Google Play Books

Updates to Play Books are on the rare side these days, though it got a Material You redesign in March, but Google today is highlighting four new features, including a YouTube integration.

Google is finally rolling out a straightforward Material You redesign of Play Books for Android. It follows the new icon introduced last year, with the app rarely seeing updates.

As we spotted a month ago, Google is rolling out the new Play Books app icon on Android along with a navigation rail on tablets.

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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