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Audiobookshelf: Self-hosted audiobook and podcast server

(www.audiobookshelf.org)
207 points fjk | 2 comments | 09 May 25 02:17 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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krick ◴[09 May 25 09:48 UTC] No.43935208[source]▶
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.

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1. stavros ◴[09 May 25 10:52 UTC] No.43935435[source]▶
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.

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2. fonema ◴[09 May 25 15:41 UTC] No.43938088[source]▶
Same here. I do this because ABS android app would not accurately track my listening progress, and is very frequently off after a pause. May be off by 30 min, by an hour, gets rather frustrating relistening the same segments. Was never able to solve this.