OverDrive: eBooks & audiobooks Reviews

I have constant ringing in my ears (tinnitus) that nearly drives me crazy when everything is perfectly quiet, making it very hard to go to sleep. But, problem solved by letting this app read me a book (if there is some sound for me to hear, I don’t notice the tinnitus). Before I lay down, I set the sleep timer for 15 minutes, then I relax while I listen to the story and it turns itself off after I am asleep. The best part is, you can use the bookmark feature to save your place periodically, then you can easily find your place by going to your bookmark and using the fast forward and 15 second advance (or 15 second back up) buttons. I use OverDrive EVERY night. Caution: save thrillers and page turners to listen to on long car rides! For bedtime, I listen to funny, stress free stories like Janet Evanovich books- they are funny and entertaining and don’t keep me awake. Last tip, for best results to induce sleep, I listen to the my favorite books over and over. That way, I don’t have to worry about ‘missing something’. You can have up to five books at a time, so I also listen to this app while I am cleaning house, gardening (great time to listen to “how-to” books) or driving (it plays through my cars speakers). Best of all, you can temporarily download the books to your phone so you can listen to it even if you don’t have wi-fi available. Love OverDrive!!!

I have never reviewed an app. Ever. OverDrive deserves more than 5 stars. In my opinion, this is one of the most innovative programs I have had the good fortune to come across. The ease of checkout is astounding as is the number of available printed books and audiobooks. Since I often travel the East Coast by car, pre-OD, I had to be sure I got to my local library to check out enough audiobooks to get me there and back. If I failed to get there in time I might not have an audiobook to listen to on a trip. Then I would have to borrow audiobooks from a local restaurant and I would inevitably be late in returning them and incur a large late fee. With this app, I never have to remember to return the books (since they just expire into the Ethernet)! If I don’t like a title, I can just delete it and download another! No more fines! No last minute scrambling to check out books! No more being upset that I have to listen to the entire book just because I don’t like the others I brought. I did have a bit of an issue in the beginning, but I persisted and now can easily navigate the site. Hmmm... I was just wondering... does OverDrive check out books and scholarly journals from the Library of Congress? Don’t all US residents have THAT library card? Again, thank you. I love, love, love OverDrive! The developers are geniuses!

I’m very happy with the this app app. I’ve had it for a couple of years now. I love the easy access to library audio books and once I got familiar with OverDrive , it was no issue to navigate. That being said, navigating it did take some getting used to. It’s as if there’s no main page, just various sections all connected to one another, which works, it’s just not what I experience in most apps and is therefore unfamiliar. Also, this app encouraged users to download Libby so I did and although I really like that Libby allows users to include personal notes with the Bookmarks, I still very much prefer this app over Libby. I’m very much hoping this app will add a note option to the Bookmarks section. I hope this app also adds a notes section to Holds so I can have a reference for the books I put on hold. I have a long list of holds and sometimes forget who recommended the book or where I found it and ultimately why I put it on hold to begin with. Also, I only use this app for audiobooks, so it would be quite a time saver if this app provided the user with filters that could be set permanently so non-audiobooks are not recommended or popping up in my searches. That being said, this app’s response to feedback and glitches is excellent. I’m very appreciative of this app’s continuous attention to app updates and corrections. I’m sure OverDrive is only going to get better.

Libraries are truly wonderful and amazing places, and yet they have their limitations (not open 24/7), don't have every book, lots of books can be heavy, etc.). We still go to our library (conveniently right across the street), but the overwhelming majority of my book reading is now on the this app app.
I usually have five or six books checked out, five or six books on hold, and hundreds on the wish list (to remind myself of what I want to read next). We listen to audio books as a family on road trips using this app, usually have at least one book checked out that I'm reading with each of my kids, and I've finally read lots of literature (fiction and non-fiction) that I've been meaning to read for decades.
My only frustrations are with what my library has available and OverDrive has a "Recommend" feature that allows readers to suggest the library acquire the rights to books it doesn't currently have.
I love this app and the only downside is that I'm tempted to read when I shouldn't because I always have six great books in my pocket.

First, I love OverDrive. Have been using it for about 5 years to download books to my phone. For me, it works beautifully, but I have three suggestions:
1). I have several pages of Wish List books. If I'm looking for a particular book in the list, I HATE having to scroll to the bottom of each page before I can forward to the next one. Please duplicate the page number/forward icons/option at the top of each page, so users can access it immediately.
2). I appreciate knowing where I am in the checkout queue (23 of 4 copies) for example. But when I am next in line (1 of 1 copies) could you write an algorithm to let me know the date the current reader's checkout is up? Surely the program knows when they downloaded it, and whether it's a 7 or 14 day usage. So perhaps my Hold could say "you are next in line, 1 of 1 copies, available on or before September 17" (for example). I realize some people might finish the book in 2 days, and others 2 weeks, but at least this information would give me an option to download another book to read in the meantime.
3). How about adding a contact site on the this app home page, so readers can email suggestions to you? Most apps have this feature.
Otherwise, thanks for a great app.

