where are the iBooks files stored in el capitan

There is, in fact an iBooks folder in the iCloud Drive folder, but it is hidden. You can see its contents in terminal:

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

And also, as he mentioned by searching for the title using spotlight.

Basically, when you turn on iCloud for iBooks, apparently it copies all your locally stored books from ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books to the iCloud drive and then deletes them from the previous location.

Now, I'm not sure why some are not deleted and stay local. Maybe because space runs out? Out of a few hundred books, 21 of mine remained local.

Note: I am running OS X 10.11.6 and iOS 9.3.3 for the below discussion.

There are two locations for iBooks under newer Mac OS X and iOS when using iCloud drive to have your content available and synchronized between OS X and iOS.

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

  This is the location for any items you have "purchased" through iBooks. This includes FREE books as well, such as the Apple User Guides.

• ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/iCloud~com~apple~iBooks/Documents
  • This is where any items that you add to iBooks (pdf and ePub) get moved to.
  • Note that ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/ is your iCloud drive local copy -- though the directories you see in the Finder are prefixed with "com~apple~"
• ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/

  This is where any files or folders you create in iCloud are stored under OS X.

iljajj wrote:

The ebooks are still on your hard drive (or ssd), but they're hidden inside the iCloud drive (e.g., iCloud Drive > iBooks > xxxxxx.epub). However, any good search utility (including Spotlight) will trace them. Just do a file name search in that folder using ".epub".

A larger problem, and one that I hadn't anticipated, was that although iBooks does not change the file extension .epub, it does re-format the ebook itself. Therefore, going back to Calibre or somesuch utility using the same epub files, will not be possible – it's a one-way process.

I don't think this is correct, have you actually seen an iBooks folder in your iCloud Drive folder?

The files are stored in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books

I found the actual ebook files here:

/Users/<username>/Library/Mobile Documents/iBooks/iBooks

The .../Library/Containers... folder does contain a plist capturing the ebook catalog with relevant data (including location).

If you do not see any books in iBooks then they may be lost but you can search for your iBooks files locally. In finder search for any ePub files on your Mac and choose files that contain ePub in the file name. You should see list of all available files on your mac and they may point to iCloud-ibooks ( a hidden directory) as in the example below. The files that you find you should be able to import into iBooks by dragging them to the app.

You can create a link to this hidden folder by opening terminal and copying the following and running the command: ln -s ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/icloud\~com\~apple\~ibooks/ ~/Desktop/iCloud\ iBooks. This will create a shortcut on your desktop called "iCloud iBooks". Once the link is created, you can easily view and copy these files for backup or manually adding to older iDevices that are stuck on older versions of iBooks etc.

/Users/'USERNAME'/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBo oks

Or just search iBooks and you'll see the iBooks file.

If you download them all on your Mac from the cloud, you should be able to find all the files in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks

I don't think anything should be getting deleted from your devices unless you're out of space, in which case it's going to remove any cached data to make room, and it may consider unused iBooks as cached data that you can redownload later.

As far as Photos go, there is a setting for Photos in both OS X and iOS to optimize storage for that device, meaning it'll delete full size photos and keep low res proxy images to maintain free space. I don't think iBooks has this feature at all, but not sure how its iCloud features work, I didn't stick around long enough to find out as I sync my iPhone/iPad with iTunes anyway, so there was no point in me subscribing for iCloud storage that I don't otherwise need (it mages sense for those who do not do this though!)

In the end I just I ended up turning off iCloud Drive for iBooks and restoring from a backup as outlined here:

iBooks books lost on iMac after upgrade app

iljajj wrote:

"The ebooks are still on your hard drive (or ssd), but they're hidden inside the iCloud drive (e.g., iCloud Drive > iBooks > xxxxxx.epub). However, any good search utility (including Spotlight) will trace them. Just do a file name search in that folder using ".epub"."

Rename a pdf in test12345.pdf, add it to iBooks, search this file in Finder, choose the file in iCloud Drive/iBooks, right mouse button and choose parent directore, a new window is opened in Finder with all your iBooks-files stored in iCloud (and on your harddisk or ssd).

christopherfromemsworth wrote:

If iBooks synchronises between my Apple devices, including the iMac, why isn't there an iBooks folder on iCloud drive?

