BookFusion iOS app: A better way to read and manage your ebooks

This post about ebook reader and management apps is presented by BookFusion.

If you love reading, BookFusion may be the ideal app for you. It allows you to have your entire ebook collection at your fingertips on any device you own. You can easily upload, organize, sync, read and share ebooks across all your devices.

All that, and the reading experience is pretty great, too. In fact, you can replace apps like Marvin 3, Kybooks and Calibre Companion with just one iOS app — BookFusion.

BookFusion: A better alternative to Marvin 3, Calibre Companion and Kybooks

Ebook readers like Marvin 3 and KyBook aren’t bad, but they haven’t been updated lately (three years for Marvin 3 and five years for KyBook). BookFusion, however, is continuously updated based on user feedback.

BookFusion is great for organizing and reading all your ebooks. The iOS app supports EPUB, MOBI and PDF formats natively. Other formats like DOC, HTML, AZW, AZW3, CBR and CBZ are supported if uploaded using the web app. BookFusion automatically converts ebooks to the popular and widely used EPUB format.

Comic book formats CBZ and CBR will soon be supported natively, meaning BookFusion will let read your ebooks and comics in one app, on all your devices.

Read and sync ebooks on all your devices

If you use several devices, you can read on any of them using BookFusion from where you last left off. The app syncs your reading position among your devices, even when you’ve downloaded your books to each of them.

That means you never lose track of your reading progress. Just open the BookFusion app, and you’re on the right page.

Powerful highlighting and annotation functionality

Using BookFusion, you have powerful highlighting and annotation features to allow you to get the most value from what you read. You can highlight with custom colors (other apps usually limit you to between three and five preselected colors), add tags and notes to your highlights, and much more.

Your highlights, notes and comments will be synced across your devices. To top it off, BookFusion also allows you to export your highlights in CSV, Markdown, HTML and PDF formats.

Keep all your highlights, bookmarks and quotes in one place for easy access at any time.

Offline reading

If you will be reading somewhere that doesn’t have a reliable internet connection, or there’s no internet connection at all, don’t worry. You can still read your books by downloading them to your devices for offline reading.

After you’ve downloaded a book, no internet connection is required to read it.

Filter searches, group and sort ebooks, and create custom bookshelves

BookFusion also makes it easy to find any book using search filters with author, genre and custom tags.

You can group books on your main bookshelf by Favorites, Plan to Read or Completed. Plus, you can sort ebooks by date, last read, author, title or progress.

You can even create custom bookshelves to group your ebooks any way you want.

Manage your library with Calibre and upload ebooks directly to BookFusion

Some folks may prefer to use Calibre to manage their big ebook collections. The popular software lets them add descriptions to books and set up metadata for book series.

If that’s you, don’t worry. BookFusion can upload all that metadata for all of your Calibre books. You also can directly edit metadata like book cover, title, description, author, series and number in BookFusion.

The app also provides a handy and well-designed add-in for Calibre that allows you to upload ebooks from the Calibre desktop app and have your entire Calibe ebook collection available at your fingertips on all your devices via your BookFusion account.

If you update the metadata for a book in Calibre that you already uploaded, you can update the book in your BookFusion account using the add-in, even if you’re currently reading the book.

And BookFusion preserves your reading progress. Two-way sync is planned for the add-in so you can update books in Calibre with metadata you revised in your BookFusion account.

You also can re-upload the ebook file, which proves helpful if you read fan fiction, where authors frequently add new chapters.

View a list of ebook series and title orders

Regarding series of ebooks, suppose you’ve applied series metadata, either in Calibre or directly in BookFusion. Then you can easily list all your series and view the books in each series in numerical order, making it quick and easy to find the next ebook to read.

You can add books to the series, edit the name of the series, or delete the series directly in the BookFusion app.

BookFusion also shows the series information on books on your main bookshelf.

Open your ebooks from BookFusion in other apps

BookFusion is well-designed and a pleasure to use. But if you have another reader app you prefer, you can use BookFusion to organize your ebooks and then read them in your preferred app.

This feature allows you to switch to BookFusion from an app like Calibre Companion to organize your books but still use the reader app you like.

Note that Calibre Companion hasn’t been updated in a year, and it requires an internet connection to view your Calibre Library.

Once you upload your books into your BookFusion account, you can view, filter, sort and group your books in the BookFusion app even without an internet connection.

Send ebooks from BookFusion to Kindle

You can still use BookFusion to manage your ebook library if you have a Kindle device.

The Send to Kindle option allows you to send an ebook in any format quickly and easily to your Kindle. BookFusion automatically converts the ebook to Kindle-supported formats.

The ebook also will become available on your phone or tablet in the Kindle app.

Frequently updated and steadily maintained

As mentioned, BookFusion remains in active development. The folks who run it listen to feedback and tend to deliver an ebook experience beyond what you see in other apps and services.

The addition of dark mode (pictured below) is a good example. It can make reading easier on the eyes, especially in a dark environment, and you can easily switch between light and dark mode in BookFusion.

The BookFusion team consistently adds new features and improvements. The most recent updates included:

• Adding series info to books in the list view.
• Increasing the size of the tap areas for turning pages, changing text alignment and displaying the number of pages remaining in the current chapter.
• Changing text alignment and displaying the number of pages remaining in the current chapter.
• Returning to the previous position in your book after jumping to a footnote or browsing elsewhere in the book.

Unlike some other apps, BookFusion has a dedicated support team to resolve issues and collect feedback. You can provide feedback in the iOS app, interact with the BookFusion team on Reddit or join Discord to chat.

And rest assured, BookFusion already supports iOS 16, which Apple released on September 12.

More features are planned

BookFusion’s current features make reading more enjoyable, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. More features are planned.

For example, BookFusion takes a fresh approach to social reading. This feature is in beta testing with select readers. They can share highlights and comments with others, and gain insights and perspectives from friends, family and colleagues while reading.

Based on previews, BookFusion will soon offer detailed reading stats available that include reading time, number of words read, number of highlights, the average number of minutes per reading session, number of books completed and a total rating.

Price: Free account (upload up to 10 books), or get 20% off on the first year or first month of the Casual, Advanced or Power plans with the coupon code CULTOFMAC20. You can redeem the coupon code after trying the app at the BookFusion website.