StoneSoup

Q: How to undo an iBooks conversion and revert back to iTunes

Apple listens if enough people complain.  If you hate the current implementation of iBooks, send Apple feedback here:

 

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ibooks.html

 

 

I'm starting this thread as a central place to collect ways of either:

 

A. Preventing a conversion from iTunes to iBooks

 

B. Reverting back to iTunes after a conversion

 

Here's what I've seen in the community so far:

 

Kevin Edgecomb's solution for reverting back:

 

Re: Not impressed! No edit info, no library management!

 

Andy Epprecht's solution for reverting back, building on Kevin's:

 

Re: Not impressed! No edit info, no library management!

 

Any other solutions for prevention or reversion?

Posted on Oct 26, 2013 8:06 PM

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Q: How to undo an iBooks conversion and revert back to iTunes

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  • by StoneSoup,

    StoneSoup StoneSoup Jan 4, 2015 9:32 PM in response to Neddie P
    Level 1 (49 points)
    Jan 4, 2015 9:32 PM in response to Neddie P

    Hi, Neddie,

     

    Happy New Year.

     

    The key (for me, at least) was emptying the trash and rebooting.  If you don't get rid of the service and the app completely, it somehow prevents iTunes from reverting to the old pre-iBooks functionality.

     

    Assuming that you did that, to figure out what's wrong, you need to break this into at least three phases:

     

    1. Restoring iTunes back to a state where you can manage your books in iTunes rather than iBooks

     

    2. Getting your books back from iBooks into iTunes

     

    3. Synchronizing your books with your iPad

     

     

    Checking whether you've gotten to the first phase:  do you see the black "Books" icon (circled in red in the following screenshot) in iTunes? 

     

    Screen Shot 2015-01-04 at 9.27.26 PM.png

     

    Regards,

    Steven

  • by GimeGG,

    GimeGG GimeGG Jan 24, 2015 10:25 PM in response to Andy Epprecht
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 24, 2015 10:25 PM in response to Andy Epprecht

    Hi,

    I just upgraded to Yosemite 10.10.1 and I have iTunes 12.0.1. I erased iBooks as explained on the steps but I have no backup from my old library from iTunes. I just have the ebooks on a folder on an external disc and the Book icon is not appearing on my iTunes. What can I do?

    Any help will be very appreciated, I have no idea what to do

     

    Thanks.

    Gime

  • by StoneSoup,

    StoneSoup StoneSoup Jan 30, 2015 11:02 AM in response to StoneSoup
    Level 1 (49 points)
    Jan 30, 2015 11:02 AM in response to StoneSoup

    I upgraded to iTunes 12.1.0.50 without really thinking about it.  I was annoyed to see the "Your books have been moved to iBooks" splash screen when I restarted iTunes.

     

    I checked Activity Monitor. The com.apple.BKAgentService.xpc service wasn't running. 

     

    I used AppCleaner to delete the iBooks program from the Applications folder.  I emptied my trash, restarted iTunes, and could see my books in iTunes once again.  All is good with iTunes 12.1.0.50 for those of us who hate iBooks.

     

    Steven

  • by StoneSoup,

    StoneSoup StoneSoup Jan 30, 2015 11:06 AM in response to GimeGG
    Level 1 (49 points)
    Jan 30, 2015 11:06 AM in response to GimeGG

    Gime,

     

    It sounds like you haven't deleted the com.apple.BKAgentService.xpc or iBooks app properly.  You can delete the former in Finder.  Make sure that you use something like AppCleaner to delete the latter.  You *MUST* empty your trash; this step is critical. 


    It can't hurt to reboot your Mac after emptying your trash, too.


    That should restore the Book icon in iTunes.  Once you see that, you can import your books back into iTunes.


    Steven

  • by Mark Armitage,

    Mark Armitage Mark Armitage Jan 30, 2015 11:09 AM in response to StoneSoup
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iTunes
    Jan 30, 2015 11:09 AM in response to StoneSoup

    Yep. it's a bl**dy nuisance isn't it.

     

    I've set up Simon (http://www.dejal.com/simon/) to monitor the various things that iBooks messes with and then alert me! Currently my 'fix list' is:

     

    1. quit iTunes
    2. kill the process com.apple.BKAgentService
    3. delete /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BookKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com. apple.BKAgentService.xpc
    4. use appzapper to remove iBooks
    5. delete ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService
    6. delete ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooksX
    7. empty the trash
    8. restart iTunes

     

    Books should be accessible again!


    Steps 5 & 6 are new, this caught me out after the 10.10 upgrade.

  • by Mark Armitage,

    Mark Armitage Mark Armitage Jan 30, 2015 11:32 AM in response to Mark Armitage
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iTunes
    Jan 30, 2015 11:32 AM in response to Mark Armitage

    My current 'Simon' checks, so I get alerted if iBooks tries to come back...

     

    Screen Shot 2015-01-30 at 19.26.03.png

  • by Andy Epprecht,

    Andy Epprecht Andy Epprecht Feb 2, 2015 1:29 AM in response to Mark Armitage
    Level 1 (58 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Feb 2, 2015 1:29 AM in response to Mark Armitage

    Thank you Mark and StoneSoup !

