Black Library: The App

First off, the good. It is a perfectly serviceable reader. It also syncs your old purchases from the BL site. It’s also a perfectly fine storefront and audiobook player. No gripes there. Let me tell you what my gripes are, I have 3, each one knocks a star off of the rating. 1. The purchase sync does not go the other way. Things you buy on this app you cannot then access on the web-front. I get it on this gripe, I don’t expect this to change as GW said this was the direction they wanted to go. 2. The app is a brick if you don’t have network. I’m in the military, and I recently bought The End and the Death trilogy audiobook to listen to while on a trip, but we didn’t have network for much of it, and whenever we didn’t the app wouldn’t let me access my downloaded library. Which might have been fine if not for gripe 3. 3. The audio and ebooks “downloaded” weren’t actually. Well I mean they were but not as an ePub, pdf or an MP3, they are buried somewhere in the app’s api and you can’t extract them without a 3rd party tool which is definitely against the TOS. In short, without network I had no way to access my purchase. Currently, cannot recommend, buy the books, from a used book store or an FLGS.

You cannot change the font or text size on iPad, it pops up to try and closes immediately.

I have selected my language as English and set the sliders in the “show me products in these languages” sections to show me English and exclude French and German. Yet when I search for a book, the results I get are in French or German. The “report an issue with this app” and “report an issue with a product” buttons are non functional (nothing happens when clicked).

Things I wish this app had, and to be honest, it should have. * press the edge to turn page instead of swiping (makes one handed reading actually work) * the ability to choose a more neutral background color other than black or white (think paper colored) * after closing the app, it should pick up back where I was in a book. As of now it’s either at the beginning of the chapter, or the beginning of the book. Very frustrating. * a better sorting method to find books. I don’t want to have to dig through all of the Warhammer books to find ones about the faction I want to read about (to be fair though, this is a problem on the website and on Amazon as well)

This app almost never holds my page. It will typically skip back a few pages, maybe a whole chapter. Very buggy. When I tried logging the bug through the link in the app, it sent an email to Games workshop customer service who hopefully told me that this email was for their physical games and miniatures, not the app. Very curious. It would also be nice if it would arrange your books by order of last read, instead of making me dig down to the bottom of my collection to find the book I want to read.

App might’ve been passable 10-15 years ago. -Resumes book 5-15 pages behind where you left off -No option to scroll vs flip -No dark mode -Forces login too often (vs Books, which only requires authentication when you make a purchase.) 10ish years ago there was a Black Library app, and I sunk hundreds of dollars into it. I wish GW all the luck, but I’m leery of a repeat.

Read on my phone? Nah, I’ll buy from Amazon for now.

Purchased five books, all have been at 0% for over an hour. No obvious way to get them any other way, nor to move to eReader. Very very bad first impression. if we can only read in app, zero stars would be too much. Shameful.

Its a book/reader app. Nothing new there. However. 1.) I would like the option to scroll vertically while I read. Every other reading app has that feature. 2.) Bookmarking. Whenever I close the app, and come back later to read, it does not remember where I left off. I have to hunt for the page most times. 3.) More customization options. Screen tint. Font color. Little adjustments to make reading on a screen more comfortable. Every other reader has it. Why not this one?

Don’t support Games Workshop doing this. They need to bring back the old Black Library Website. You can’t even export the books to another E-Reader, the downloads take too long, and the app is badly designed. Utter idiocy.