Book Pad: EPUB & PDF Reader

Double-tap your Apple Pencil and Book Pad turns the page. The pencil doesn't have to touch the screen, so you can leave your iPad on a stand and read with the pencil in your hand.

Book Pad opens the EPUB and PDF files you already own. Highlight as you read, and every highlight from every book ends up in one place. Book Pad has no account and doesn't track you.

TURN PAGES WITH APPLE PENCIL
• Double-tap Apple Pencil (2nd generation) or Apple Pencil Pro to go to the next page. You can set it to go back instead.
• On Apple Pencil Pro, you can also set squeeze to turn pages.
• Book Pad follows the gestures you set in the app, even when the system double-tap setting is Ignore.
• Pick how pages turn: slide, fade, or no animation.

OTHER WAYS TO TURN THE PAGE
• Use the arrow keys, Page Up and Page Down, or Space. Bluetooth page-turners that send key presses work too.
• Tap the left or right side of the screen.
• In Settings > Page Turning > Remotes & Gestures, choose which input goes forward or back. Try a gesture or key there and the book on screen shows what it will do.
• The screen stays on while you read. You can turn this off in Settings.

YOUR FILES ARE YOUR LIBRARY
• Book Pad's folder in the Files app is your library, and each subfolder becomes a shelf.
• Put a book on more shelves without moving the file.
• Import many books at once from Files, or send them from another app with the share sheet.
• Move or rename a book and your reading position and highlights stay with it.
• If a file goes missing, Book Pad keeps its highlights. If you clear them, Recently Deleted holds them for 30 days.

HIGHLIGHT WITHOUT A MENU
• Press on a word, drag across the passage, and lift. The highlight appears right away.
• Choose from five colors and add a note to any highlight.
• Highlighting works in EPUBs and in PDFs with selectable text, including PDFs that block copying.

EVERY HIGHLIGHT IN ONE PLACE
• Search the text of all your highlights and notes at once.
• Filter by book or color, or show only highlights with notes.
• Group highlights by book or color, and sort them by newest, oldest, or position in the book.
• Tap a highlight to jump back to that spot in the book.

EXPORT AND TAKE THEM WITH YOU
• Export one book or your whole collection as Markdown, then save it to Files or share it.
• Next to each book, Book Pad keeps a small .notes.json file. Copy it along with the book to another iPad running Book Pad and your highlights come too.

READ YOUR WAY
• Light, sepia, and dark themes, or your own background and text colors.
• Set the font, text size, bold text, margins, justification, and line, paragraph, character, and word spacing. Settings > Text & Layout shows a live preview while you adjust.
• Add your own .ttf or .otf fonts in Settings > My Fonts.
• Read EPUBs page by page or as one continuous scroll.
• In landscape, read two pages side by side, or switch to one page at a time.
• Table of contents, search inside the book, and footnotes that open right on the page.
• Opens fixed-layout EPUBs too.
• PDFs get an outline, text search, page jumps, and zoom.

PRIVACY
• No sign-up No analytics and no ads.
• No analytics or tracking. Book Pad has no servers and collects no data.

GOOD TO KNOW
• Book Pad opens your own files. It doesn't sell books.
• DRM-protected books and password-protected PDFs can't be opened.
• Deleting the app also deletes the Book Pad folder on your iPad, so keep a copy of your books somewhere else.
• Requires iPadOS 18 or later.