How to delete Apple Books you no longer want

Apple Books is a great app that enables you to buy ebooks in the Apple store and read them on your iPhone, iPad or Mac. But how do you delete apps? You can't but they can be hidden.

The best thing about the Books app is that you can carry a whole library of books in your pocket, read them on the bus, train or plane, take them on holiday and so on. The only irritation is that your library grows over time and the list of books becomes so long it can be difficult to find the one you want.

There are free books in the store and free samples of books can be downloaded before you purchase them. It is so easy to download books and samples that you can end up with a lot on your iPhone or iPad. The collection of books can become a bit of a mess.

This is because not all the books you download will actually be interesting. Some free books might not be much fun, and you could try a free sample, but then decide not to buy the full book because it isn’t what you thought it would be. Let's see how to tidy up your Books library.

Remove downloaded books

Open the Books app on your iPhone and select the Library tab at the bottom. Take a look at all the items. Do you really need them all?

A book is not actually on the iPhone or iPad if there is a cloud icon next to it. It is in your iCloud account and if you want to read it, tapping it downloads it.

If there is no cloud icon and either a NEW or a percentage read indicator, it means the book is stored on the device. Press the three dots on the right to display a menu and tap Remove.

You might expect this would remove the book from the library, bu the Remove function simply removes the download, which free's up storage space, but does not actually remove the book from your library.

Hide a book in Apple Books

Press the three dots again next to the book, which now has a cloud icon because it is in iCloud and not on the iPhone. Press the three dots next to the book again and this time there is an option to hide the book. Press it.

When you return to the Library view, the book is gone. This is not an ideal result because the book is not really deleted and is merely hidden, but it is the best that can be done. If you buy a book or even just download it for free, it is recorded as a purchase. All purchases are recorded in your account and you cannot ‘un-purchase’ something. This is why it cannot really be deleted and hiding is a fudge.

Unhide hidden books in Apple Books

Suppose you hide a book and want to unhide it so that it can be downloaded and read again. How do you do that?

There is no way to unhide a hidden book in the Apple Books app using an iPhone or iPad. However, it can be done on the computer by going into your iTunes Store account. This can be done in the Apple Books app on the Apple Mac or in iTunes on a Windows PC. It cannot be done in iTunes on a Mac.

In Apple Books on the Mac, go to the Store menu and select View My Apple ID. In the iTunes in the Cloud section, click Manage.

Hidden purchases and hidden free items are listed and there is an Unhide button under each item. Click it to unhide the book. It will then appear in the Books app on the iPhone and iPad.

If you have a Windows PC, open iTunes and click Account > View My Account. Click Manage in the iTunes in the Cloud section and the hidden books are listed with Unhide buttons below them.