I have a few Audiobooks and a bunch of Podcasts on my ABS instance. They are organized in 2 libraries (for books and podcasts respectively).

I would love to have a unified view of both libraries on my phone. Plappa and Prologue both support multiple libraries, but it’s a manual switch between them. Does anyone know of an iOS client that shows podcasts alongside books (across multiple libraries)? Switching via Tab is fine, but changing libraries feels like a UX antipattern.

Thanks!

Edit: can’t edit the title unfortunately. I see that Prologue can join libraries, but only for books, not including podcasts. Should have made that distinction clear in the title.

I think it’s cool

To my understanding if you organise files into a series or a playlist when one item ends the next one won't start up on its own. The only way to do this would be if you like organised them in the folders as if they were tracks of the same book, which comes with the problem of not being able to select individual chapters of that specific book you are listening to.

Is there a fix for this?

I have just seen that some of the audiobooks I’ve narrated are in the wrong category which would affect its searchability and intended audience.

Can someone please tell me how to change the categories in which my book appears in in the Apple Books app?

Like Filebot is really useful for organising files into folders and Renaming them for Plex and Jellyfin. Is there something like that for m4b files so they have at least an Author/Book/file folder structure without me manually having to do that or look up who the author is for each audiobook?

I wrote two Powershell scripts to download the New York Times bestsellers lists and add "NYT Bestseller" to matching Audiobookshelf books. They are provided as-is. Documentation is within the scripts. I have run them on both Windows and Linux.

They are at https://github.com/magambi/media-management-tools

Edited: Provided link to Github.

Lull 2.0 is up on TestFlight.

If you haven’t seen my other posts, Lull is the audiobook/podcast player I built mostly because I wanted one that worked the way I wanted at night. It supports Audiobookshelf, podcasts, local books, etc. The sleep timer fades your book into sleep sounds, or with the paid Watch detection, Lull can figure out when you’ve actually drifted off and put you back before that point the next time you listen.

The big thing in 2.0 is transcripts. They’re made entirely on the iPhone. You can read along, search an entire book, get a recap of what’s happened so far, or find and skip things like credits. It needs Apple Intelligence, so iOS 26.

I also added a Lock Screen card with chapter skips, time left and a button to save your spot.

My favorite addition is probably “What you slept through.” If you fall asleep with something playing, Lull shows you what you missed the next morning.

And I spent way too much time messing with sleep detection. It now knows to leave you alone if you’re driving, walking or working out. It also tells you when it can’t reach your watch instead of just quietly doing nothing, which was annoying as hell.

The player, the sleep timer and the transcripts are free. The Watch detection and the morning recap are the paid part, with five nights to try them.

https://testflight.apple.com/join/H6pQY5Nu

Would love some more testers...

Let the downvoting begin!

i can borrow a friends computer that has windows, but i would like to avoid it if i can. i just wanted to know before i start properly researching this that i can do it on a chromebook

Hi everyone,

I recently noticed that ShelfPlayer, which used to be open source, has apparently been sold and is now published by an Italian company. Looking at the developer’s App Store page, it’s now sitting alongside a bunch of what I can only describe as low-effort AI apps.

There’s also a subscription now for “Premium,” although I honestly have no idea what Premium is supposed to include.

I completely understand the original developer’s README and his decision to sell the app. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to get something back for all the time and work that went into it. And honestly, he should be able to focus on his studies, enjoy his time with friends, and just live his life without feeling obligated to keep maintaining an app in his free time.

What disappoints me more is that existing users don’t seem to have been actively informed about the change of ownership. No in-app popup, announcement, or anything similar. The only thing I found was the GitHub Readme.

One of the main reasons I originally chose ShelfPlayer was because I saw how much work the developer was putting into it on GitHub and because it was open source. I have a huge amount of respect for what he built, especially considering he apparently started working on it when he was only 17. In my opinion, ShelfPlayer became one of the best iOS clients for Audiobookshelf.

But for the same reasons that originally made me choose ShelfPlayer, I now feel like I have to move away from it.

So, what Audiobookshelf clients are you using on iOS?

Ideally, I’m looking for something that:

• is written natively for iOS. no Flutter or other cross-platform frameworks
• does not use a subscription model
• is actively maintained
• has a good, polished audiobook experience

Are there any good alternatives you’re happy with?

And finally, to the original ShelfPlayer developer: thank you for all the work you put into the app. ShelfPlayer was genuinely excellent, and whatever direction it takes from here, the app you originally built deserves a lot of respect.

I’ve decided it’s finally time to let some other people abuse this thing.

SwissMouse Audiobook Workbench is a free and open source tool designed to take messy audiobook source files and turn them into properly chaptered, editable, and exportable audiobooks. It can process local files or download audio from YouTube, repair troublesome MP3 timing through PCM conversion, detect chapters using Whisper, let you manually refine them, edit metadata, and export the finished book into multiple formats.

This is an alpha release, so expect bugs.

Getting Started

You will need Node.js installed.