I would give OverDrive a 10 if I could as I’m a long time user. I’ve tried other apps in hopes to get more of a selection only to realize this is the best. I’m troubled as I recently changed my selection from General adult to teen to change up the selection of titles. Only to find that I can’t change back. I’ve switched to general adult, too all titles, and mistakenly to kids. Nothing works. Now I’m stuck on Kids and teens and can’t search for authors of adult literature. I’ve logged out and turned off my device. OverDrive was updated today so if this was a glitch I expected to have it fixed. Maybe no one else complained so that’s why I’m finally submitting a review. My current work around is to borrow books on my secondary device. Once the book has made it to my loan section I can then download to my primary device. My holds work in this same fashion so I’m still able to enjoy them when available. My next plan is to save my history, delete OverDrive , reboot my device, and then download again.

Oh! Can you bring back the ability to search by alphabetical title or author? It’s a time sync to have to click through 100’s of titles or authors if you want to look within the center of the alphabet. I sort by author usually.

I use this app to check out audio and ebooks using my library card info. It’s great and I’ve read so many more books because I have it. A super downside with this app is how popular it is. The waiting list takes forever on popular books. I thought it might help if it were easier to return a book when you have finished. Especially ebooks. I haven’t figured out how to return a book I borrowed so I gave up and will wait until it expires. Anywhere I see the title there should be a return button. And a pop up message that says return book or cancel when you’ve reached the last page wouldn’t be a bad idea either. I also wish there was a way to pass on books when they become available to you but you’re not ready to read them yet. Like I will put a hold on a book and months later I get an email saying it’s available for 2 weeks. Well that also happens to be a busy time for me so I can’t read it and it ends up sitting on my bookshelf checked out until it expires. I have to sign up again for the waiting list and the whole time somebody else could have been reading it. I wish there was a way to let the next person go ahead of you in line until you’re ready to read it. These are my suggestions!

App overall is ok because of the large selection but it definitely lacking in some areas. For one, it will tell you the book has 1 day left before it expires but it may just have 15 Min left. Numerous times I’ve thought I had all day but then it expires with just a few min left on the book, today’s expired book had less than 4 Min left. Very frustrating. Also, if the book expires before you finish it and it is available for download again at that time it should ask you if you want to re-check the book. OverDrive should also let you save certain settings, for example if you usually just use OverDrive for audio books, you should be able to save that setting. There should also be just a box you can check for only titles that are available now instead of going through all that stuff in advanced search. There should be something like a holiday genre for books such as Christmas books and so on. And finally, it should download the chapters in order so you can start listening immediately or very soon. Most of the time it starts downloading in the middle sections of the book and the first chapter is usually the last to download. Just my thoughts, hope some updates are on the way.

This application has brought me countless hours of entertainment and education. I can select, with ease, from several cooperating local libraries. And I am a “Library Felon” no more, because books are returned automatically, with no overdue fees. Surely this service will bring more people back to the public library system, which deserves continued support.
The audiobook options are my favorite feature. What a treat to be read to while driving to work! Please consider adding the ability to look these up by narrator, because some readers (Barbara Rosenblatt, Jim Dale, Stephen Fry, the late Patrick Tull) are very gifted, while others may be drone-y, or absurdly over-expressive. It would be nice to easily avoid those.
I agree that the “1 day remaining” notification is misleading, but exact expiration time can be accessed by “Loans”, under the books icon.
Some books are improperly indexed. Using Advanced Search by author often yields nothing, but specific titles by that author can be found.
Thank you for this splendid service.

While I have used this app for several years now and have thoroughly enjoyed it, I am now concerned with changes in OverDrive . Since upgrading my phone from iPhone 6 Plus to iPhone eight, OverDrive now does not allow me to adjust the spacing in my e-book. I prefer reading in doublespaced or even triple spaced pages but now all I get are single-spaced pages. What happened? Even when I select double space from the options menu, it comes back single-spaced. I tried deleting OverDrive and reinstalling it once I got my new phone, but then I lost the ability to download the book I had been reading. Even though it was checked out to me, it wouldn’t let me download because it said it was checked out to a different account. I had to call the library and they had to move me up to the top of the waiting list for me to download it again. According to the library tech person I spoke with, this is not an uncommon problem. To add to my frustration, I have found no way to contact this app to share these concerns. I guess my only option is to write this review and hope somebody at this app actually reads this and cares enough to try and fix these problems.

