WHERE does iBooks save PDFs added to your Apple Books Library on your Mac?

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Level 1

13 points

WHERE does iBooks save PDFs added to your Apple Books Library on your Mac?

I'm using iBooks 1.5 on OS X El Capitan. (And iOS 13.3.1 on my iPhone.)

I read somewhere that all files (both ePubs and PDFs) added to your Apple Books Library are saved in

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books

However, only a book I purchased a while ago and a Books.plist file are in that folder on my Mac. That Books.plist file does contain references to the PDFs I currently have in iBooks, including each PDF’s source path (where on my Mac the PDF was when I originally added it to iBooks), and their iBooks(?) path:

~/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~com~apple~iBooks/Documents/[filename.pdf]

But opening "Mobile Documents" in Finder actually opens "iCloud Drive", and those PDFs are nowhere to be found in it!

Thanks in advance for any useful information.

MacBook Pro 15", OS X 10.11

Posted on Feb 27, 2020 8:05 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

skidaddyski

Level 2

165 points

Feb 28, 2020 12:27 AM in response to albertop9

If you've enabled iCloud Drive for Books, and if the PDF appears in Books and you can open it, then the PDF is indeed in iCloud Drive. Instead of using Finder, use Terminal and cd to that path:

cd ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/iCloud~com~apple~iBooks/Documents

Or cmd-space to open Spotlight Search and then paste that path and enter. You'll see your files.

The other folder you mentioned (~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books) is where Books stores stuff that is not eligible for iCloud Drive. So that would be books from Apple's book store, or non-store books and PDFs if you haven't enabled iCloud Drive for Books.

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Answer 2

albertop9 Author

Level 1

13 points

Feb 29, 2020 9:32 AM in response to skidaddyski

Cool! Thank you!

So… Following your instructions, I only got this from Terminal:

my-mac:Documents Alberto$

(No PDFs, apparently. ?)

…But Spotlight (after removing the \ in the pasted path) did show the PDFs and their enclosing folder in iCloud, and I could open the folder - although only right from Spotlight; not navigating to it in the Finder. But that was enough for me.

I’m just left wondering why Apple would go to such extremes to hide that folder. It doesn’t show up even if hidden files and folders are made visible!

Oh well…

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WHERE does iBooks save PDFs added to your Apple Books Library on your Mac?

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