How to Transfer Your Downloads: Syncing Ebooks to an iPad via MacOS X Mavericks

Sync Downloaded Books to iPad in Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks

Posted by Jonny Greenwood on 11/28/2018 4:21:19 PM.

Apple surprisingly makes the Mac OS X Mavericks upgrade free to all the Mac users, which makes Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks the most “popular” version ever, for the activation speed is faster than any previous version.

The new Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks brings many exciting new features, of which the most attractive one to me is the independent iBooks application. With it we can finally read iBooks on Mac computers. But it is the iBooks application that makes many people want to downgrade to Mac OS X 10.8.5, saying the iBooks application is totally a mess.

iTunes can’t sync/transfer local downloaded EPUB books to iPad under Mavericks

In the past we need to use iTunes to sync any kind of contents or apps to our iPad, iPhone or iPod. With Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks making iBooks an independent application, the “Books” is gone from iTunes library. When you open iTunes under the Mac 10.9 Mavericks and go to “Books”, a notification tells you the “Books” have moved away.

And when you want to drag a downloaded local EPUB or PDF books into iTunes, it just bounces back and nothing changes. What’s worse, you cannot find a sync button on the new iBooks for Mac application, either. In another word, we are unable to sync downloaded local EPUB and PDF books to our iPad, or other iOS devices.

iTunes says no, we make it yes

I am not saying cracking iTunes or iBooks for Mac. To transfer or sync downloaded local EPUB and PDF eBooks to iPad, we have many other choices, and here I will introduce the most capable and simplest way - Calibre Content Server.

To use this method for syncing local eBooks to iPad, we need to meet these requirements:

1. Calibre for Mac is installed;

2. iPad and Mac computer connected to the same local are network.

That’s all. And below is the step-by-step guide.

1Install Calibre on your Mac

Calibre is totally free to download and use. Click the buttons below you can download the Mac version directly.

NeoDownloader - Fast and fully automatic image/video/music downloader.

2Load the books you want to sync into Calibre

By directly dragging eBook files into Calibre you can load them in.

3Enable Calibre Content Server feature

Look at the menu bar at the top, click “Connect/share –> Start Content Server”. Then the three blue ball will turn to green, and there will display your IP address and port information, which will be necessary in the following steps.

4Visit Calibre Content Server on your iPad

Now take your iPad and open the web browser, input [your IP address:port] in the url address bar and visit it. For example, my IP address is 192.168.1.16 and my port is 8080, then I should visit 192.168.1.16:8080.

5Sync/Transfer books to iPad under Mavericks

Click the “Get” button under book cover, then we will be navigated to a page which asks you how to open this file. “Open in ‘iBooks’” is what we choose.