How to Edit Categories in iBooks on Mavericks

I found a way to edit the category for a book in iBooks. It's not pretty but it's a start. My books are all ePubs, I don't know if this will work for books in other formats. Here's what to do:


  • Copy the book from iBooks to Calibre (I just drag-and-drop it from iBooks to Calibre).
  • In Calibre, right-click on the book and select "Edit Book" from the Context Menu. This will open up the Calibre Book Edit Tool.
  • On the right side of the screen, scroll down through the Files Browser until you reach the Miscellaneous section.
  • Right-click on "iTunesMetaData.plist" and export the file.
  • Find the exported file in Finder, right-click on it and open with the Property List Editor App. This is an Apple developer tool but I think you can download it without registering as a developer. Alternatively, there seem to be some third-party Property List Editor's out there. If you can't find a property list editor you could use TextEdit.
  • If you have a Property List Editor just change the "Genre" property value. If you're using TextEdit, it's the data in the string tag that follows the genre key, e.g. <key>genre</key><string>Your Category Goes Here</string>
  • Close and save the file.
  • From within the Calibre Book Edit Tool, right-click again on the iTunesMetaData.plist file and select the "Replace" option.
  • Replace it with the file you just modified. Make sure the file you replaced is called "iTunesMetaData.plist"
  • Close the Calibre Book Edit Tool and save your changes.
  • From within Calibre, right-click on your book and save it to disk in ePub format.
  • Delete the book in iBooks.
  • Drag the ePub file into iBooks. Your category should be whatever value you used for the Genre property.


Good luck, the process really needs to be much simpler. It would be a great enhancement to Calibre if it could edit the iTunesMetaData content directly via the Edit Metadata option. Better yet, Apple could fix iBooks.

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Jan 16, 2014 6:50 PM

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4 replies

Feb 1, 2014 12:59 PM in response to Mr. Mordechai

Well, the process just got a lot simpler. I posted an enhancement request which was very kindly implemented. The bottom line is that you can now edit plists directly within Calibre. Here's the updated procedure for ePubs.


  • Copy the book from iBooks to Calibre (I just drag-and-drop it from iBooks to Calibre).
  • In Calibre, right-click on the book and select "Edit Book" from the Context Menu. This will open up the Calibre Book Edit Tool.
  • On the right side of the screen, scroll down through the Files Browser until you reach the Miscellaneous section.
  • Double-click on "iTunesMetaData.plist" which will open the file in an edit pane.
  • Look for <key>genre</key><string>Current Category</string> and change "Current Category" to whatever you want it to be. If this doesn't exist in the plist, then add the key/string combination.
  • Close and save the file.
  • Close the Calibre Book Edit Tool and save your changes.
  • From within Calibre, right-click on your book and save it to disk in ePub format.
  • Delete the book in iBooks.
  • Drag the ePub file into iBooks. Your category should be whatever value you used for the Genre property.


Thank you Calibre team!

Mar 10, 2014 4:15 PM in response to wolf4jc

Just to check, I have Calibre version 1.22 installed (on a Mac) which was released in late January. Editing the plist was a recently added new feature so is it possible that your version of Calibre is out-of-date? What version are you using?


When I get a chance I'm going to udpate to the latest Calibre version 1.27 to see if any regression bug was introduced after version 1.22.

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How to Edit Categories in iBooks on Mavericks

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