Read books on your Android device

With the Google Play Books app, you can read books on your Android device and use features like bookmarks, notes, and word definitions to enhance your reading experience.

Download the Google Play Books app for Android.


Read books you’ve bought

To read the books you've bought on Google Play:

  1. Open the Google Play Books app.
  2. Touch Menu Burger nav > My Library.
  3. Touch the cover of the book you want to read.

See recommendations and search for books

You can choose from your recently viewed, opened, and purchased books and find recommendations in Read Now when you open the Play Books app.

  • Recommended for you: You can add a free sample of a recommended book, clear a recommendation, or buy a book on Google Play in the “recommended for you” section.
  • Search: To find books you’ve bought, you can use Search search in the top right. If you search for a book you haven’t bought, your search results will open in the Play Store where you can buy it if you wish.

Skim books, bookmark pages, add notes, and more

Flip pages quickly in Skim mode

In Skim mode, you can flip through pages quickly and jump to chapters, bookmarks, and notes. To enter Skim mode:

  1. Open a book.
  2. Touch the middle of the page.
  3. Swipe to move quickly through pages.

You can see your progress or jump to bookmarks on the slider bar at the bottom of the screen. To jump to a specific:

  • Chapter: Touch the chapter name in the top left and choose from the list.
  • Page: Touch the page number and type the one you want.
Bookmark pages

To add or remove a bookmark, touch top right corner of the page. A bookmark bookmark should appear.

To see a list of your bookmarks:

  1. Open the book.
  2. Touch the middle of the page > Table of contents table of contents > Bookmarks.
Add notes, find definitions, translate words, & search phrases

As you're reading, you can add notes, get definitions or translations, or search for words or phrases. Here's how:

  1. Touch and hold a word to select it.
  2. To expand your selection, drag the cursor on either side.
  3. You'll see the following options:
    • Note: Touch this option to enter a note.
    • Define: Get the definition of the word you selected. To see definitions while you're offline, connect to Wi-Fi. Then touch Menu Burger nav > Settings > Offline dictionary.
    • Translate: See a translation of the word or phrase you selected.
    • Search: Search for your selected word or phrase within the book, on the web, or on Wikipedia.
Play audio and video

If a book has audio or video content, you'll see a Play button Play button. To start playing it, just touch the button. If you turn the page, the audio or video will stop playing.

Note: Audio and video can only be played when you’re connected to the Internet. To help prevent excess data charges, you may want to connect to Wi-Fi before you stream audio and video.

Turn on accessibility options

If you have a hard time reading text on your device, you can have books read aloud by turning on TalkBack, Android’s text-to-speech assistant.


Manage your library

Sort your library

You can view organized lists of books you’ve downloaded by touching Menu Burger nav > My Library. To organize your books by title, author, or most recent, touch Sort sort in the top right.

Delete books

If you no longer want a book to appear in your Play Books app, touch the book’s Menu vertical menu on the front cover. You can choose to:

  • Remove the download from your device
  • Delete the book from your library
Delete a book from your account permanently
  1. On your computer, visit your orders page on Google Play.
  2. Next to the book you want, click Menu vertical menu > Delete forever.
  3. Clear your Play Books mobile app data by visiting Settings on your device > Application manager > Google Play Books > Clear data.
  4. If you have the Play Books app for Chrome, open Chrome.
  5. Click Menu Burger nav > Settings > Show advanced settings > Clear browsing data (under “Privacy”).
  6. Check the box next to "Hosted app data."
  7. Click Clear browsing data.
Some Google Play products and features aren't available in all countries. See what's available in your country