iTunes doesn't show books to synch to iPad

Hello Pogdaddle,

I see that you're having an issue with your books not syncing from your Mac to your iPad. I'd be happy to provide you with some information that can help with getting your books onto your iPad.

Let's have you take a look at the following article that provides the steps that may help in this scenario:

Books User Guide

"See your books on all your devices in Books

With iCloud, your books, PDFs, collections, highlights, notes, and bookmarks appear automatically in Books on your Mac and your iOS devices when you’re signed in everywhere with the same Apple ID. Then you can easily download the books to read and enjoy them.

See books and PDFs you added to Books

• On your Mac: Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click iCloud. Next to iCloud Drive (make sure it’s selected), click Options, then select Books.

• On your iOS device: Go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud (or Settings > iCloud), turn on iCloud Drive, then turn on Books. Next go to Settings > Books, then turn on iCloud Drive."

If the issue remains, or you're receiving an error message, respond back with more details.

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.

Enjoy your day!

See Managing apps with iTunes 12.7 or later - Apple Community. Management of apps, books, and tones was removed from iTunes in 12.7. You should be able to drag and drop from Finder to the device where it appears in the iTunes sidebar, assuming you can locate the source files however the Books app on Mac does a pretty good job of hiding its sources.

tt2

This happened to me too, very annoying. Tried various stuff including deleting and reinstalling the Books app on my iPad. I have to many (big) books for iCloud to be useful (iCloud Drive is just a major pain on all accounts).

But: I got to see all my books from Books back in iTunes while syncing my iPad by just deleting a file in my iTunes file, called iTunes Library Extras.itdb (iTunes just made a fresh one upon relaunch).

Hope this is more helpful than the useless and very, very annoying push to use iCloud for Books syncing.

Hi there! I encountered the same issue earlier but upon searching for solutions in google, I was able to find one remedy and it worked! Just drag and drop ebooks from the source folder. I am so surprised that it is way easier BUT Itunes won’t display the books, it will just directly sync to the device.

Hi there! I encountered the same issue earlier but upon searching for solutions in google, I was able to find one remedy and it worked! Just drag and drop ebooks from the source folder. I am so surprised that it is way easier BUT Itunes won’t display the books, it will just directly sync to the device.

I have had much the same problem on and off for the past month (or two?). On my Mac (a 15" 2015 MBP running MacOS 10.14.5), I have over a hundred ePub books and dozen or so PDFs listed in Books.app (most of them from my own collection, not purchased from within the app). I sync them to my iPhone 5S (running 12.3.1) via iTunes. But recently, when I connect my phone to my Mac and iTunes opens, iTunes' list of books to sync often only shows the dozen PDFs and not the hundred ePubs, which results in all the ePubs being deleted from my phone (even the one(s) I'm halfway through reading).

For me, it usually works for me to cancel the sync and close iTunes: when I immediately re-open it, it's usually showing all my books again (and they all get re-copied to my phone during sync, though it takes a while). It might possibly be relevant that I've got Books.app open in the background at the moment: that maybe seemed to help, once, or maybe I'm imagining things. The problem *may* be directly related to events where iTunes opens automatically on its own in response to my phone being plugged in via USB: I don't remember that behavior before a month or two ago, and I *may* have seen a correlation between those events and the disappearance of my ePubs from the list. Maybe.

Yup. Running the same. It was all there yesterday and today it isn't. At what point did it fail you? I ask because I found that by selecting a book in iTunes, then turning on the box while holding down Command, which selects ALL books, the list repopulated. I agree. iTunes has become something of a joke. Apple seems to have given up on it and if their new system works, fine. I hope!

I have had the same issue. I solved it by connecting iPhone to computer AFTER starting iTunes. If I do the other way around, the iPhone books do not show up for syncing.

An addendum to the previous post. This seems to work with photos, contacts and calendar. It makes no sense but, open the iBooks list, calendars, photos, and contacts before you open iTunes. For some unknown reason the information will appear in iTunes. Why? Don't know. Works on my computer so let me know if it works for you. Weird!!!

Same problem, but with an older version IOS nine.

What I did was create a folder on iCloud drive called books. On my Mac I selected all books and drag all books from the iBook app into the iCloud books folder. I did the same for PDFs. I cloud files syncs that folder across all Macs and ios devices. If I need a book or PDF, and it is not on in iBooks, I just click on it in the iCloud books folder, then I can access it.

Also I think the books folder is kind of a backup so if the books Or iTunes or something goes wrong I have a copy.

I would think apple would do some testing. In a race to get "Dark Mode" we can't sync pdfs or books.

I have been having this exact same problem for about the length of time as the original poster. I have to sync my books at least twice a lot of times for them to appear on both my iPad AND my iPhone. It's funny that for both devices, iTunes doesn't seem to even recognize all of the books I have in my Books library on my iMac when this happens (it reads only about 20% of my titles available on Books), but then once I either quit iTunes or at least try to refresh my devices by switching back to my music library, they suddenly reappear. Very perplexing, and, frankly, very annoying.

I have given up trying to get Mac Books/iTunes to sync my books correctly with my iPhone and iPad. With these latest updates (OS X 10.14.5 and iOS 12.3.1), all ePub books that were on my iPad disappeared. Not the first time, but having run through all of the suggestions I've seen in the past few months on different forums and here, none of them work for me now. And the only way I can get ePub files to appear in my iPad is to email them to my iPad, then click on the file and Open with Books. The files are small, so it's possible to do 10 or so at a time.

I suspect all of this will get fixed with the next big iteration of OS X, as it's rumored that iTunes is in for a big overhaul. I sure hope so.

(stuff I've tried:

• delete all extensions/plists/.itdb files associated with iTunes
• log out of all Apple ID, restart all devices
• checked all Preferences/System Pref settings associated with Books, iTunes, iCloud.
• toggled on/off all of those settings

I think you're exactly correct. Apple is in the midst of completely redoing iTunes and everything that's connected to it, so I suspect this issue is just a symptom of this mid-stream situation. I'm just glad there's a simple workaround to being able to get ePub files into my iPhone and/or iPad: just mail them to myself.