Reading goals in Books on MacOS cannot be turned off

As promised. For the time being, I've come up with an AppleScript that switches off the setting via GUI scripting. This alleviates the pain of having to switch it off manually every time:

if application "Books" is not running then
	log "Books is not running"
	return
end if

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Books"
	click menu item "Settings…" of menu "Books" of menu bar item "Books" of menu bar 1 -- Opens the Settings pane
	
	tell window "General"
		set theCheckbox to checkbox "Enable Reading Goals" of group "Reading Goals" of group 1
		set wasReadingGoalsEnabled to the value of theCheckbox as boolean
		if wasReadingGoalsEnabled then click theCheckbox -- Disables the Reading Goals
		click button 1 -- Closes the Settings pane by clicking on the close button
	end tell
end tell

if wasReadingGoalsEnabled then
	log "Reading Goals disabled"
else
	log "Reading Goals already disabled"
end if

I'm personally using the script as a Raycast Script Command, so that I can run it with a keyboard shortcut. You can also put it inside a Shortcuts automation, so that it can run every time the Books app opens. Besides, I'm sure there could be other ways to automate it.

Yet in the end this is still a geeky workaround; fingers crossed that Apple gets this bug squashed soon.

MrHoffman suggested that:

if [Apple's official solution] is not working, update to the most current version of macOS, then turn the reading goal on, boot into Safe Mode, reboot normally, and turn the goal off again, and see if that clears this.

I followed this advice word for word and it did nothing for me—the reading goal reappeared the next time I logged in to my device’s user account.

I do not trust that Apple would fix this annoyance any time soon. I will write an automated script to switch this setting off and share my solution here once I finish it.

My device is MacBook Air M1 on macOS Sonoma 14.1.2.

Thanks @IdrisSeabright, I have reported this bug to Apple. But again as I said,

I do not trust that Apple would fix this annoyance any time soon. I will write an automated script to switch this setting off and share my solution here once I finish it.

If you followed this:

and if that is not working, update to the most current version of macOS, then turn the reading goal on, boot into Safe Mode, reboot normally, and turn the goal off again, and see if that clears this.

Related:

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support (MD)

Set reading goals in Books on Mac - Apple Support (MD)

Geeky, but useful. Thanks for taking the time to script it. It's working fine for me on Sonoma as a Shortcut triggered by Shortery.

liang197 wrote:

Can someone please tell apple to fix this most annoying bug?

Yes! You can!

Product Feedback - Apple