How is the Android app? The only good app for local audio-books I know is "Smart AudioBook Player". The web-app GUI in the demo is less than perfect, but kinda ok, if you enable chapter-view. The biggest problem is a single set of ±10 s rewind buttons: for a dedicated audio-book player it's not enough, a separate ±1 min button set is a must. But since the authors didn't think of that, I don't expect it to be different in the Android app. I'm rather asking about mobile-specific features:
1. Does it properly stop the playback when headphones are disconnected?
2. Is there a usable lock-screen widget?
3. Does it auto-rewind after a pause? It's best when the pause duration is taken into account: it shouldn't rewind more than a couple of seconds if you pause for a second, but a whole minute may be better if you left it off yesterday.
4. Does it handle well situations when the server is not accessible? Can you just pre-download a couple of audio-books for your 10 h long flight? I mean, honestly, streaming is never desirable, the only point of a self-hosted server is that you don't have to download and delete your collection manually. It's a tricky problem when the playlist is highly variable (as with music), but for an audio-book player should be a non issue: just pre-fetch a whole book (maybe manually), storage space is a lesser issue than mobile internet.
GCUMstlyHarmls · 5m ago
1) Yes, it stops playing when I put my bluetooth headphones away (YMMV with wired or other methods).
2) Yes, but sometimes pressing play wont actually play. I also see this occurring with antenna-pod (FOSS podcast player), so I think this is Android 15 being broken, or they both use the same underlying (non standard?) audio library.
3) The sibling says yes, from checking the github issues, I think its not as "smart" as other players and simply does a fixed offset if you pause for some length of time. Honestly I always figured it ran back a few seconds due to how keyframes [sic] work in m4b files.
4) Yes, I do not have any data on my phone so I basically exclusively download my books to the device and play them offline. Sometimes I do get progress syncing issues, honestly I forget in which direction, possibly it only occurs when I finish a book offline then go online and it resets back to the last "still playing" sync point.
Sometimes I do have issues downloading a book, and it will stall out mid download. I can't say whether this is the app, the phone, the wifi or the server. It's sporadic, possibly fixed in some recentish version, haven't seen it for a while.
You can (independently) adjust the skip ahead/skip back buttons between 5s, 10s and 30s. I just leave it on 10s and mash if I have to. Before ABS I used Voice (FOSS, IMO great but I wanted library management too. Not as feature rich as Smart Audiobook Player, intentionally I think.) which only had one set of skip buttons so I never "missed" this in ABS.
filcuk · 6m ago
1 and 2 are system functions primarily.
3 yes, configurable
4 as expected- streaming resumes if it can, you can predownload
The android app has improved a lot lately, it's perfectly fine to use.
Gratuity0493 · 58m ago
Answer for #1 & #2: I do not know.
Answer for #3: yes, it does.
Answer for #4:
Yes, it works reliable. If the server is unavailable everything just works fine. If the server is available your current position is synchronized so you can continue on a different device.
stavros · 44m ago
I use ABS to host my audiobooks and I use the Android app to download them to a folder, and then use Smart Audiobook Player to play them. It works great, though you lose the time syncing with the server, if you care about that.
There are also alternative clients, like Lissen.
walthamstow · 2h ago
I had to stop using ABS because the Android app has a fatal flaw - you can't queue podcasts. I listen to podcasts while I'm doing dirty jobs, I can't pull my phone out and play another episode manually.
midasz · 58m ago
I just use abs to serve podcasts, subscribe to the abs feeds with antennapod. Have a couple of premium podcasts setup that way (so even keeping a local archive).
heavyset_go · 47m ago
Open Audiobookshelf with Firefox on Android and install it as a PWA
mrklol · 2h ago
Somebody suggested using playlists for that on Reddit, maybe it works!
midasz · 41m ago
This is one of the pillars of the selfhosting world imo. Together with Immich for photos, Plex(amp) - arr stack for media, and Vaultwarden for passwords. They've just never let me down.
Maybe openwebui is another addition but it's still early days
TheAceOfHearts · 4h ago
I've also been using this for a while now and it works great. My only complaint is that tools for cleaning up metadata are a bit clunky if you have a very large collection. You can basically go through every item one-by-one, or you can run an automatic script to check the whole collection. It would be great if you could define certain rules to require manual review, and incrementally run the tool to improve the tags whenever you have a bit of free time to clean up your collection.
But the ideal solution would be to have some way of generating fingerprints for each audiobook, and then build up a database which matches that fingerprint to the correct metadata. That way the work of organizing and tagging large collections could be crowdsourced; this is what other communities have done.
Maybe we're not too far off from AI-assisted tools that can just figure out how to properly tag a bunch of items correctly just by looking at the filename and existing metadata. Maybe even picking up on additional contextual clues by listening to a little bit of a chapter, to check if the title of the work is mentioned at the start.
theshrike79 · 4h ago
So basically Musicbrainz Picard, but for audiobooks?
jostyee · 3h ago
Self-hosted Audible alternative
theshrike79 · 1h ago
> But the ideal solution would be to have some way of generating fingerprints for each audiobook, and then build up a database which matches that fingerprint to the correct metadata. That way the work of organizing and tagging large collections could be crowdsourced; this is what other communities have done.