I think one problem with this whole thing is they should've just called it iCloud for iBooks and not "iCloud Drive" as people are associating that with the iOS app and folder within OS X where you can see folders of data used by different apps. iBooks actually stores its local data in a "hidden" directory within your Library that you're not actually meant to access directly, kind of like you shouldn't be digging around in your iTunes or Photos Libraries directly as those are managed by their respective apps. Nobody should be looking for an iBooks folder in iCloud Drive to open/delete/organize books, you're supposed to do that from within the app itself only.

I'm blaming marketing for this one...

Hi, you should go to this filepath:

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

Note that iBooks is supposed to contain no spaces. You can just paste the path when you hist Cmd-Shift-G in the Finder.

The problem is that this shows only my purchased books, not the ones I sideloaded. Does anyone know where I can find those?

Noura Shehab-Eldeen wrote:

WOW, so they are really lost..

don't you think that i should be asked before my files are deleted , even if to free space??

and that space became full at the first place because of icloud.. it showed that storage is full while on iTunes it showed that I still had space and it didn't get free again until I deactivated iCloud on my iPhone..

why aren't my files on iBooks backed up on iCloud and shown on iCloud Drive?

I don't believe it automatically deletes anything to free up space, I was speculating but I am pretty sure you have to manually delete books from your device.

If everything had worked correctly, then they *should* all be available from iCloud. You'd see them listed with the little cloud logo on them within your library, available for download. If your books disappeared from your library and aren't listed, then something probably went wrong — you shouldn't have lost anything. Did you look at iBooks (on OS X) > File > Move Books from iTunes by chance to see any were stuck over there? Can you grab your books from a backup and re-add them? You did backup your data, didn't you?

Also, I'm pretty sure that the iBooks library is not visible on the iCloud Drive folder on your Mac or the app on iOS, if that's what you mean by "shown on". But you will see it listed in your iCloud data usage.

Hi, Might or might not apply now however I've just had this issue.

Just updated to Sierra and also had to migrate my profile as old one was corrupted.

I had an alias setup on my desktop which pointed to the correct folder they were kept in. (the one you have to cmd+shift+G and paste /Users/'USERNAME'/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBo oks to see).

Mines empty. so logged back into old (corrupt profile) and theres only 3 books there.

So I'm asking wheres the books and searched and found this thread.

So after being angry that apple has hidden my books, searching for them (*.epub) and so on. (I had a lot of books not bought - all legit mind from my current uni course material and PDF's which i need for uni and unable to manually backup.)

By chance I was looking through my 'All My Files' folder and low and behold sort by kind and scroll down and I can see all the .epubs and .pdf's and so on that I've uploaded via iBooks.

The bought ones are somewhere else - defiantly not in the iBooks folder and it appears apple is storing all our books in a hidden folder in the cloud.

You can't search for them as you can't seem to search the iCloud folder. But they are easy to find.

The ebooks are still on your hard drive (or ssd), but they're hidden inside the iCloud drive (e.g., iCloud Drive > iBooks > xxxxxx.epub). However, any good search utility (including Spotlight) will trace them. Just do a file name search in that folder using ".epub".

A larger problem, and one that I hadn't anticipated, was that although iBooks does not change the file extension .epub, it does re-format the ebook itself. Therefore, going back to Calibre or somesuch utility using the same epub files, will not be possible – it's a one-way process.

Thanks, finally we can see them.

Apple, this is NONSENSE and INEFFICIENT that every last thing I OWN needs to be hidden FROM ME. For goodness sake!

- Let me see iBooks and their real names

- How can I take a secondary backup from the iCloud drive? I have to drag them out of iBooks I guess?

- Let me see how many books I have (give me a 'total' in iBooks)

- I've just dropped Photos for Lightroom for this very reason

I'm having the same problem as vonBunau.

Also, I cannot find the /Users/'USERNAME'/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBo oks filepath referenced above and all over the web. No "containers" folders show up in any type of search. Was it renamed? Can't find it, all search results come up empty. Anyone have any ideas?