While you can stick with the default appearance, you also have the option to change the appearance of your books in Apple Books (previously known as iBooks). But despite its possibilities, not many people know yet how to do it.
In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about how to change the appearance of your books in Apple Books. Let’s get started.
When customizing the Books app, you can change the font and also pick whether you want normal or bold text. Below are the fonts you can choose from:
Athelas
Original
Avenir Next
Charter
Georgia
Iowan
Palatino
San Francisco
New York
Seravek
Times New Roman
In addition to the above, you can also adjust the background and whether you want to use Light or Dark Mode. Moreover, you have the option to choose whether you want the text to be bigger or smaller.
Other options for customizing your appearance in Apple Books include:
Line Spacing
Character Spacing
Word Spacing
Text Justification
How to Change the Appearance of Your Books in Apple Books
The process to change the appearance of your books in Apple Books is quite similar, regardless of whether you use an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Here’s how to adjust the most important areas.
Changing the Font
Changing the font in your book is very easy. Follow the steps below to achieve your desired result.
Hover close to the top of your screen (Mac). If you’re on an iPad, tap on your screen and select the small icon in the bottom right-hand corner and select Themes & Settings.
Tap Customize.
Select Font.
Choose your preferred font from the list of options available when they appear.
Line, Character, and Word Spacing
To adjust spacing in your images, you’ll need to follow these instructions instead.
Navigate to Themes & Settings before selecting Customize.
If you haven’t already, make sure that you’ve toggled Customize on under Accessibility & Layout Options.
Change your line, character, and word spacing however you feel is necessary.
Select Done when you’re finished. Your changes will then come into effect.
Text Justification
Text Justification will slightly tweak the spacing in your paragraphs, and turning on the feature is very straightforward. In Themes & Layouts > Customize, scroll down to Justify Text (it’s beneath Accessibility & Layout Options). Here, you can toggle the feature on.
Enabling Light or Dark Mode
In addition to Light and Dark Mode, Apple Books lets you switch automatically between the two if you’d like to have a mixture. Follow these steps to enable your preferred option.
Navigate to Themes & Settings.
Select the circular icon.
Choose Light, Dark, or Automatic, depending on your preferences.
Changing the Text Size
To change the text size, all you have to do is tap the larger A icon to increase it. If you want to lower your text size, select the smaller A icon instead. Change the size until you’re happy with what you see. Both options are in Themes & Settings.
Adjusting Theme Settings
On the main Themes & Layouts page, you also have the choice to choose from Quiet, Calm, Focus, and several other options. Pick whichever one you feel is best for you. If you want to change it later, you can always revert to Original or pick something else.
Why Can’t I See Options to Change the Color or Font of My Books?
In some cases, you might not see the option to change the color of your fonts or make further adjustments. You can start by closing and reopening the Books app, or by restarting your device. But if neither of those work, it’s possible that the book you’ve chosen doesn’t support such adjustments. In these instances, there’s unfortunately not a huge amount that you can do.
Change the Appearance of Your Books in the Apple Books App With These Tips
As you can see, you have plenty of options to change the appearance of your books within the Apple Books app. You can alter the text, change the font, and even adjust your line and character spacing. Each of these is fully customizable, though you should also note that you can’t adjust your settings in every single book.
Give these tips a try and see which settings work best for you. Feel free to let us know what your favorite settings are in the comments section, too.
Danny has been a professional writer since graduating from university in 2016, but he’s been writing online for over a decade. He has been intrigued by Apple products ever since getting an iPod Shuffle in 2008 and particularly enjoys writing about iPhones and iPads. Danny prides himself on making complex topics easy to understand. In his spare time, he’s a keen photographer.
We’re still looking into this particular issue with iOS 10.2.1. In the meantime, see if any of the tips mentioned in our article on iBooks problems, just published today help out.
My mother’s iBooks keeps making parts of her page disappear. Sometimes if she goes out and goes back in it rights itself, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes turning the iPad off and back on again works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Is there a fix? It’s driving her nuts.
I haven’t seen anything about this glitch elsewhere, and fiddling with fonts and size hasn’t created a long term solution.
We haven’t heard of this particular issue before. We’ll look into it and see if there’s something we can offer for assistance. I’m sorry your mother is having to deal with this issue. That certainly makes reading tough!
I’m not happy with the new format in iBooks. I’d like to have the double page format in landscape back! I’ve been reading books in Ibooks for over 5 years and I read a lot! It should look like a book when you read not a word document. Please change it back!
I am trying to get my ibook to let me use different fonts and colors but it wont give me the option. I open the Aa thing but it only gives me the brightness lever and the size of text options. why wont the other features appear?
I have verre bad eyes and thats wy i read with iBooks, big text, but i can’t change collor i online have wite On black, black On wite of sepia but in THE evening is iT to strong. IT would-be nicer of i also van change THE collor for example Orange On black or black On Orange.
Has something been changed in IBooks? Am finding it almost impossible to read books because they only offer scrolling of a two column page. As I am partially sighted I need to increase the size of the font but because I am also a very fast reader using ‘scatter vision’ I.e. Taking in the whole page at once, not reading word by word or line by line neither the two column set up or the scrolling version works for me. Why on earth can’t you just have a single column page? This is really annoying and means I won’t be using iBooks for my online reading experience.
why is it that i don’t see any color or font changing in my ibooks
Same here . Trying to change font. Shows what it will be but doesnt apply when closed.
I too prefer a double column format like on my kindle app. Please fix this quirk in iBooks.
Thanks Liz. No wonder I was having no luck finding similar complaints online.
Yvette
Hi Yvette,
We’re still looking into this particular issue with iOS 10.2.1. In the meantime, see if any of the tips mentioned in our article on iBooks problems, just published today help out.
The hunt for an answer to this issue is on-going!
Cheers,
Liz
My mother’s iBooks keeps making parts of her page disappear. Sometimes if she goes out and goes back in it rights itself, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes turning the iPad off and back on again works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Is there a fix? It’s driving her nuts.
I haven’t seen anything about this glitch elsewhere, and fiddling with fonts and size hasn’t created a long term solution.
Yvette,
We haven’t heard of this particular issue before. We’ll look into it and see if there’s something we can offer for assistance. I’m sorry your mother is having to deal with this issue. That certainly makes reading tough!
Cheers,
Liz
I’m not happy with the new format in iBooks. I’d like to have the double page format in landscape back! I’ve been reading books in Ibooks for over 5 years and I read a lot! It should look like a book when you read not a word document. Please change it back!
i have ibooks 4.9.1 on my ipad 4. i would like to have the double column format back. please.
I am trying to get my ibook to let me use different fonts and colors but it wont give me the option. I open the Aa thing but it only gives me the brightness lever and the size of text options. why wont the other features appear?
I have verre bad eyes and thats wy i read with iBooks, big text, but i can’t change collor i online have wite On black, black On wite of sepia but in THE evening is iT to strong. IT would-be nicer of i also van change THE collor for example Orange On black or black On Orange.
Has something been changed in IBooks? Am finding it almost impossible to read books because they only offer scrolling of a two column page. As I am partially sighted I need to increase the size of the font but because I am also a very fast reader using ‘scatter vision’ I.e. Taking in the whole page at once, not reading word by word or line by line neither the two column set up or the scrolling version works for me. Why on earth can’t you just have a single column page? This is really annoying and means I won’t be using iBooks for my online reading experience.
On my iBook app it all of a sudden won’t do search, top charts. How do I get these back?
When I put iBook on the lowest dim to read at night there is a line 2/3 across the books with 1/3 being brighter. Can this be fixed please.
I have already been to the Apple Store 3 months ago regarding this