I was referring to this bit, which is exactly what the Musicbrainz database does for music albums.
volteret4 · 3h ago
No, this is a server app for your podcasts and audiobooks, picard is the best music metadata tagger imho, but they arent related
Arn_Thor · 4h ago
A good solution for a standalone server. But since I use Plex already there’s an audio book plugin for it that I use along with Prologue for IOS.
Prologue is amazing, have been using it for a year now after seeing it on HN before. Also don't need to run another service for it as I already use Plex.
shaunkoh · 38m ago
Does it still play well with the notorious new Plex app?
InsideOutSanta · 4h ago
What's a good source for DRM-free audiobooks? I'd love to ditch Audible and move to something like this, but I haven't found a store that has a good selection.
(Edit: thank you, everybody, for the great answers!!!)
bentley · 2h ago
I primarily source my copyrighted audiobooks from Libro.fm and Downpour. Both have large (though not universal) catalogues.
Librivox has free, public domain audiobooks. The narrators are volunteers, so performance and recording quality varies, but there are some very good ones there.
Some podcasts provide legitimate audiobooks of copyrighted works, generally with similar quality caveats to Librivox. For example, the blog “Readings from Under the Grapevine” has a free, legally licensed recording of the Narnia series (except for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe).
I never buy audiobooks with DRM, even if the DRM is trivial to break. Amazon has made clear their intentions to lock media down ever further. I shouldn’t have to put up with that, so I’m not going to support them financially.
If I can’t find a copyrighted audiobook at one of the DRM‐free shops, I get it from my library, either through Libby or by checking out a physical copy. Not that these would be helpful for someone using Audiobookshelf…
navanchauhan · 4h ago
If you want to sail the high seas, MyAnonaMouse is one of the best private trackers.
udev4096 · 3h ago
Audiobookbay has a better audio book collection than MAM. Plus, it's a public tracker and doesn't require an invite
dspillett · 16m ago
I've tended to avoid public trackers when I can find what I want on private ones. I'm not sure that they are any safer in terms of consequences resulting from being noticed by media firms and relevant legal groups, but the transfer speeds are generally better (due to there being less leeching presumably), and public tracker UIs tend to be more filled with junk that sometimes gets past my ad/malware filters.
[Not a comment on Audiobookbay specifically, I don't remember having tried that one and it may be great for all I know]
Arn_Thor · 4h ago
Audible books can be.. liberated from such encumbrances. There’s a program called Libation.
theothertimcook · 4h ago
Iirc Downbpour, I’ve just been using booklibconnect on my audibles tho.
djhworld · 4h ago
You can strip the DRM from audible books and create mp4s using ffmpeg.
Although, given Amazon’s recent efforts with the kindle, I’m going to say they will probably remove the ability to download books soon
once_inc · 4h ago
You can quite easily flash you Kindle with new firmware that is more forgiving and abled.
heisenzombie · 4h ago
I understand the audiobook server, but what’s the use case for the podcast part? You replicate a podcast on your own server, in case the original goes away?
dspillett · 30m ago
> You replicate a podcast on your own server, in case the original goes away?
Or, as a couple that I've listened to and might re-listen later have, they later start injecting adverts where they were not previously present, or start piling more in where they were reasonable before.
heavyset_go · 43m ago
Some podcast feeds only list the last N episodes, so if you want to listen to episode N+1, you either have to have it already downloaded locally or cache the feed and hope the audio file's URL is valid when you go to listen to it later.
bubblethink · 1h ago
If you subscribe to a paid podcast, you can mirror and share your own rss link with friends, which is better than sharing credentials or your private link, and it won't trip some shared password flag at the upstream server.
TheAceOfHearts · 3h ago
It can be configured to automatically fetch podcasts and keep a local copy. If you have a workflow for listening to audiobooks then it allows you use that same workflow for podcasts. With the mobile app you can "check out" audiobooks or podcasts and have any listening progress tracked between platforms.
erinnh · 3h ago
You can use it as that.
I use it as my podcast app.
I mostly only have the last 2-5 Episodes on my server for each Podcast. (you can automatically remove episodes if there are more than X)
Though I do keep all Episodes for 3 of my favourite Podcasts.
theshrike79 · 3h ago
Yes, pretty much. You can also post-process them to remove ads etc. because you have the files on your own server.
Some podcasts remove all of their backlog when they "sell out" and go behind a paywall, having them backed up prevents that. (How did this get made?[0] being one example)
Also some podcasts (BBC ones I think) add ads while you download, based on your country. Some of my No Such Thing As A Fish[1] episodes have Christmas themed ads in them because that's when they we're cached :)
I recently pulled the back catalogue of the Acquired podcast. All the older episodes going back as far as 2016 have adverts for Claude!
unsnap_biceps · 2h ago
I mirror all my podcasts locally as shows do disappear before I listen to them. Wondery has a ton of shows that if you miss the few week window, they're being a wondery+ paywall.
walthamstow · 2h ago
The BBC does this too.
lawn · 2h ago
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History do this too.