Overall, I like OverDrive...at least now that I know how it works. I use it almost exclusively for audiobooks, so this review is really about those. It took me a while to figure out how to use the filters and how to go from the search to loans to files to the bookshelf so that I could actually listen to the darn book. It would also be nice if the way to return books early, before the auto return date, was more obvious. I bet the waitlists wouldn't be so long if it was easier to figure it out. My guess is that lots of people don't even realize they CAN return the books early. Also, I tend to like to know how long an audiobook is before I check it out. I haven't found a way to find out in OverDrive. There are definitely some good features. The filters, once you know how to use them, are really, really good. The PLAY screen has forward and back 15 seconds so that if you miss something, you can go back and check it out without getting lost, which is nice. It also goes back a few seconds after it's been paused, so that you can recognize where you were when you stopped last. Overall, once you've got everything figured out though, it works great!

This is an app to read books (among other media), so you would think they would have a typographer involved. Apparently not. The type is very poorly done. Spacing is bad, fonts are limited (you have all the iOS system fonts available, why not use them?), and worst of all, everything is fully justified—words are spaced out unevenly to make each line go all the way across the ‘page’ from the left margin to the right margin. That’s fine if you have a professional typesetter touching every detail to make sure it all remains readable, or even a good bit of software to handle it, but this is just dumb “we have three words on this line, so let’s have huge spaces even larger than those words to force them all the way across the ‘page.” Just stupid and unreadable when it happens across the entirety of a novel.

If the developers insist on including this cardinal sin of typography, they could at least allow me to set it to ragged right margins (left-aligned) by myself, but no such option exists. …not to mention the terrible letter and line-spacing, on top of the terrible word-spacing justified type introduces.

Fixing the type is not optional. OverDrive is utterly broken until they hire a typographer to pull their heads out of their asses. iBooks gets this so invisibly right. Surely this app can too.

I was looking in my backpack 🎒 for my books 📚 to read. Then I found out that they weren’t in my backpack. There were in school! (This happens a lot so I don’t why I was surprised) I was so frustrated and confused because I thought I put my books in my backpack. Clearly no. Crossing fingers 🤞🏻that it’s at school. Anyways, I quickly looked for a book app and I found this. I asked my mom if I canould get it and she said yes! 😁 I did all the process to actually get into it and when I finally did, I searched up the book I needed, “Nine, Ten”. It was there! And I didn’t even need to actually go to the library to get it (Like other apps. GR....)! I was/am so happy! I’m definitely going to use OverDrive whenever the same problem happens which is probably going to be in a week or two. I never know. Anyways t
his is the best app ever! Thanks for making OverDrive whoever made OverDrive . I hope this convinces you to get it whoever is reading this! Have an amazing day!

This is the only option I have for borrowing e-books/audio books from my library so it’s not one I chose personally. (have no idea if OverDrive is just for libraries or other resources) It’s ok to navigate but wish there were options such as being able to create a wish list for audio books and a wish list for print, or a way to separate them when viewing. Limitations on the number of books on hold is too low when you consider that there could be 30+ holds in front of you and that holds can be placed prior to a book being released. Again, this might be a function of my library, not sure. When searching for books it is difficult to exclude sub-genres such as vampires. Also have issues with transferring from “loan” to “file” - at times downloading locks up my iPhone or iPad and I have to close out OverDrive and try again. On numerous occasions I will be half or 3/4 of the way through an audio book and it will randomly delete ALL files. Not only do I have to download the entire audiobook again I have to figure out where I left off. Frustrating. IMO it could be much more user friendly.

I don’t usually write reviews for apps but felt compelled to write one for this cause it’s awesome. The interface is easy to use and never glitchy or buggy- you can listen to audiobooks while using other apps and pause it like any other audio file. OverDrive is an awesome way to read and listen to more books for free through your local public library. I’ve been making a conscious effort to read more and OverDrive makes it easy. When I’m running errands or doing chores I listen to an audiobook, and instead of wasting time on social media, I try to read an ebook on here instead. It has been so much better for my mental health and it feels like a better use of my time. They are downloaded onto your phone so you can consume them anytime anywhere. I’m seriously so grateful it exists and cannot recommend it enough to everyone. If you’re a fan of books OverDrive is for you! And if you’re someone who’s looking to improve your quality of life and get smarter this is for you too.