     

    When will they ever learn at Apple and get that horrible iBooks implementation back into iTunes for where it is expected to be. I will never understand and agree with that blockheads at Apple who decided to take the ebooks and pdf's out of that iTunes and tearing it apart from audiobooks and the rest of the media.

     

    I run into a mess this time too after updating Yosemite. I still forgot to care about it. After restoring my iTunes library files I finally managed to get it right again.

  • by gmeddy,

    gmeddy gmeddy Mar 27, 2015 4:12 AM in response to Mark Armitage
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mar 27, 2015 4:12 AM in response to Mark Armitage

    I have been able to follow all these steps except the "delete iBooks" step.

    It appears that iBooks is 'locked' and "cannot be modified or removed because it's required by OS X".

    I completed all the other steps and have found that iTunes is still not respecting my efforts.

    I cannot use iBooks anymore even if I wanted to... so what sort of a pickle am I in?

     

    is there a hack to remove iBooks regardless of the "locked" state it's in?

  • by StoneSoup,

    StoneSoup StoneSoup Apr 8, 2015 3:00 PM in response to gmeddy
    Level 1 (49 points)
    Apr 8, 2015 3:00 PM in response to gmeddy

    Hi, gmeddy,

     

    I see from another thread that you were able to delete iBooks by unchecking the "Protect default apps" option in AppClean's preferences.  I haven't had to do that, myself, but I'm glad that that worked for you.

     

    Steven

  • by StoneSoup,

    StoneSoup StoneSoup Apr 8, 2015 3:03 PM in response to StoneSoup
    Level 1 (49 points)
    Apr 8, 2015 3:03 PM in response to StoneSoup

    Just upgraded to Yosemite 10.10.3 today.  I opened iTunes and saw that it had hidden all of my books again.  The hated, "Your books have been moved to iBooks" splash screen reappeared.  I did not start iBooks.

     

    I checked Activity Monitor. The com.apple.BKAgentService.xpc service was running.  I executed a Force Quit and then deleted it using Finder.

     

    I used AppCleaner to delete the iBooks program from the Applications folder.  I emptied my trash, restarted iTunes, and could see my books in iTunes once again.  All is good with Yosemite 10.10.3 for those of us who hate iBooks.

     

    Steven

  • by Mark Armitage,

    Mark Armitage Mark Armitage Apr 8, 2015 3:10 PM in response to StoneSoup
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iTunes
    Apr 8, 2015 3:10 PM in response to StoneSoup

    Yep. As I said in my last post, I set-up 'Simon' to monitor my iBooks stuff and of course after the upgrade it all went red, but I followed the few steps from my last post and as I did - each check went green and after a few minutes work all is well again and iBooks is no more.

     

    What a relief!

     

    (The containers were back again as well, but thankfully I knew to zap them this time so everything was fine).

  • by Mark Armitage,

    Mark Armitage Mark Armitage Apr 8, 2015 3:16 PM in response to gmeddy
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iTunes
    Apr 8, 2015 3:16 PM in response to gmeddy

    Sorry, missed this.

     

    Glad you managed to sort it though, I'm replying here just for completeness.

     

    Stonesoup is correct, you might have to tell zapper not to protect apple apps (I do). I think you also must have killed the service first otherwise it will get ratty. Assuming that you do both of those then you should be fine and iBooks should be a distant memory in no time ;-)

     

    I'll tweak my post with the summary to note this just so it's all in one place. - Actually I won't - it won't let me edit it any more. *sigh*

  • by Mark Armitage,

    Mark Armitage Mark Armitage Apr 8, 2015 3:17 PM in response to Mark Armitage
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iTunes
    Apr 8, 2015 3:17 PM in response to Mark Armitage

    There is an option in AppZapper to 'protect apple apps', you may need to turn this off to be able to delete iBooks.

  • by craigriches,

    craigriches craigriches Apr 18, 2015 6:27 AM in response to Mark Armitage
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Apple TV
    Apr 18, 2015 6:27 AM in response to Mark Armitage

    Thanks so much for your input Mark

    I am now running 10.10.3 and iTune 12.1.2.27 and have returned both my epubs and my PDFs to iTunes.

    I have extra question though.

    If i look in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books

    my epubs and PDFs are also located there.

    Are these copies? Should i delete this folder also?

    If so, which folder exactly?

    Thanks in advance, maybe I missed a step...??

  • by Mark Armitage,

    Mark Armitage Mark Armitage Apr 18, 2015 6:37 AM in response to craigriches
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iTunes
    Apr 18, 2015 6:37 AM in response to craigriches

    In iTunes, select a book/PDF, right click it and show in finder. Make sure that all the books/PDF's are shown in that location and that it isn't the container directory!


    If everything is okay then delete the container directory, but I would suggest first that you close iTunes, compress that container directory and move the zip file somewhere safe. Then re-open iTunes and check that everything is still there and accessible.


    My main issue with iBooks is that it copies my files to that directory which has to be on the internal System disk. I don't have that kind of space to waste. So, yes, they *SHOULD* be just copies but it doesn't hurt to make sure first ;-)

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