All over the world, local libraries offer millions of ebooks and audiobooks. You can borrow them — for free, instantly — with a library card and Libby: the award-winning, much-loved app for libraries.
• Browse your library’s digital catalog of books — from classics to NYT best-sellers
• Borrow and enjoy ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines
• Download titles for offline reading, or stream them to save space
• Send ebooks to your Kindle (U.S. libraries only)
• Listen to audiobooks via Android Auto
• Use tags to create your must-read list and any other book lists you want
• Keep your reading position automatically synced on all your devices
In our beautiful, intuitive ebook reader:
• Adjust text size, background color, and book design
• Zoom into magazines and comic books
• Define and search for words and phrases
• Read and listen to read-alongs with your kids
• Add bookmarks, notes, and highlights
In our ground-breaking audio player:
• Slow down or speed up the audio (0.6 to 3.0x)
• Set a sleep timer
• Simply swipe to skip forward and backward
• Add bookmarks, notes, and highlights
Libby is built by the team at OverDrive, in support of local libraries everywhere.
Happy reading!
Love the concept but the app UI isn’t at all intuitive or user-friendly. I click around constantly, trying to remember where a feature is. I like that it allows me to read books for free, but find it challenging to deal w/. I’d also like some kind of “undo” function. I accidentally returned the wrong book–an unread one w/ a lengthy wait list–and couldn’t undo that even though I realized it seconds afterward. I ended up buying that ebook since it was in the middle of a series I was reading.
Useful but glitchy. It’s great being able to borrow books and audiobooks during COVID. Also, no worries about scratched disks. But you can’t have anything else running on the phone without an error message. Listening to Spotify while searching for a book? Nope, app tries to quit. I think you can play an audiobook while using another app, but this thing is so glitchy, and it doesn’t have a good in-app way to report a bug.
Surprisingly annoying to use, why switch up overdrive. It is better than when I first tried to use it. If we could add some of the features left out of Libby that were included in overdrive that would be great, like the ability to actually see the progress of my download. Overdrive literally let me see it download by chapter. It makes it much easier to diagnose what went wrong in the download process. It almost made it so that I didn’t have to wait for the whole book to download, just the chapte
I have always had to check out CDs or go to the library and download audio books onto an MP3 player, such a hassle, especially being disabled. One of the ladies at my library taught me how to use LIBBY, she downloaded it to my phone then taught me how to use it. I am SO pleased with the LIBBY experience. I had to get a Bluetooth capable speaker, but that was no big deal. Checking out, renewing, turning books in, it’s all so easy now. Thank you LIBBY, for making listening to audio books so easy!
Sorry I am disappointed. The original overdrive app is much better. I don’t want to be forced to this app. This one is more about glitz and not function, it fancy graphics and is visually ascetic, but is not easy to use. The library is much harder to find books to read. The audio player has some nice features but it is easy to bump the display and end up jumping from the current listening point.
Visually pleasing, mostly functional, but with a very shoddy user interface. No matter how long I’ve been using it, it always takes multiple tries to accomplish my tasks, because the clickable areas are never as expansive as I expect. (If the icon to check out or hold a book is on the same line as text about how many copies there are or how long the wait is, you cannot click on the text, you must click on the unlabeled icon.)
I prefer overdrive. I have cards from multiple libraries. I click on a specific library to search from through timeline, but the search results are from any of the other libraries. There’s a lot wrong with this app. I keep sending support requests, and taking the surveys, but I get no response, and nothing changes. The app also keeps freezing, and I’m having to constantly force close. Getting rid of overdrive, which worked perfectly for me, and forcing this app is a mistake. It’s unstable.
Still sucks. Seems to be getting worse. More crashes, books wont fully download, I miss Overdrive. Currently I have less than 20 minutes remaining in a thriller and it keeps jumping to the end. NBD just the most exciting part of the book that I can’t listen to. Old: So far I’m in agreement w/ all the other folks that came over from Overdrive. This app sucks. I don’t get notifications when my holds are available. The app randomly gives errors and I can’t listen to my books. Navigation is clunky.
I am forced to uninstall and reinstall the app each time I wish to listen to a borrowed audiobook. I get one listening session, then the app freezes… Ridiculous! I do not understand why Overdrive was discontinued. It worked just fine–if with less features. What irritates me the most is that the app claims to be compatible with my device. Absolutely frustrating!
Can’t find AudioBooks by author or title. Replacing the very intuitive and highly functional OverDrive with Libby is is a huge error in judgement. I have been using OverDrive for years with virtually no problems or issues. Trying to use the Libby App has been an exercise in futility. I have worked my way through every button, every combination of paths to find various popular authors, series, titles and have yet to get consistent results. Every time I try to use the app I get different results.
