MacOS – Synchronize iBooks across multiple Macs running Mavericks

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I'm wondering if it's possible to keep iBooks in Sync between various computers (running Mac OS X mavericks) under the same iCloud account. I set up my iBooks but synchronization only happens between a single Mac and devices running iOS 7. What's the point of using iBooks, if when I'm not in my laptop, I want to read the book on my iMac, but iBooks doesn't get synced across Macs…Did I miss anything?

Thanks for any hints, answers, such as using File sharing with Dropbox, Team Drive, etc. to try to synchronize the iBooks database and Data Contents. I only tried the Books folder from ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data but it didn't work.

Best Answer

You might have the wrong idea (in Apple's eyes) about syncing through iBooks. You will not be able to have content magically appear on your second Mac, if the book is not purchased through the iBooks Store. Syncing does not work iTunes Match-like.

For non-iBookstore files, like MobileRead epubs, you will need to transfer the same epubs you imported onto iBooks on machine 1 to machine 2 and import them again. I hope you still have copies of these files -- because as far as I can tell, iBooks splits up epubs you import into it, and you cannot get them back out as an epub again. (I would love to be wrong about this.)

The good news is: Once you have imported these files, syncing between Macs works for notes, reading positions and highlights, as long as you have enabled "Sync bookmarks, highlights and notes across devices" in iBooks preferences. Again: iBooks will only sync said bookmarks, highlights and notes, NOT the books themselves. You will also need to have logged in with the same Apple ID on both devices.

Needless to say, you should also make sure to run the latest version of iBooks (currently 1.0.1).

This might be the only advantage of (and reason for) not being able to change metadata in iBooks -- at least the software knows which files are identical...