Google Play Books

Following new icons for the Play Store and Play Games, it’s now time for Google Play Books to get a new logo, while a tablet redesign is also in development.

Back in December, Google announced new widgets for Photos and YouTube Music. An updated widget featuring Material You for Play Books was also previewed and is now widely rolled out.

Following Gmail last week, Play Books, Google Photos, and YouTube Music are set to get new widgets on Android.

Google’s “Play” family of apps is now down to the Store, Games, and Books after the Google TV and YouTube Music revamps. An update to Google Play Books today adds the ability to create custom shelves for better content organization.

To mark National Read Across America Day, Google Play Books is getting a pair of tools to make the Android and iOS apps more friendly for kids and young readers. 

Today, only the top books get audio versions narrated by professionals given that recording is a time-consuming process that doesn’t necessarily scale to every published work. Google is now working on auto-generated narrators that can turn more books into audiobooks. 

Many Google apps in recent months have been updated with the company’s Material Theme. The latest is Play Books, with that revamp now beginning to more widely roll out on Android.

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In January, Google added audiobook support to Play Books, while the Play Store gained a new section for the long-form audio format. After integrating with Assistant Routines earlier this month, Google is updating Play Books with “Smart Resume,” Bookmarks, and greater speed controls, as well as expanding Family Library to more countries.

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Over the weekend, Google Play inadvertently teased the launch of an audiobook store and listening feature. Today, that functionality is officially launching as part of Play Books and includes integration with Google Assistant.

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Google “temporarily” stopped allowing new publishers to sign up for its Google Play Books Partner Center more than a year ago, largely due to rampant piracy on the service. Now, a year and a half later (it was originally shuttered in May of 2015), the Partner Center still hasn’t opened back up…

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Google has today launched a nifty new feature in Google Play Books called Discover. As you might expect, it helps you discover new books that you might want to read…

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The Play Books app has a special affinity for comic books with a number of features meant to improve the reading experience on mobile devices. Announced as part of Comic-Con, Bubble Zoom uses machine learning to magnify text bubbles in digital comics. Users can test this out now on select Marvel and DC volumes.

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Google today has announced an update to its Google Play Books app on Android and iOS that brings with it a new feature called “Night Light.” The update is available now and bumps the app to version 3.7.45 on Android.

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Google is updating Play Books to provide a better experience for reading comic books. Citing how the smaller screen of a phone makes it harder to follow along in detail heavy pages, there’s a new landscape mode to vertically swipe through panes. Just turn your phone sideways to access the new view.

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