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iBooks on OS X not showing all my .epub books.

I have some .epub books that friends have shared with me. When I add them to iBooks on the Macbook Pro it is displaying the books however once I quit iBooks and reopen it majority of the books seem to disappear (as in I’m not seeing them at all) and when I drag and drop the books back into iBooks a message stating

“This book is already in your library. Do you want to replace it with the one you’re adding?” pops up; if I click replace the book shows up again but the same thing happens when I quit iBooks.

Posted on Dec 9, 2015 9:22 AM

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Posted on Dec 18, 2015 8:36 PM

I had this same problem today, and somehow I found a solution.

The reason for this to happen is that iBooks has copied your epub file to the library, but it failed to keep a log for some mysterious reason.

The solution is quite simple actually.


1.Step 1: Figure out how many books of your books has been logged.

Go to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books, this is where all the files are stored, then open Books.plist in this directory with Xcode, you'll see that there's a certain number of "Books" element, this is the number we're looking for.

If you don't have Xcode, then it's gonna be a little bit tricky, because this file can't be normally viewed in TextEdit, it's a binary file.

Just run this super long command in Terminal:

cp ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books/Books.plist ~;plutil -convert xml1 ~/Books.plist;grep -o 'BKDisplayName' ~/Books.plist|wc -l;rm ~/Books.plist

It'll tell you how many books iBooks has keeped in log, too.


2.Step 2: Find the epub files that disappear after restarting iBooks.

Simple, just use preview to find them all.


3.Step 3: Copy them to another directory and delete them in this directory.


3.Step 4: Open iBooks and add them again, either drag them in or Shift-Command-O is ok.


4.Step 5: Rerun the command or check the plist file in Xcode, and see if the number has increased by the number of your newly added books.

If so, then problem solved, else, you should redo step 2~4 until it's right.

6 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Dec 18, 2015 8:36 PM in response to TEWdani

I had this same problem today, and somehow I found a solution.

The reason for this to happen is that iBooks has copied your epub file to the library, but it failed to keep a log for some mysterious reason.

The solution is quite simple actually.


1.Step 1: Figure out how many books of your books has been logged.

Go to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books, this is where all the files are stored, then open Books.plist in this directory with Xcode, you'll see that there's a certain number of "Books" element, this is the number we're looking for.

If you don't have Xcode, then it's gonna be a little bit tricky, because this file can't be normally viewed in TextEdit, it's a binary file.

Just run this super long command in Terminal:

cp ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books/Books.plist ~;plutil -convert xml1 ~/Books.plist;grep -o 'BKDisplayName' ~/Books.plist|wc -l;rm ~/Books.plist

It'll tell you how many books iBooks has keeped in log, too.


2.Step 2: Find the epub files that disappear after restarting iBooks.

Simple, just use preview to find them all.


3.Step 3: Copy them to another directory and delete them in this directory.


3.Step 4: Open iBooks and add them again, either drag them in or Shift-Command-O is ok.


4.Step 5: Rerun the command or check the plist file in Xcode, and see if the number has increased by the number of your newly added books.

If so, then problem solved, else, you should redo step 2~4 until it's right.

Feb 4, 2016 10:03 AM in response to TEWdani

I have a particular epub which I can not add. I have a pdf with the same name. ie. the two books only differ by file extension and content. The pdf version is an early release ebook and the epub is the final version. When I try to add the .epub version it does not show up in the library. Nor does it increment the book counter in the plist file. Any idea why the book fails to load? Is there a way to get a log for the ibook processing of the add to library operation?

iBooks on OS X not showing all my .epub books.

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