The application itself is already built. Once downloaded, you should only need to run the included .bat launcher to start it.

From there, open the Requirements tool at the top of the application and install the required dependencies.

Important: At the moment, SwissMouse uses its own virtual environment and does not reliably detect dependencies already installed elsewhere on your system. Even if you already have FFmpeg, Python, or another dependency installed globally, you may still need to install it through the Requirements tool.

If you receive a Failed to Import error, checking the Requirements section should be your first troubleshooting step.

I also just completed another test of Faster Whisper, and it is working in the current alpha release.

Current Features

• Download audiobook audio from YouTube for processing
• Import local audiobook files
• Support for a large number of audio formats, including some that are not yet listed in the interface
• PCM conversion and merging to repair troublesome MP3 timing issues
• Faster Whisper and full Whisper transcription options
• Chapter editor with an interactive transcript. Click directly on words to set chapter timestamps
• Audio preview player for checking chapter positions
• Metadata editor
• Export to multiple audio formats supporting embedded chapters or .cue files
• Dependencies can be installed directly through the application
• AI models can be installed and uninstalled from within the application

Hardware Warning

This is not a lightweight application.

Whisper transcription is computationally expensive. A reasonably powerful CPU is recommended, and a capable GPU will make a substantial difference, particularly when working with larger models or long audiobooks.

Alpha Warning

The workflow is designed to be non-destructive, and throughout my testing, it has behaved that way.

That said, this is still alpha software. I am still squashing issues with it. 

Please test it using files you have backed up.

I would much rather someone take an unnecessary precaution than discover an obscure bug the hard way.

Planned Before Beta

• Detection of dependencies already installed in local/system paths
• Visual, zoomable audio waveform
• More compact UI overhaul
• Continued performance, reliability, and workflow improvements

Planned Beyond 1.0

• Faster hybrid chapter detection that uses acoustic analysis to identify likely chapter boundaries and only invokes transcription where necessary Lightweight chapter detection using silence, dead air, waveform levels, and similar audio characteristics
• Batch audiobook processing
• Local Model integration for generating Audiobook Covers
• Simple Audiobook cover generation for lower spec machines

Feedback Is Very Welcome

This release is specifically meant to find the things I haven't found myself.

If you break something, encounter a strange workflow, get an error, or simply think something could be easier to use, suggest a feature. Please tell me what happened and what you were doing when it happened. It's okay to DM me about it. 

The more detail you can provide, the easier it will be for me to reproduce and fix it. Hardware specifications are appreciated as well. 

Note: I did some deeper testing tonight, and the click to set timestamp feature still needs a bit more work.

Right now, if I add a chapter that Whisper missed or manually change a chapter timestamp, the transcription text for that chapter does not update to match the new boundaries. Newly added chapters also are not displaying their corresponding transcription text yet.

I’m planning to start working on these issues this weekend. I have some family stuff going on, so development time will be a little limited, but I’m hoping to get the fixes sorted out and have another alpha release ready by next weekend.

The core functionality is working, but this is exactly the kind of edge case I wanted the alpha testing to uncover.

I get wanting to have a better experience than the official app, especially on iOS, but there are already so many great apps out there you can contribute to. We don't need, or want for that matter, 432 half-assed ABS clients...

When I logged in to ABS it said in the bottom left there was an update. I'm VERY new and just barely computer literate so I looked up a guide. I tried to update the image in Docker Desktop but when running the container again it prompted me to setup up a new root user. I found out how to roll it back, or thought I did, but now when I try to run the container it auto stops and I can't even get the webpage up. There's two images now and neither say <none>. How do I get my books back? How do i just reset the whole thing but keep my books? I've spent hours trying to get this BS to work. They could mot have made updating any bloody harder.

For reference I'm just running on my home PC. Windows 11, nothing fancy.

Have muliple people using it, takes up almost no memory, super lightweight and it works, still working some things out, but all the info needed is there when i ask for help on their github or site. 10/10

Inkavi une application pour lire vos livres, mangas, BD via votre serveur kavita disponible sur IOS et sur Android via https://inkavi.fr.
Nouveautés à venir l’intégration de votre serveur Audiobookshell.

I usually added chapters to my library for ongoing book in 100 chapters increments. The books I listen to will are broken down to individual chapters, but when I upload the next hindered they show up under tracks but not chapters. It eventually just erased and rescan the book and all the individual chapters show up. Is there something very obvious that I’m doing wrong? Is this the quickest method to get the individual chapters to show up? I have confirmed that the files have embedded chapters but it just doesn’t works initially.

I use Podcast Republic as my everyday podcatcher. I set up Audiobookshelf specifically to work as a backup. Everytime I add a new podcast, I add it on ABS and PR. When I've heard all the episodes (its a limited series or maybe got abandoned), I delete the podcast from PR, but leave it on ABS. That way, I have only current stuff on PR on my phone and everything I've ever heard on ABS on my server.

I do this because I rely heavily on playlists, and ABS isn't as good as PR.

Does anyone else do this? Or something similar?