I love the variety of author’s earlier books that are hard to find. Only negative is long wait for popular books! I continue to use the app daily. If unfamiliar with app, it is easily setup so you can enjoy a good book today. I like the ability to set playback sleep. The ability to locate your place if lost without having placed a bookmark. Highly recommend.
After using the Overdrive app for many years and being forced to switch to the Libby app I have to say that I am disappointed and frustrated. The Overdrive app was far superior to this one. The interface is annoying and too ‘cutesy’. The search option and filter options are not very helpful. Worst of all, the very worst, is that I don’t seem to have a wishlist to store titles that are currently unavailable or that I am not quite ready for. I have many issues with this aspect. No room for more.
I enjoy the easy access to ebooks and having multiple library cards. The new addition of being able to see which library has the shortest wait or availability on a title is very nice and I’m surprised it wasn’t a feature before. The audio book controls still leave a lot to be desired and the interface is still very clunky, but it’s gone up since my last review.
Super convenient app! I’ve never run into any bugs or crashing. I like the range of books and audio books and how many you can borrow at a time. One of my favorite parts of the app is that you can request a text/audio book unavailable in your library’s catalog. I’ve been able to request and then read more books I’m interested in that way. One place for improvement would be more features for audiobook navigation. I always recommend this app to my students and fellow book lovers!
Libby is great but it’s glitchy. It automatically shuts off repeatedly when using other applications. I like to be able to listen to an audiobook for instance while I have my navigation app open when I’m driving cross country. It’ll shutdown a dozen times requiring you to pull over, stop the car, restart the app started again only to have it shut down 20 minutes later. Sometimes it crashes and you have to reinstall it to get it to work again. Then you have to re-enter all of your library cards
This app is harder to use than OverDrive, does not have the best features from OverDrive, and stalls when I’m listening to an audiobook and trying to search/borrow/put holds on books. OverDrive is super responsive, whereas this app is very slow to load every step of the way. UX and UI doesn’t make sense either. Example: Call to Action = Place Hold, but I already have a hold on it and in another area, it says “On your holds shelf.” The Call to Action should say “Manage Hold.” RIP OverDrive.
I like the app, it just shuts down all the time. I will open it and put on my navigation and the app shuts down after 2 minutes. Reopen it and start it again and it shuts down again after a couple of minutes. It just keeps doing that. Very frustrating. Wish they would have kept the overdrive app. Never had a problem.
Whoever thought this app was a good replacement for Overdrive – think again. Maybe time to talk to librarians about organization. It’s not user friendly, navigation is poor, more drop down menus are needed rather than relying on tags and graphics. What’s with having to literally tap the cover or title or you get all the authors books and series and have to go find the book in the list. Very disappointed we are stuck with this new app before it was really finished if it will ever be.
Please add an option to tap instead of swipe to turn pages or completely removed animations. These were options in overdrive and I’m not sure why they haven’t made it to Libby. I prefer to tap because it’s faster, but half the time it’s recognized as a swipe and takes me to the previous page. Very frustrating, I miss overdrive.
Why in the whole world would you get rid of Overdrive when it’s a better, more user-friendly App than Libby? I can add books I want to read and return to them when I’m ready…AND I easily find them! Libby doesn’t even have as many audiobooks as available on Overdrive, nor am I able to find/narrow down my genre choices. I’ve had both apps on my phone since 2016, but chose to use Overdrive because it is an overall better App. Uugh…I may just opt to pay for Audible. Ridiculous!
Hate this. It is much less capable than Overdrive. For example, with Overdrive if I’m reading something online at work and come across a book title I’m interested in I can go to the Overdrive website and search across all of my saved libraries at once to see if one of them has the book. With Libby, there is just the app and no website. I also have to search each saved library individually, and the process for actually opening the book on the app is not intuitive.
There have been a lot of bugs on the app and I’m frustrated with my experience since the overdrive app worked better. I hate how the books are organized in the app, it feels chaotic and not user friendly. I also hate the downloading system, lately the app will randomly just not download books for no reason or it will undownload a book and then fail to re-download it. I love what the app is setting out to do but I feel the switch from overdrive has not been very successful and smooth.
Being forced to go from the easy to navigate and read overdrive app to this absolute chaotic mess and calling it an improvement? I wouldn’t bother to complain because I love my library, except I used to download audiobooks in under a minute on overdrive. It’s taking libby an hour each. But… you can push out more notifications no one wants. Why don’t people making book apps have actual users involved in the design.
