Who would have though increasing a margin would even out the spacing? I was tearing my hair out trying word and letter spacing. This is one of the worst apps for reading. I wish my library didn't force it on me by switching from Overdrive. The Libby app is decent because it most books can be read in Kindle. Not so with this app which I can't understand. I use a different Library if at all possible so I can read in Kindle but sometimes the book I want is only at my Sarasota county library and they all switched to this app.

My rating is based on comparison to software I use which costs money or if free is older version of tried and true software. Anyhow heres hoping version 5.0.7.5 I just downloaded for use on new ipad fixes at least most of bugs/problems associated with earlier versions ( i.e recently installed version 5.0.6.5 actually more frustrating than earlier versions—kept forgetting current position in book when I closed and later re-opened book; often forgot who I am and required repeated log in; often opens with tiny font size different from my selected font size and will not accept changing font size when that happens; occasionally would open and then immediately shut down; and so on). Could eventually work around some bugs (i.e. disconnect from internet and open book “offline” to work around open/shutdown bug ). Earlier versions prior to 5.0.6.5 would go hours refusing to open at all. Maybe covid has driven so many people to online library that system is overwhelmed?

Suddenly the eBooks from my library are available only in this format, rather than Kindle. It was okay, definitely not great, for the first couple books I read using this app. But the search capability isn’t very useful, and the text selection ability is awful (I still haven’t been able to get copying to work at all, or to highlight or look up more than one word at a time). Now I’m trying to read a publication that has copious footnotes, which I would dearly like to read. Although they appear as blue superscript numbers, they aren’t active, i.e., you can’t tap on a footnote number, read the associated footnote text, and return to where you were in the main text. No, you have to set a bookmark for the first page of notes at the end of the book, activate the menu, select Notes/Highlights, and then navigate through to the desired numbered footnote. And then, it seems, you have to navigate, via the Table of Contents or the bottom page slider, back to the page you were previously reading.

If you look at the release notes you’ll see that the effort over the years has mostly been fixing bugs, not developing new features. So, it runs very well. But, the playback speed option isn’t very granular, there is no history, and more advanced features, like syncing an audio book with its printed version, don’t have much of a chance of ever happening. Looking the reviews, you’ll see a trend. Four or five stars, with a “…but I wish it has [insert feature request here]. “ You don’t get five stars from me if you ignore the feature requests from your user base. This app is mandated by my public library, so I’m forced to use it. It’s good, but not great, and the dev team doesn’t seem motivated to do much dev’ing. I’m guessing they targeted the public library market, accomplished their initial design goals, and called it a day. That said, I am grateful they do release bug fixes, and that it is a solid, reliable product.

I used to love cloud library, but after a recent update it no longer functions. Way to ruin a great app! It took me several tries to even find the list of ebooks from my local library and now the ebooks won’t download at all when, before this update, they downloaded easily. Also the new app deleted my user history including a carefully curated list of books I intended to read. The app supposedly has more features after the redesign (and it may have more features that I don’t use or care about) but the features I always used and loved now don’t work. The new app also offers many books that aren’t available at my library. It’s a frustrating waste of time to browse through books, see something that you like and then be presented only with the options to “save for later” (whatever that means!?!) or “suggest” (I don’t want to be the collection curator for my local library. That’s what I count on librarians for!) The interface is counter-intuitive and hard to use. What a horribly stupid update. Please restore the functionality of the previous version ASAP.

Been using this app for YEARS and had a long history of 300 books I would use as reference to find authors I like and to see what books of each author I already read. Then all of a sudden the app only holds the last 199 titles thus making the other 100 book titles disappear and each time I finish a book another old title from the list is gone. I complained about this and was told it was part of an update. I also complained that when I try to resort the history list by author, the entire history disappears and a message that says “no history” pops up until I close the app and reopen it. This was back in early December and there have been updates but none of this has been fixed. BUT they’ve taken the time to rethink their logo- way to prioritize what’s important, CloudLibrary! Check out what they say about it “new chapter, new look” and “same app, same content, same team”. Literally telling us they changed and fixed NOTHING that matters and complimenting themselves in the process. CHOOSE A DIFFERENT APP!