When I setup Audiobookshelf a week ago I also bought the rest of his entire collection from his site, getting a complete library for his show.
agnishom · 5h ago
I host this on my homeserver. Pretty nice app so far.
senectus1 · 5h ago
been using it for a couple of years now. its an absolute cracker.
Pity the iOS app is almost impossible to get.
rthz · 5h ago
On iOS you can use the plappa client. It’s open source and works well in my experience.
PokerFacowaty · 3h ago
Seconded, I've been using plappa for a couple months after Apple messed up PWAs after bringing them back (Audiobookshelf didn't want to change to next chapter when the app was in the background) and I'm generally very happy
1. Does it properly stop the playback when headphones are disconnected?
2. Is there a usable lock-screen widget?
3. Does it auto-rewind after a pause? It's best when the pause duration is taken into account: it shouldn't rewind more than a couple of seconds if you pause for a second, but a whole minute may be better if you left it off yesterday.
4. Does it handle well situations when the server is not accessible? Can you just pre-download a couple of audio-books for your 10 h long flight? I mean, honestly, streaming is never desirable, the only point of a self-hosted server is that you don't have to download and delete your collection manually. It's a tricky problem when the playlist is highly variable (as with music), but for an audio-book player should be a non issue: just pre-fetch a whole book (maybe manually), storage space is a lesser issue than mobile internet.
2) Yes, but sometimes pressing play wont actually play. I also see this occurring with antenna-pod (FOSS podcast player), so I think this is Android 15 being broken, or they both use the same underlying (non standard?) audio library.
3) The sibling says yes, from checking the github issues, I think its not as "smart" as other players and simply does a fixed offset if you pause for some length of time. Honestly I always figured it ran back a few seconds due to how keyframes [sic] work in m4b files.
4) Yes, I do not have any data on my phone so I basically exclusively download my books to the device and play them offline. Sometimes I do get progress syncing issues, honestly I forget in which direction, possibly it only occurs when I finish a book offline then go online and it resets back to the last "still playing" sync point.
Sometimes I do have issues downloading a book, and it will stall out mid download. I can't say whether this is the app, the phone, the wifi or the server. It's sporadic, possibly fixed in some recentish version, haven't seen it for a while.
You can (independently) adjust the skip ahead/skip back buttons between 5s, 10s and 30s. I just leave it on 10s and mash if I have to. Before ABS I used Voice (FOSS, IMO great but I wanted library management too. Not as feature rich as Smart Audiobook Player, intentionally I think.) which only had one set of skip buttons so I never "missed" this in ABS.
The android app has improved a lot lately, it's perfectly fine to use.
There are also alternative clients, like Lissen.
Maybe openwebui is another addition but it's still early days
But the ideal solution would be to have some way of generating fingerprints for each audiobook, and then build up a database which matches that fingerprint to the correct metadata. That way the work of organizing and tagging large collections could be crowdsourced; this is what other communities have done.
Maybe we're not too far off from AI-assisted tools that can just figure out how to properly tag a bunch of items correctly just by looking at the filename and existing metadata. Maybe even picking up on additional contextual clues by listening to a little bit of a chapter, to check if the title of the work is mentioned at the start.
I was referring to this bit, which is exactly what the Musicbrainz database does for music albums.
(Edit: thank you, everybody, for the great answers!!!)
Librivox has free, public domain audiobooks. The narrators are volunteers, so performance and recording quality varies, but there are some very good ones there.
Some podcasts provide legitimate audiobooks of copyrighted works, generally with similar quality caveats to Librivox. For example, the blog “Readings from Under the Grapevine” has a free, legally licensed recording of the Narnia series (except for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe).
I never buy audiobooks with DRM, even if the DRM is trivial to break. Amazon has made clear their intentions to lock media down ever further. I shouldn’t have to put up with that, so I’m not going to support them financially.
If I can’t find a copyrighted audiobook at one of the DRM‐free shops, I get it from my library, either through Libby or by checking out a physical copy. Not that these would be helpful for someone using Audiobookshelf…
[Not a comment on Audiobookbay specifically, I don't remember having tried that one and it may be great for all I know]
Although, given Amazon’s recent efforts with the kindle, I’m going to say they will probably remove the ability to download books soon
Or, as a couple that I've listened to and might re-listen later have, they later start injecting adverts where they were not previously present, or start piling more in where they were reasonable before.
I use it as my podcast app.
I mostly only have the last 2-5 Episodes on my server for each Podcast. (you can automatically remove episodes if there are more than X)
Though I do keep all Episodes for 3 of my favourite Podcasts.
Some podcasts remove all of their backlog when they "sell out" and go behind a paywall, having them backed up prevents that. (How did this get made?[0] being one example)
Also some podcasts (BBC ones I think) add ads while you download, based on your country. Some of my No Such Thing As A Fish[1] episodes have Christmas themed ads in them because that's when they we're cached :)
[0] https://www.earwolf.com/show/how-did-this-get-made/ [1] https://www.nosuchthingasafish.com
When I setup Audiobookshelf a week ago I also bought the rest of his entire collection from his site, getting a complete library for his show.
Pity the iOS app is almost impossible to get.