ReadAnywhere

Review by eFreeware

ReadAnywhere is a free Android app from McGraw-Hill Global Education, the publisher behind the McGraw Hill Connect platform and the McGraw Hill eBook. It exists for one audience: people who already have access to course materials through one of those services and want to reach them from a phone or tablet instead of staying tied to a computer.

That is the main reason to consider it. If your course reading and assignments live inside Connect or the McGraw Hill eBook, this app puts them in your pocket, so a study session can happen in a spare half hour rather than only at a desk. It is not a general-purpose reading app and it does not sell books; it is a doorway into material you have already been given access to.

The app has been available since June 2017 and was last updated in July 2026, with the recent changes listed simply as bug fixes and improvements. It has more than 500,000 installs and a 3.2 average from 7,176 ratings, a middling score that suggests the experience divides its users. It carries no ads and offers no in-app purchases.

Coursework that follows you off the network

The feature the developer leads with is offline work. ReadAnywhere lets you take notes, highlight passages and complete assignments without a connection, and everything you do is synced the next time you open the app while online. That is a meaningful design choice for anyone whose study time happens on a subway, on a flight, or anywhere the signal is unreliable.

The practical effect is that a commute or a wait between classes does not have to be dead time. You can read a chapter, mark the passages that matter and work through questions, then let the app catch up with the server later. The sync is the part that matters most: your work is held until the app can reach the network again, so the sequence is work first, sync after.

I would treat that sync step as a habit rather than an afterthought. Opening the app once you are back on Wi-Fi or mobile data is what moves your notes and answers where they need to go, and doing it before you close the app for the day keeps everything in one place.

Reading, notes and adaptive assignments in one place

Beyond offline access, the app gathers the McGraw Hill tools a student is likely to need. The eBook is there for reading, and Connect's adaptive assignments are available too, so the reading and the work that follows it sit in the same place rather than in separate apps or browser tabs.

Note-taking and highlighting are built into the reading experience, which is what turns a digital textbook into something you can study from rather than just scroll through. Marking up a chapter as you go is the kind of feature that pays off later, when you come back to revise and your own annotations are waiting for you.

The adaptive assignments are the part that connects reading to assessment. Because they are the same assignments used in Connect, what you complete in the app counts as part of your coursework rather than as a separate practice exercise. That continuity is what makes the app worth installing for an enrolled student rather than simply reading in a browser.

What you need before it does anything

ReadAnywhere is free to download and carries no ads and no in-app purchases, so there is no second decision to make about spending inside the app. The cost that matters is the one you have already taken on: access to McGraw Hill Connect or the McGraw Hill eBook.

You sign in with the username and password you already use for Connect or the eBook. There is no separate account to create and no way to use the app without one of those logins, which means the app is only useful to people whose courses or institutions have put them on McGraw Hill's platform.

That is the boundary of the app, and it is worth being clear about it before you install. ReadAnywhere is a companion to a service you subscribe to or are enrolled in through your course; it is not a store, a library or a standalone reader, and it does not provide books of its own.

Getting the most from a study session

The way the app is built suggests a rhythm: read and annotate when you have time, complete assignments while you are at it, and let the sync happen when you are next connected. Planning around that order avoids the awkward case where you finish work offline and forget to let the app send it on.

For a student juggling several courses, the app is most useful as the place where reading and assignments meet. Rather than carrying a laptop to every gap in the day, you can open a chapter, highlight what your instructor emphasized and answer the questions attached to it, all from a phone or tablet.

It also helps to think of the app as the mobile half of a larger workflow. Work you do here belongs to the same Connect account you use elsewhere, so the material you read on the move is the same material you will see when you sit down at a computer later.

The recent update was limited to bug fixes and improvements, which tells you the developer is still tending to the app rather than adding new capabilities. For a companion app tied to an existing platform, that kind of upkeep is what you would hope for.

A practical companion for enrolled McGraw Hill students

ReadAnywhere suits a specific reader: someone with an active McGraw Hill Connect or eBook login who wants to read, annotate and complete assignments without being chained to a desk. The offline support and the sync that follows it are the strongest arguments in its favor, and the absence of ads and purchases keeps the experience uncluttered.

The catch is the requirement itself. If your course materials do not come through McGraw Hill, the app has nothing to show you, and the 3.2 average from more than 7,000 ratings suggests that not every user finds the experience smooth. I would go in expecting a functional companion to your course platform rather than a polished standalone reading app.

For the student it is built for, though, the trade is straightforward: a free download that turns dead time into study time, provided you remember to let it sync. That is a reasonable bargain for anyone already working inside McGraw Hill's ecosystem.

What's new in version 4.7.2

Bug fixes and improvements