How to remove books from iCloud permanently ?

"Apple does not allow the purchaser to delete any media that is purchased via iTunes, Mac App Store, or iBooks Store."

Not quite accurate...because I did this myself, which is why I did not offer "I'm not sure, but...", as I did in suggestion using iCloud.com. I was able to delete over 100 apps (not native apps) that I purchased and found I never used or didn't like. This earlier this year...April 2016, I believe. And upon selecting an app, right-clicking, and choosing "Delete"...the options were (not verbatim, but close):

1. Do you want to remove this item from your library?
2. Do you want to delete item from your library? (sending it back to the cloud...)
3. Do you want to delete item and send it to the recycle bin?

I selected #3 and received a pop-up warning, "Are you sure you wish to permanently delete this item?" I clicked yes, and the item was no longer in my iTunes library, not even with a cloud symbol.

The rest of your comments are valid; the items I "permanently deleted" from my iTunes library were all apps. To this day, they are not found anywhere in my account purchase history. As for hiding content you don't want to see, this is a great option. But the issue was to get rid of content unwanted that is taking up space in the iCloud, so hiding is not a solution. Personally, I have not been able to find a working solution to this issue, despite eons of hours researching all imaginable, but reputable sites. And THIS is why I am so (to be kind) displeased with Apple, as well as Google and Microsoft (and others, to be sure). I'm SURE Apple included these conditions in its' 30-100 page Terms & Conditions notice/policy, but that still doesn't make it right or acceptable to restrict a user's rights (let's not say "constitutional rights") but individual, ethical and inherent rights to purchased and paid for content.

And I won't rant away, because honestly, there isn't a thing anyone can do about it without coming together as a whole to petition a demand to update their policies. I'm not complaining, don't misunderstand. I accept that it is what it is, and though I choose not to like it, and let it rile me at times, I continue to choose Apple products over Android, fully aware of the advantages and disadvantages.

I merely wanted to offer my experience and opinion as a means of support. Thank you for your response, and professional attitude.

Regards,

Renée

Woode wrote:

I have two ePub books, one downloaded from Project Gutenberg and one from another source, that I imported into iTunes then transferred to my iPad. Upon opening them, I discovered that they are usable because of errors in text and formatting. These two books were synced to iCloud and now cannot be deleted. They cannot be removed from Purchases, though they were never purchased from the iBooks Store. However, they can be deleted from your iTunes Library. Directly from the library. Just Select them and then go to Edit on the top menu and select Delete. Since they are not purchased items, they will be deleted from your iTunes library.

Whether purchased from the iBook Store - Sorry - but Apple's policy from day 1 is that purchased items cannot be deleted from iCloud. You can hide them if you don't want to see them again, but if the policy were to let you delete them, then Apple would be inundated day in and out with furious users who had "accidently" deleted a purchsased item, or whose spiteful brother or boyfriend had deleteted them, and would be absolutely indignant if there was no way to get them back. Apple would be the bad guy, consipiring to figure out new ways to get your hard-earned cash out of your pocket even though you OWNED the items in question....Not to mention, as stated before, this is the INDUSTRY standard.

or downloaded from somewhere else, I should be able to completely remove an unwanted book from iCloud. It does not matter if it is unusable because of errors or simply unwanted. I do not want to remove iCloud from my device - so don't delete iCloud from your device. Either remove the item from your your device, and don't look at the iCloud side, or hide the item in iCloud so whether you are looking at the device library or at the iCloud library on the device, you won't see it....how hard is that?

, because I want to read the rest of my library on my Mac, or my iPad, or my iPhone.

This, Gail, is a problem.

I have a slightly different problem. For some reason, the file for an iBooks book that I purchased a couple of years ago became corrupted during the iBooks upgrade. It's a book that I need to access regularly for something I'm researching and writing. This happened with only one book.

I have tried deleting and reinstalling the book repeatedly from my MacBook Pro, iPhone and iPad, but every time I re-download the file, what I get is the corrupted file on iCloud.

The solution, I'm thinking, is to delete the corrupted file backup up on iCloud, then reinstall a clean, non-corrupted file from the iBooks Store. Is that possible to do?

