Cengage Read

• Free

Last verified 31 Jul 2026

4.2 3913 ratings · App Store

1. 3/5App complications and solutions

   Hello I use this app a lot and stopped using it but recently started again since I have a 3 year subscription. Anyway I think the information and book selection is good so far but could be improved and also could be added too . More is better. Anyway my biggest issue with this app was that it would stop reading the text after every page how ever that has changed and is now automatically played endlessly this is great how ever the issue is that it sometimes reads copy rights and extra stuff that is not important. But the biggest issue to me is the voice is not fun to listen to it’s very monotone and robotic and can be frustrating to listen to after a few hours. There are a lot of options but they are still all very terrible to listen to and to robotic and sometimes it pronounces words incorrect. But the thing that I’d appreciate the most would be to add a voice that sounds more human like and not irritating thanks I appreciate this app a lot and only want to it to be improved on

   megativecoefficents · 31 Jul 2026

2. 1/5Disappointed Instructor…

   Given the push to a subscription textbook service where electronic access is the only way in which to access a book, I find it completely befuddling that the application for reading such electronic textbooks on both an iPad and iPhone is so deeply flawed on such a basic level. The short story here is that the application cuts off the text at the “bottom” of the page. Need to use a larger font size? More text is cut off. This application has made the text virtually unreadable, in my opinion. I have no idea what other features are available in the application because I never even made it far enough past the first page before giving up entirely because the content was cut off. To go a step further, I am an instructor who has used other textbook applications and never experienced such a fundamental issue before. Simply stated, I will not use Cengage products in my courses until this application error is corrected. If I could give zero stars, I would. This application is completely unsuited for its purpose.

   FFWest326 · 31 Jul 2026

3. 1/5Frozen and no developer response

   When you’re busy studying and doing your assigned readings, the last thing you want to worry about is an e-textbook app glitching. The footnotes are frozen, there is no way to export notes, or combine highlighted texts or anything like that. When companies take over textbooks and then make them hundreds of dollars in an effort to encourage people to use their app or their e-readers, one hopes that the alternative functions well. It does what it needs to do, which is allow users to read their textbooks, that the users can do what they need to do, which is complete assignments, look up texts, references material. But this app and Cengage can’t seem to meet that standard to just work. It just doesn’t work often enough to make this a good option. Cengage charges how much for textbooks? Yet, can’t create an app that works most of the time. EDIT: I just went down and read the reviews, and there are barely any developer responses to glitches, bugs, user experiences problems and app issues. Way to be on it Cengage.

   CLight2 · 31 Jul 2026

4. 3/5Needs improvement

   The app will close out during use and then you’ll have to reopen it. It’ll do this 3 times in succession randomly while reading or trying to highlight/put notes. I could deal with that but my biggest gripe is that what you do on the app does carry over to the website version. So if you read and highlight a book on the app then save to synchronize everything and open up the Cengage website the book will pick up where you left off for the last page you were on in the app BUT none of the pages you read and highlighted in the app will show as been having highlighted on the website. It’s very inconvenient because sometimes I carry my iPad with me to read my textbooks and then when I am home I use my computer to complete assignments but I can’t do that when none of the stuff appears on the website as having been read and marked up.

   farkle sparks · 31 Jul 2026

5. 2/5Forced Necessity

   I can see why the reviews on this app is so low. I had to have a 7th edition book for my class and the cheapest rental I could find was on YOUR website. Good. Awesome. Let me just get it on my computer. Maybe I can pull up the cengage website on my phone so I could study while I go about my business. Oh wait, I CAN’T! Because apparently I have to get the APP because I can’t access the book that I PAID FOR on a web browser! Okay, fine, let me just download the app. Lo and behold, I can’t even SEE THE ENTIRE PAGE because I have no idea how to clear out the bottom “go to this page” tab. I don’t even know if it’s capable of doing that. I have to pinch the screen to read the rest of the page. If you have a solution for me to see the full page I’m reading, maybe even find a way to format scrolling instead of the clunky swipe-to-next-section-of-the-page, that would be JUST SWELL. Thanks.

   NightOwlette · 31 Jul 2026

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