How to Add PDFs to Apple Books — Convert to EPUB First

Apple Books supports PDFs, but they don't behave like books — they open as fixed-layout images, don't reflow to your font size, and don't support the reading features Apple Books is built for. Converting to EPUB first makes your PDFs read like native books.

Why Apple Books handles PDFs awkwardly

When you add a PDF to Apple Books, it's stored in the "PDFs" section, separate from your books. PDFs are rendered as fixed images — zoomed out to fit your screen. The font size slider, line spacing, background colour, and brightness controls that make Apple Books pleasant to read don't apply to PDFs.

An EPUB, by contrast, opens in the Books reader. Text reflows to your chosen font, size, and line spacing. You get chapter navigation, highlights, notes, and reading progress tracking — the full experience.

Step-by-step: convert PDF to EPUB for Apple Books

1. Go to toolkit.bot/pdf2epub in Safari or any browser — no account required
2. Upload your PDF (drag and drop or tap the file picker)
3. Wait ~30 seconds for the conversion
4. Download the .epub file, then open it in Apple Books using one of these methods:
   • iPhone/iPad: tap the downloaded .epub file in Files or Safari downloads → tap the share icon → "Open in Books"
   • Mac: double-click the .epub file — it opens in Apple Books automatically; or drag it into the Books window
   • iCloud sync: add to Books on any Apple device and it syncs across your library automatically

The EPUB appears in your Books library, not the PDFs section. Full reading controls apply immediately.

Does Apple Books support EPUB3?

Yes. Apple Books has supported EPUB3 since iOS 8 and macOS Yosemite (2014). The output from toolkit.bot is EPUB3 with WCAG 2.2 AA metadata — fully compatible with the latest Books app on iOS 17/18 and macOS Sonoma/Sequoia.

What about scanned PDFs?

Scanned PDFs contain images rather than real text — Apple Books can't reflow them or make the text selectable. toolkit.bot runs Tesseract OCR automatically on image-based PDFs. The EPUB output contains real, selectable, reflowable text. You can highlight and look up words in the Books dictionary.

What about academic papers with footnotes and figures?

toolkit.bot's layout analysis detects common PDF structures:

• Two-column layouts (arXiv, IEEE, ACM papers): extracts columns in reading order rather than scrambling left-to-right across both columns
• Tables: ruled-line tables are converted to HTML <table> elements — readable in Books
• Footnotes: detected and placed at end of section as endnotes

Free or paid?

5 conversions per month free, no account required. If you need more:

• $9/month — unlimited conversions
• $0.50/conversion — pay as you go, no monthly commitment