Libby, by OverDrive 4+

As an avid reader I have found this App to be a godsend. I read quickly and easily finish an average book in a day. When travelling I would commonly pack a half dozen books which always caused issues with baggage weight. Now I can have books downloaded ready from the library and no problems with being over weight limits. I love how you can place books on 'hold' and you are notified they are available to download immediately - no traipsing off to a physical library to collect - of course, Murphy’s law dictates that when you have several on hold they will arrive all together but with the new feature of being able to put your hold back and stay top of the list this is no longer a problem. A great and convenient app.

While I appreciate the access to great books, the application itself is poorly designed and unstable. Issues primarily occur when trying to fast forward / rewind or when the application tries to determine your reading location in audiobooks. Shutting the app down doesn’t fix the never ending spinning wheel nor does force restarting my phone. This has been ongoing across multiple devices ever since I started using Libby four years ago. Other issues include books (that you may have had waiting on hold for months) disappearing from your library and not showing up in history. Great service, terrible app.

Update: I had a book on hold for three years (yes 3 years!!!) and was in the short list (maybe a month or two away) before it disappeared from the library. TBO at this point I don’t really even use this app anymore. Even with the updates, it’s finicky and the offerings are severely limited. Any decent recent releases or older top sellers are either non existent (most common) or have so few copies you need to plan months or years in advanced. At first I thought that libraries were keeping up with modern tech but over the past 4-5 years I’ve become more and more disappointed.