Anyone knows how storage works for Books?

Anyone knows how storage works for Books?

Is there a library like in Photos ??

I would like to position the storage for my Books on the external hard drive connected to my mini Mac.

Couldn't find any knowledge in Help for Books och in Apple support.

Posted on Nov 27, 2025 8:28 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 27, 2025 9:19 AM

Books does not use a single library file like Photos or Music, it stores your downloaded books individually in a folder deep in your user profile.

/Users/[username]/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books


You can move the files out of there, but then Books will be unable to find them, and likely just download them again.


You could copy the entire "Books" folder out of there onto your external drive, and use a symbolic link to redirect the folder location to your external drive so Books saves future downloads on your external drive.

This requires a terminal command though.


ln -s [target_file_or_folder_in_external_drive] Books

something like:
ln -s /Volumes/nameofexternaldrive/nameoffolder Books
1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 27, 2025 9:19 AM in response to viv

Books does not use a single library file like Photos or Music, it stores your downloaded books individually in a folder deep in your user profile.

/Users/[username]/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books


You can move the files out of there, but then Books will be unable to find them, and likely just download them again.


You could copy the entire "Books" folder out of there onto your external drive, and use a symbolic link to redirect the folder location to your external drive so Books saves future downloads on your external drive.

This requires a terminal command though.


ln -s [target_file_or_folder_in_external_drive] Books

something like:
ln -s /Volumes/nameofexternaldrive/nameoffolder Books

Anyone knows how storage works for Books?

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