Complete Guide: Unlocking ACSM Files on Your Apple Device

How to Open ACSM File on Mac

Posted by Ada Wang on 5/13/2020 3:23:55 PM.

I just purchased a book from Google play books, but when I click “Download PDF” what I actually downloaded is a .acsm file. My computer is Mac. How to open .acsm file on Mac?

Nowadays, reading eBooks has become an important part for our daily life. If you are an avid eBook lover like me, you must have got a large number of eBooks in multiple formats such as Kindle kfx/mobi/azw3, pdf or epub files. But when we download or purchase eBooks online, we also usually get .acsm file, which is not the common eBook format like PDF or EPUB. For Mac users, how can we open ACSM file on Mac and read ACSM files on Mac? You may have tried to double-click it to open ACSM but failed. Don’t worry! Here I’m going to show you how to open and read ACSM file on Mac.

Which Software can Open ACSM file?

For downloaded ACSM file, we cannot directly open it via Kindle for Mac, Nook for Mac, Kobo desktop or iBooks reading app. In fact, it’s not an actual eBook file, but just a download link for us to get the complete EPUB or PDF file from Adobe Content Server.

The server is created by Adobe. It means that the ACSM file can only be opened via its own reading app–Adobe Digital Editions(ADE). Once you open them wilth ADE, the acsm file will be converted to EPUB or PDF files.

How to open ACSM File on Mac

We have learned that we can only open our downloaded ACSM file on Mac via ADE, so let’s learn the detailed steps. Now you may be thinking it’s easy– just install it and double click the URL Link.acsm to open. Yes, it’s right, but things are not much simple. In order to open ACSM file successfully, we have to first authorize ADE with our Adobe account which should be same as the email address that is used to download or purchase the ACSM file. Now just follow me to learn the details.

Step1. Download and install Adobe Digital Editions

Download Adobe Digital Editions: Download ADE according to your own operation system

Step2. Authorize ADE with Adobe ID

Usually if this is the first time we install and run ADE, it will ask us to authorize the computer with our Adobe ID. If not, please click Help–>Authorize Computer. Then a dialogue will pop up showing like the following picture. Simply enter your Adobe ID and password to authorize it.

Notes: If you don’t have an Adobe ID yet, you can tap “Create an Adobe ID” to get a new one. But please select the “Adobe ID” as the eBook Vendor please. DON’T set google vendor ID or others as the Adobe ID.

Reminder: Make sure the email address is the same as the one which is used to purchase the book. If you have already authorized ADE with another Adobe account, please click “Help–>Erase Authorization” to de-authorize it, and reauthorize ADE with the correct Adobe ID. Otherwise, you cannot open the ACSM at all.

Step3. Open ACSM File with Authorized ADE

After we have authorized ADE successfully, now we can simply double-click the downloaded ACSM file to open it. Usually it will be opened via ADE by default. If not, please right-click the file and select “Open with–>Adobe Digital Edition”. Or click “File–>Add to Library” in ADE to load the ACSM files. Then it will download the complete EPUB or PDF for us. After the download is finished, the book will be opened automatically.

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You can find the downloaded epub or pdf books here

For Mac: Users/Your computer name/Digital Editions …
For Win: …\My Documents (Documents)\My Digital Editions …

Or you just just right the book cover, then select “Show File in Finder”

Takeaway: How to Read ACSM with Any Reading App on Mac?

Now we can read ACSM file on Mac with ADE program easily. What if we don’t like this reading app? Can we read the downloaded EPUB or PDF file via iBooks app on Mac? The answer is Yes. But if you try to open them via iBooks, you will fail to open. Most of the EPUB or PDF files downloaded from ACSM are always protected by Adobe DRM so that we cannot directly open it via other app except ADE. What can we do to read them on other apps like iBooks? Things will be pretty easy if we can remove the DRM from those EPUB/PDF eBooks.

Here I strongly recommend you a powerful and easy-to-use eBook DRM Removal tool–Epubor Ultimate -- which can easily help us decrypt eBooks purchased from Kobo, Google, Nook or other public online eBook stores to read them more freely as we like.

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Complete Guide: Unlocking ACSM Files on Your Apple Device