Well... ...no... ...I cannot hide them from iCloud and even though I have selected "hide", the books still show up. I have selected "do not download books with explicit content" but this feature only applies to NEW books, so, all the old books, such as a book by mistake, I downloaded, can still be accessed by my Children and they are still able to read the explicit content.

This has to be a priority for Apple if they allow Children to access explicit content that we as parents are trying to manage.

APPLE: The parental control button does NOT work on all books.

A parent should be able to control what is "explicit" content and what books can be or should be available to children. Currently, this feature does not work to my liking and it needs to change.

CURRENTLY - explicit content is controlled by Apple and the standards are way too relaxed.

NOT HAPPY.

Somehow it took the Apple "machine" hours to decide what had explicit content and what does not - and the book that was NOT going away from my iBooks App has now gone and vanished - it may be a glitch that it takes time for the "machine" to go through the contents of the book before "it" decides if the content is explicit or not.

I would like to be able to make the choice - and not leave it to "the Apple machine" to make that decision.

It's gone now - but it took 3 hours.

TK.

Elizaema - Is this on a mac or a device that you are referencing? There are two magazines I am trying to delete and they are seen again if I click "hide icloud books" on the ipad even though they are hidden for the actual account.

That's an iPad image. I also would like to delete some books, mainly sample books and Apple Guides for every iteration of iOS. Surely we should be able to delete the books we decided we didn't like, or the old guides while they issue updated iOS iPhone and iPad guides (which, BTW, are really great). I don't want to hide them, I want them gone, not clutter up my screen. Most of us are confused because there is that "Cloud with download arrow" icon in the iBooks app. The books must be somewhere...

OK, so if you don't want to see the books in the Cloud, then when you open the iBooks app, and click on the option in the top center (on an iPhone) that says All or Books or PDFs or a Collection Name if you have collections, at the bottom of the screen where you select your view, there is an option to "Hide iCloud Books". If you turn that on, then when you are in anything but "Purchased", you will not see that "Cloud with the download arrow icon in the iBooks app".

Cheers,

GB

Ok, so I just now did this. If the book was purchased in the Ibooks store, go to the store, at the bottom it will say purchased. Click on that. when you hover over an icon it will have an x. Push the x and it will delete it from IBooks completely. No need to hide it 🙂

Ok, so I just now did this. If the book was purchased in the Ibooks store, go to the store, at the bottom it will say purchased. Click on that. when you hover over an icon it will have an x. Push the x and it will delete it from IBooks completely. No need to hide it 🙂

My problem is slightly different. I have a bunch of books in iBooks on my iPad but they don't show up on my Mac computer when I open iBooks on the Mac. How can I get them saved/downloaded to the computer? Why won't iTunes sync it? A lot of the books are free books on iBooks, so I too would like to delete a bunch of them when I am finished with them, or decide I don't want them.

If you go to the "Sort By" option in the upper right-hand corner of the iBooks ibrary, you will see an option to "Show iCloud Books". Click on that to show all of your purchases.

And again, you cannot delete purchased books. You can hide them as has been previously explained in this thread.

Cheers,

GB

Were the books purchased with the same Apple ID that you currently have signed on to iBooks on your Mac? What OS X are you running?

Also, have you gone to File and clicked on Move Books from iTunes?

Cheers,

GB

Yes, but I think I just figured it out ..... I went to IBooks Store; clicked on all books (I think I clicked on Purchased first), selected all, then went to Preferences and clicked on Store and Download new purchases automatically. It looks like they are downloading into my Mac now. I tried to do that from iTunes and it wouldn't let me do anything with the Preferences, so it looks like that is what needs to be done.

I've read the thread about removing the books; which is helpful, actually about hiding the books. I think that will work for me. What surprises me about Apple's response about not being able to delete books .... in Kindle and Kobo you are able to go to the online bookstore/purchase area (ie Amazon) and delete the purchase from your purchase history/bookshelf. Where I can understand Apple's position, I'm surprised that we can't do that. But as I've said, I think it will work with the hiding of books.

The accepted answer is false. Simple go to the iBooks store. Go to purchased. Find the book you want rid of, and hover over it. Click the x button. You won't see it again. Instead of ranting against Apple can I suggest a bit of independent thinking and investigation. It will serve you better.