This is far less intuitive than OverDrive, more cumbersome to move between menus, and does NOT allow for seeing titles that are not in my library’s collection and making recommendations. Why are we being forced to move to a less helpful app with fewer options? Seriously considering just paying for a commercial audio book service. Please keep OverDrive until you improve this app.
Good, not great. Main problem is that there is no option to show progress while reading. It’d be nice to have the page number and the total number of pages at the bottom of the screen. It also used to allow the user to display the header with the time & battery icons while reading, but now they only show for a few seconds before disappearing. Very disappointing. Unless this change is backed out, I’ll be using Kindle from now on.
Update: After using this app for a few weeks it has sucked the joy out of reading. I am about to delete it and just stop reading altogether. I really wish I could give it negative stars. This app sucks. The old overdrive app was so much better. They layout and functions are terrible. The font can only be changed from miniscule to tiny. I may haveto go back to reading paper books.
Switching from Overdrive kicking and screaming. I know I don’t like change but Libby just doesn’t seem as easy to navigate. Update: Well, I tried to accept it. Today turned off WiFi so wouldn’t be distracted by notifications. Who knew I would lose half of the book? Please bring back Overdrive! 1/2/2023. Yesterday started an audiobook and listened an hour or two. Today I turned it on, started over. No way of knowing where stopped. No way to page thru chapters.
The old Overdrive app is going away and we’re forced to go to Libby. The more I use Libby, the more I hate it. Crashes constantly, can’t listen to an audio book while driving. Overdrive restarts where I left it; Libby starts on the bookshelf, requiring me to select my book, then sit through a cutesy animation. Overdrive, long pressing a word brought up a menu that gave the option of define, web search, or Wikipedia search; with Libby all you get is Define. Too many other hates to list them all.
I don’t want to be forced to switch from Overdrive. Libby’s load times are so much slower, the interface is clunky and yet somehow also unnecessarily simplified, it shuts down half the time I’m using it. All of the important usable buttons are hidden in tertiary menus. Please just let me keep using Overdrive.
This app is great for book lovers. I only listen to audiobooks so I can’t comment on ebooks. Once used to the apps, it’s a breeze to move around and take advantage of its features! I thought I could never move on from Overdrive but I did (our county is changing library app from Overdrive to Libby) and it was a seamless transition.
The bad: 1. Can’t verify my library card. Overdrive never had this issue. Nothing can be borrowed without verifying the library card. 2. If there’s history of borrowings, it’s not easily located. 3. In the audio books, no chapter titles, just chapter numbers. (To be fair, this might not be only Libby’s fault.) 4. Ugly interface – everything is big and outdated. Overdrive looked and felt and worked so much better. The good: 1. Searches across all libraries in one spot.
Nothing like Overdrive. Isn’t user friendly. Sound is low even though my phone can be very loud. Even if I use earbuds it makes no difference. I’m sad that eventually Overdrive will be eliminated and we’ll have to use this horrible app. EDIT: I stopped using Libby and went back to Overdrive. Then my tablet died and my new one doesn’t even have Overdrive available! I can’t find anything and I could have gone food shopping while waiting for an audiobook to download. I’m very sad. Miss Overdrive.😢
Overdrive was so much better. No wish list here (none that I could find) not very user friendly, doesn’t have the history option nor does it show you chapters. Used Overdrive for many years, I would have thought they would have had all the features we were used to plus more. Disappointing.
Glitchy, hard to navigate, freezes while searching and doesn’t seem to find books by author or title even though I know they’re available. The app randomly stops working altogether (doesn’t even start up) and the only fix I’ve found is uninstalling and reinstalling the app (which I’ve done about 5 times now in 2 months). I miss Overdrive. 🙁
12/22 update-2nd review talked about losing the ability to listen offline. Took weeks to find a fix. Finally found a fix within the app, no thanks to Libby. So excited! 3 months later (December) both Libby and Verizon did updates, now I cannot listen offline again. This time the initial fix I used does not work. This is an unacceptable issue! It ruins using Libby to listen. Why can’t Libby find a fix for this?!
Oh, I think the update broke the function for putting multiple holds at different libraries on the same book. Next bug fix??? Great hold management system. The ability to defer a loan is really helpful, since I try to juggle a lot of books, and a new, requested book is always coming available. I read within Libby too, which has an interface that is just as good as the Kindle app
No offline functionality and constant interruptions in playing. App requires data or wifi to even open. This means that without cellular data or wifi, you can’t open the app, let one listen to a “downloaded” audiobook. App will also randomly stop playing, making it difficult to use without constant interruption to press play again.