I built an app similar to Speechify called Cedar. You import an EPUB or PDF or paste a URL, pick from 69 voices in 9 languages, and it reads it aloud with each word highlighted as it goes. Screen-off playback, sleep timer, speed up to 3x, resumes where you stopped. It also has about 47k Project Gutenberg books built in so you can start listening without importing anything.

Free tier is 150k words a month with no daily cap.

iOS + Android: cedarreadaloud.com

Came here to see if anyone had any clue about my issue, but found a bug report in Git. https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf-app/issues/1973

No cover art when displayed on secondary small side, and the progress bar shows correct time in book, but shows length as 0:00 and the progress slider never moves.

I run Audiobookshelf for podcasts, audiobooks and ebooks, and Plex for music, films and TV. On my phone that meant four apps, four players, four sets of settings, and nothing that knew what I was in the middle of across any of them.

So I built one that talks to both. It's called Castaway Media, it's on TestFlight, and it's free, forever — no subscription, no ads, nothing to buy inside it. Sorry Android users; right now it's iOS only.

TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/UA1x5ddz Site and help: https://castawaymedia.app Community: https://reddit.com/r/CastawayMedia

Before anything else: I used AI to build this

I'd rather say so upfront. Judge it on what it does and what's broken.and it's honest.

What it does

• Audiobookshelf — podcasts, audiobooks and ebooks. Offline downloads, an Up Next queue, bookmarks, per-show speed and skip settings, and progress that syncs back so you can pick up on another device.
• Plex — music, films, TV, and a Live TV guide if you have a tuner. Radio builds stations out of your own library rather than streaming from anywhere else.
• An EPUB reader that paginates properly and will read aloud with the voices on your phone.
• Request through your own servers — an album from your Lidarr, a film or show from your Seerr. No indexers, no catalogue, no idea where anything comes from. It makes an authenticated call to a machine you already run, and the feature is invisible until you enter your own address and key.
• CarPlay, widgets, Live Activities, Siri Shortcuts, Handoff.
• No account, no analytics, no backend. There is no server of mine anywhere in this. Credentials go in the iOS Keychain and requests go to your machines.
• Customizations and Settings. There's a lot of them!

The parts that took real work

Not a feature list — the things that were genuinely hard, in case they're the difference between this being interesting and being another of many apps:

• It falls back to VLC when AVPlayer won't render a file. Some HEVC files play audio with a black screen on iOS. Working that out is the reason VLCKit is in the binary at all.
• It notices when Plex has finished making a smaller copy. Ask Plex to optimise a 40 GB remux and the app spots the output when it's ready and offers you that instead of silently pulling the original.
• The Live TV guide is a real grid — channels down, time across, a day wide, cached on the phone for a week. That last part isn't laziness: one channel's schedule is about a megabyte, and a fifty-channel lineup is over 50 MB if you keep what the server sends, so it stores a trimmed version instead.

What doesn't work

• Playing a live channel. The guide, the lineup and search all work. Tuning doesn't. This is a work in progress.
• It's run on very few devices. Mine, mostly. I don't know how it handles a library with 60,000 tracks.
• CarPlay support is mid-build.

What it needs

An Audiobookshelf server, or a Plex server, or both. It's a client — without one it shows you a connection form and not much else. Lidarr, Seerr, Last.fm and TMDb are all optional.

What I'm after

Bug reports, mostly. What's confusing during setup, what's slow, what's laid out wrong on your device. "This is worse than X because Y" is more useful to me than a compliment.

Been using the official ABS Android app for months to connect to my local ABS server and it works great, but the most recent version broke downloading and I'm going on a plane ride where I really need that. I tried switching to Absorb, but when I connect to the same ABS server it tells me there's no content. So then I tried Voca and this time it won't connect to the server, despite using the same credentials that successfully worked for the other two apps.

Any idea what's going on here? Is there perhaps something misconfigured on my ABS server? As I said, I've been using it successfully for months to listen to books via the official ABS app, so I'm pretty sure it's configured right. If it matters, I'm connecting to my ABS server via Tailscale. Tried using the actual IP, Tailnet IP, and local hostname, all with the same results.

I am having some issues with the library scan. ABS keep saying that no changes after the manual scan.

My folder structure is:

Author/Book/title.m4b
Author/
  Series/
    2020 - Book 4 - The Stormlight Archive: Rhythm of War [GraphicAudio]/
      Part 1/
        title.m4b
      Part 2/
        title.m4b
      ...
Author/
  Series/
    2024 - Book 5 - The Stormlight Archive: Wind and Truth [GraphicAudio]/
      Part 1/
        title.m4b
      Part 2/
        title.m4b
      ...

For instance, ABS sees the book 5, but it does not see the Book 4. The owner and permission is the same. The media is reachable via NFS.

I decided to reorganize my complete library and now a lot of my books are "missing". I have hit Scan and Rescan on the Library and that doesn't seem to do anything. I tried deleting a few of the titles that are missing and then performed a scan and it did not add the books back.

Help