Updated after iPhone upgrade: I just did the upgrade on my iPhone 6 and app won’t even open. So sorry I upgraded as now I can’t listen to my checked out audio books. Please get your developers working on bug and performance fixes. This app is a disappointment! I mainly use the iPad version and am displeased and frustrated with it, especially the new UI. History does not work. The biggest frustration is that every time I stop reading at book mid chapter, when I reopen the app it goes back to the beginning of the chapter. I thought a work around would be to set a bookmark before I closed the app, but that doesn’t work because the bookmark takes me to the beginning of the chapter. Earlier versions of this app did not have this problem. You need to deploy an emergency bug fix release soon as you’ve made this an unusable tool for reading ebooks from my library and I’m sure they are paying lot of money for their ebook subscriptions.

Please don’t get me wrong here… I love this app and what it’s trying to do. I’ve read more books than I can count because they have partnered with my local library. So my criticism comes from a place of love. This app has so much potential. For starters, the act of searching for books or authors nothing short of a disaster. The search function isn’t exactly intuitive so I find myself having to type in complete book or author names. For example, typing in Evelyn Hugo should instinctively return books or authors by that name however I rarely find that to be the case. Second, browsing the library for new books is a bit of a pain. A lot of the “lists” they’ve created seem to contain the same books so I’m not seeing many new ones. Book descriptions, reviews and stats are a bit wonky. The formatting for book reviews and descriptions seem to have zero consistency across the board. There are a handful of things I adore that are worth mentioning. The hold option is incredible and I appreciate that it provides a countdown to when it’ll be available to you. I also love the renew option if you’re taking longer on a certain book. Additionally, the multi-device syncing is so helpful. I can pick up where I left off on my iPad or phone no matter what. I love the offline downloading as well so you can read without service. I have yet to use audiobooks so I can’t speak to that particular function. All told, I thoroughly enjoy this app as I can credit it to the primary reason I picked up reading again. I just think we can do a lot better now that it is gaining notoriety.

I hesitate to leave a scathing review...and yet I WILL. this app is the only way I can access my library’s digital content AND it CONSTANTLY crashes (to the point where I just give up most of the time on listening to books). It’s fine for e-books, but for as long as I’ve been trying to use the app to listen to audiobooks, it has been a nightmare. I pay for audible and their app has never given me problems—it’s simple and straightforward and works perfectly. I wish I had that experience with CloudLibrary. For a month or so there was an update that worked ok (not good, but okay), but then the app was updated and now it’s back to crash city. I want to offer constructive criticism for the developers but honestly there’s nothing I’ve enjoyed about the app.

Hi, The app responding so I deleted the app and re-downloaded it no it wouldn’t let me login. It’s telling me ‏”Login Failure HTTP response error” Please tell me how to fix this problem?

Aug 1 2024 -- new recent update has logged me out and wants me to delete the app, reinstall and re login. What did you do in this update that refuses to "register" me? Still don't have the functionality of other apps, but somehow you convinced my public library to subscribe to your service so I'm stuck using you.

My public library switched to CloudLibrary after using Hoopla for several years and Overdrive (Libby) before that. Both of those tools were great. Not so much for CloudLibrary. The search functionality is poor as is the selection of books (though hopefully that’ll improve over time). I mainly use it for audiobooks and its implementation is also poor: pausing is spotty (either with my phone or with my Bluetooth earbuds). I often have to restart the app. And it often loses its place. Overall very frustrating.

Warning to any audiobook lovers- This app doesn’t use standard Bluetooth controls, thus rendering the player a frustrating nightmare. If you press back because you miss heard something it will take you to the beginning of the chapter. Same story for forward. this has been like this for years, the app devs just don’t care. This is the only audiobook player that works like this.