I seriously despise this app. It doesn’t perform as promised. Notifications never show up despite having all the appropriate settings tweaked on my tablet. The Overdrive app that this app replaced actually worked and sent email notifications. This one requires daily monitoring so you don’t miss a hold notification. Can’t give 0 stars, so giving it a very sullen 1. Whoever decided to go with this garbage and ditch Overdrive really needs to be fired.
Surprisingly good – The streamlined UI for both the ereader and the audiobook player are among the best, even compared with major retailers. Nice audiobook widget. Can’t imagine wasting money on audiobooks, given a decent Libby library to pull from. Missing the ability to recommend new books to my library, and annoyed by how hard it is to broaden my search to multiple libraries.
The UI in Libby doesn’t have a dark mode, it’s blindingly bright in my bookshelf. The app customization settings are pretty much just missing. I also don’t have a way to return a borrowed book if it’s downloaded to Kindle. The return book button is missing from both Kindle and Libby for those books, which I’d like to make available for other readers as I finish (or lose interest in) them.
Libby is nothing short of wonderful. It’s like a trip to the library every time I open the app and the reader itself is spectacular to use. It’s typically easy to search for anything I could think of, including listed book series, categories, and my own tags. My biggest complaint is just that the UI seems a bit convoluted at times and finding sections can sometimes take a bit of clicking to remember where they are.
I’ve changed so many settings to try to get longer books to download, but it’s just not working. I’ve got 40GB of space, so that’s not the problem. I get a partial download, but unlike with overdrive I can’t go to my downloads page to see which parts didn’t come through. Trying to download a 20 hour audiobook all in one chunk doesn’t work well, and even with permission to download in the background, this app just isn’t doing it. I use audiobooks to get through long drives in cellular dead zones.
Only because it gets hung up once in a while and I have to close it and get back in. No big deal, just irritating. I also wish it would filter out books you’ve already read when you’re looking for something new to read. It keeps a history of when you checked a book out, and you can tag it as read. But, I’ve read hundreds of books, so scanning past them all is also somewhat irritating. No big deal in the big picture, but would be a nice added feature.
Poorly designed interface, slow and hangs up. Filtering is a huge part of an app like this. can’t save your search for later, choices easily zero out and you have to redo them every time. It’s just not a flexible search process path, it has to be redone all the time. It’s just disappointing especially since there’s no other options to use as the local government has invested in this decision to use this poor app as cute as it is, but that doesn’t help it to be useful. Another poor govt choice.
I want the Overdrive app back. There dozens of usability inconveniences with this app. Doesn’t allow you to set margins for a book. Always opens to the menu, rather than returning to where you left off (I frequently tab away from the app to do something else, and I want it to reopen to my book, not the menu, when I return). Links for things like sharing to Goodreads are gone and links in general are spread out in tiles. They prioritized form over function, unfortunately.
So disappointing after OVERDRIVE 0⭐️ I guess this is the app we’re being forced to when Overdrive is discontinued, but it leaves a lot to be desired. Interface is not at all intuitive, the “tag” option is so hard to navigate as to be worthless, and there is no option to recommend books. I’ve tried Libby twice and I’m sticking with Overdrive until they delete it from the app store. Filing out the internal survey doesn’t seem to generate any improvement, hence the bad review.
A lot of these subject options feel superfluous. The same books pop up under all the options, e.g. thriller, suspense, mystery, drama, crime.. same books. The app doesn’t need all that if it’s not showing anything different. And please make it so I don’t have to scroll have the way back to the top to reach the back arrow.
I’ve read 13 books in 3 months. Much quicker than checking out real books. Love the bookmark feature. App never glitches. Wish I could put more than 10 books on hold at a time. Love the feature when a book becomes available from a hold that I’m not ready for it, I can save my spot in line and adjust when I may be ready for it.
I like this app not only because it’s free but because the audio books are read by real people and not computer generated. However, I would like more selection of books and audio books. My two sons have Dyslexia and it’s difficult to read to both of them everyday so I rely on audiobooks but it gets pricy and I would like this app to have more selection. Also, it is only compatible with my phone, not on my PC.
Connect your library card to your public library system. Fantastic variety for all ages and interests. Easy to navigate and easy to use. I can add titles to my wishlist, place a hold on them or just browse the library until I find something interesting. I’ve already found many new favorite authors and genres. I’ve used this app for almost 3 years and I love it!
Replaced a good app with a bad one. Overdrive worked great. This new app is not as user friendly, and I lost all of my wishlist and reading history when I converted to Libby. Trying to recreate my wishlist and am at a loss as to where I am in several series now. Developers should have left well enough alone. I want Overdrive back.