How to read EPUB books on iPhone without Apple Books

EPUB is the standard ebook format: it's what you get from DRM-free stores, Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, or a library of your own. iPhone opens EPUBs in Apple Books, and for many people that's enough. Here's when you might want something else, and how to set it up.

1. What Apple Books does

Tap an EPUB or PDF in the Files app, or in Mail or Safari, and choose Books. Apple Books copies it into its own library and opens it. It's free and already on your iPhone.

Reasons people look elsewhere:

• Books get copied into Apple Books' library, away from the folder where you keep them.
• Comics in CBZ files, and other formats like FB2 and Markdown, don't open in it.
• They want their highlights in a file they can keep, not only inside the app.

2. Use an ebook reader for your own files

We make one called Bookloft. It reads EPUB, PDF, CBZ comics, FB2, plain text, Markdown, web pages and RTF, and shows each book the way its publisher designed it, with your theme, font and size on top.

1. Install Bookloft.
2. Tap + and choose your books in the Files app, or open an EPUB from Mail or Safari and share it to Bookloft. On a Mac, drag books in with Finder.
3. Read. Highlight in five colors, add notes, and export them all to Markdown or JSON whenever you like.

It's free for any 10 books with every feature; your whole library is $4.99 once, for your whole family. No subscription, no ads, and no account.

Good to know

• Books bought from Kindle or Apple Books are protected (DRM), so no other reader can open them. These steps are for files you own.
• Free, legal EPUBs of classics are easy to find at Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks.
• Your place in each book follows you to your other iPhone and iPad through your own iCloud.