My library changed to this app and I hate it. It keeps cutting out mid book on me and I can’t figure out why. It isn’t worth the stress of trying to restart a book so many times. I wish the library would change their provider

My library switched to this and its been horrible. It constantly crashes or gives a message saying “There’s something wrong with your library card”. I’ve had to delete and reinstall this app several times already to fix the problem. Very disappointed

I haven’t really had any problems with this app (I don’t listen to audiobooks so I don’t have troubles with them) and all the books I’ve borrowed work fine. The only issue I have is that I hate the page flip way of reading; I much prefer scrolling down, like on Wattpad. A scrolling option would add more variety and for me, I read more smoothly with scrolling and auto-scroll options.

Is anyone working on this app? It's not working anymore. It doesn't load on my iPhone or iPad.

They need to learn from Hoopla, Hoopla is the very best. Simcoe digital library service is incredibly disappointing everything I want to read is not offered on this platform. So little is offered I don’t understand why all of ontario is not offered the same province wide.

Would rather listen to books on Libby any day but my library went for cheap and it shows, doesn’t pause properly, can’t choose to sleep at the end of a chapter only set time increments. Wouldn’t recommend this app if you don’t have to use. I only use when things aren’t available in the other app

Almost every popular book is only available as a summary. That’s absolutely useless!!! Very poor selection of audiobooks.

I don't understand why I can scroll through over 250 newly added fiction audiobooks for adults and be so thoroughly disgusted with the selection. Not the same for e-books however as I'm visual difficulties I rely on audiobooks.

This is so much better than Libby. I use both. My local library system uses Libby, with 8 month hold lines, no organization on available books…just a bin full of mostly kids books. I have to pay for Cloud Library. Believe me, it is worth it. Far better organized, more responsive, and better selection. I also use Kindle/ kindle unlimited, at $11 a month. This is far better value.

Constantly get this error on all my devices. Can’t play anything. Delete an reinstall does nothing. About to give up on this app.

I love this app but I wish there were more audio books especially Chris Colfer

Not a user friendly app. Doesn’t allow for easy searches or browsing.

Checking out books consistently times out whenever I start using the app. If I keep trying, eventually it will work—and then it works fine. I assume CloudLibrary is caching my credentials after I get the first book checked out, but it takes forever to get to that point. I will add that Overdrive does not have this problem. There’s also apparently a race condition where, after a long wait, I will eventually check out a book. However, it won’t actually be checked out, and I’ll get an error if I try to return it. Generally this happens with new releases, but occasionally I will get this with an older book. Sometimes I can read the book on the web client, but not download it with Digital Editions. Holds have never worked consistently. When I first used the app, sometimes I’d get holds on upcoming releases when they were released and sometimes I wouldn’t. Then I could put holds on books, but the holds would reset every month (except that there was one day a month where I could check out anything). Then they apparently removed holds completely. Now holds are working. Sort of. Unlike Overdrive, though, you can’t really plan your holds. Books that other people have checked out seem to randomly appear and disappear, and you’re only allowed to put holds on a handful of books. It’s not at all useful. All of this is true on the web client as well, so I have to assume these are back end issues. I’m not impressed.

Recording error a few times while listening

The app works for basic borrowing, but the holds system is frustrating. Items I place on hold seem to disappear or shift without clear explanation, and it’s not obvious when something will actually become available. It makes planning my reading really difficult. A more reliable and transparent holds feature would make this app much stronger.

The app updated a month ago and started to show no books in the history. Reinstalled the app and now it won’t let me login to my library system. I keep getting the login timeout error. Library system shows the books that are checked out and the history as well.

When go to find my books it says I don’t have any when I really do

Times out after seconds. Limited selection. Free, so I can’t really complain, but ugh!

Barely any audio books