This app is meant to replace the old one that everyone is used to using. The original release of this app was missing many features that made the old one 100x better to use instead. It felt more incomplete and unpolished even though it was meant to modernize the app. Initially, it lacked the ability to list your ebooks in series rather than listing individual volume or chapters. Yet despite it being finally added back in, its implementation was not user friendly. Now my biggest gripe that annoys me to no end is how illustrations are displayed in light novel ebooks. The previous app scaled the image up to fill the entire screen. This app doesn’t do that, nor is there any setting or option to do that. Manga appears to look fine but when it comes to illustrations, it just look small and shrunken down. I want to see every single detail the illustration has to offer so I can marvel at the artwork. I wish I could still use the old app and still access my ebooks. I knew the split and modernization of BookWalker as a whole was coming. But when it all finally went live, I felt like I regret having migrated everything to it. Everything about this app just screams poor implementation and rushed instead of polished and having feature parity. I truly love BookWalker as an ebook store for mangas and light novels. But ever since the split going live, it’s been depressing and disappointing.

I have spent countless hours reading hundreds of novels from Bookwalker. It’s nice to have the store and reader integrated into the same app, but that’s where the positives end. On the store side my wishlist list is replaced with a less transparent “favorite” list. No longer have an inbox to tell me about deals, upcoming releases/ preorders in series I enjoy, and the “purchase sequel” list is no where to be seen making it more difficult to continue longer stories. On the reader side the organization is completely gone. No “bookshelves” to customize and manage my books, just a long list with inadequate filters especially when missing “read, reading, and finished” filters. Not sure yet but the books don’t seem to be downloaded to the device and may need a connection to load as you read; not a major issue unless you pre download books when you know you’ll be without a stable connection.Releasing the new app in this condition is ridiculous. It “looks” nice and sleek, but lost all the actual functionality of the previous version. I plan to stay on the old reader for as long as I can. I hope they can fix this clearly unfinished app/site.

The new experience is just awful to use. I didn’t install the new app until I realized my pre purchase from awhile ago could not be loaded on the old app. Upon entering the new app, I was bombarded with ads from all the sales that I don’t care about while trying to log into my account. As I was typing, the banner appeared over my keyboard and then took me away from the login multiple times. It was infuriating. Then once I get into my account, I realize all the customization features are gone. Oh well. I install my new book, and now have to reformat everything to the way I like it. Then I realize that the pictures in light novels don’t actually center properly on the page depending on your settings, and default to the top of your device which is very annoying. I have lots of books from the store previously, but I don’t think I’ll buy anything from bookwalker again unless all this gets fixed, and by then I’ll already have found a better alternative.

New app is mostly better, but still has some growing pains to work through. You’ll probably encounter any issues I’ve seen yourself, so I won’t spend a lot of time on that. What I will say: new app is faster on both old and new devices, has better reading options, and I love the way you can quickly flip through a book if needed. I find it weird that the arrows at the bottom move between volumes, but for certain shorter books this makes a lot of sense. Maybe make it configurable? Having the store be better integrated into the app is nice. That said, I’ll probably try to mainly purchase books from the website, since in app is a little more confusing. Makes sense though, with the cut that Apple takes, they have to do more to profit off the app sales. I’d recommend buying from the website anyway just to support the platform better, rather than giving Apple more pocket change. Excited to see where this app goes!