Got an iPhone, iPod Touch or an iPad? You can now read PDF files on your device using the free iBooks app from Apple. There are quite a few PDF reading apps available in the iTunes store but managing PDFs using iBooks is more convenient and the bookshelf view offers a better reading experience.

Don’t however bid farewell to the very-awesome Good Reader app yet as iBooks can only handle PDFs and ePub files – you will still need that app for reading all the Office documents and saved web pages.

How to Manage PDFs with iBooks

You can drag multiple PDF files from your desktop and drop them to your iTunes application and they’ll get uploaded to your iDevice in one go. You can even choose to selectively sync PDF files between the computer and your iPhone /iPad without having to remove any of them from the iTunes library.

iBooks offers a special thumbnail view so you can quickly glance the contents of multiple one pages without any scrolling. There’s built-in search and you can even bookmark your favorite PDF pages for later reference.

Finally, a unique feature is that iBooks lets you categorize and rate PDFs inside iTunes just like your music collection – this option should come very handy if you have large collection of PDFs that you intend to read on your iPhone or iPad. Some screenshots:

A: Drag and drop PDFs in your iTunes library

B: Click the PDF’s button in iBooks to access your PDFs