When it comes to keeping a collection of e-books neatly organized, there are many options out there. But if you’re fully invested into the Google ecosystem, you’ve probably looked at the Google Play Books app at least once. It lets you buy and read all kinds of e-books, comics, and even audiobooks, though when your library gets bigger, it gets significantly harder to organize. After blessing the service with a new icon, Google is now adding some direly needed library management improvements.
As announced by the company, the Google Play Books app is improving the way you manage your library, especially if your book collection is rather extensive. One important addition is that you now have the ability to manage multiple books simultaneously. You can now select as many as you need and manipulate them in bulk, with actions like adding them to shelves, marking them as finished, or removing downloaded copies from your device.
Google has also implemented various filtering options to find exactly the reading material you’re looking for. You can now filter books by genre, author, reading age (for kids’ books), and family library status. These filters help you quickly find specific books based on your preferences.
A new section consisting of “unshelved” books that don’t belong to any shelf lets you quickly organize your reading materials in a breeze. There is also a new alphabetical index on the right side of shelves, letting you quickly jump to specific titles or authors. It is only available if the library you’re looking at contains more than 25 books, is sorted by title or author, and is in list view.
These changes are available as of version 2023.04.17.00, so if you want to check out these changes, make sure to download that specific update. As always, it might take a few days for it to reach your device via the Play Store.