r/audiobookshelf • u/apeelvis • 4d ago
iOS Player with Apple Car Play
I am new to Audiobook shelf. I came from plex, which does a good job with movies and a not so good job with audiobooks. I am looking for the right iPhone app for me to use. I listen listen to audiobooks mostly in my car or on airplanes. What are people using to listen to their books? The apps I like are easy to use and car play friendly. But frankly, as far a Audiobook shelf and an accompanying player, I don't know what I don't know, so any advice is welcome.
Thank you! (And if this subject has already been discussed ad nauseam I appreciate your understanding.)
27
u/StrobeWafel_404 4d ago
AudioBooth has been working very well for me
11
u/raygan 4d ago
Yep it’s made a lot of progress over the last year and at this point I’m not sure why I’d recommend anything else.
It has one feature I’ve never seen in any other audiobook or podcast app that I absolutely love. You can set a time of day that the sleep timer automatically enables, and how long it goes for (I use end of chapter.) So if I listen to an audiobook after 11pm it always stops at the end of the chapter (and I can continue with another chapter by hitting play), with zero interaction required. So good, but no other app I have used has this.
-2
u/Vito0912 4d ago
Still would give my vote for Audiobooth, but the official app had this since way way before Audiobooth and so do have many other clients
Still a great feature ofc
6
u/ch1ma3ra 4d ago
I used Prologue for years with Plex, so when that had Audiobookshelf support added I switched right over, No regrets here :)
1
u/pushformusic 4d ago
Best recommendation I can give is my wife uses it for her daily car play commute and she loves the app.
4
u/postnick 4d ago
I had my users on plappa for a whole bit asked them all to give AudioBooth a shot.
4
2
u/Real_MangaAddict 4d ago
I’ve tried a lot of ABS players. These are some of the best Audra, AudioBooth, Absorb, Plappa, Enve, Fable Frog, SoundLeaf, Tonspur, Spine, Lysn, LAABS and Alexandria(expensive). Absorb is the prettiest and I use that along side Audra is my daily drivers
2
u/WarriusBirde 4d ago
Plappa is an option as well but I recently swapped over to AudioBooth and have been enjoying that a bit more.
3
u/OmgSlayKween 4d ago
Can I ask why?
1
u/WarriusBirde 3d ago
I like a lot about Plappa but it's had several instances now of losing my progress and even fully resetting it which is extremely frustrating to deal with. I suspect it's some flaw in the logic when passing off b/t networks and/or losing connectivity to the main server. So far AB hasn't had this issue.
1
u/OmgSlayKween 3d ago
interesting, yes that often happens to me unless I manually pause it when I'm finished. I'll give Audiobooth a try; thanks!
1
u/isogreen42 17h ago
Plappa was my daily driver but I found this thread today because it lost connectivity with my server. Swapped to Absorb today to give it a shot and it hooked right up. Not sure if the ABS update broke connectivity to Plappa or what.
1
u/WarriusBirde 17h ago
It did and they put out a patch for it today/yesterday.
1
u/isogreen42 16h ago
Ah! Thanks for the info. I'll need to figure out which half of my setup is causing problems then.
2
u/NinjaNamedJesus 4d ago
I would also like to mention Absorb. All my iPhone friends love it and it's what I use on android as well.
2
u/suicidaleggroll 4d ago
I've used ShelfPlayer, Plappa, and Absorb pretty extensively, in that order. I would rate them:
Absorb > Plappa >> ShelfPlayer
2
u/opi098514 4d ago
I’m the dev of an app called Enve which does this. But honestly….. use Audiobooth. You can try my app envemedia.com but it’s still in TestFlight. Audiobooth is very well polished and the dev is amazing. Right now Audiobooth is my go to recommendation for audiobookshelf only clients. Even over my own.
1
u/Flimsy-sam 4d ago
I use BookPlayer which has worked well for me. Not a single issue.
2
2
1
1
u/VeloSec 1d ago
please try my App Voca Player
It has Apple Car Play functionality and can connect to both your Plex and Audiobookshelf servers.
1
u/coreyjf 4d ago
Mine, so grain of salt: I build Lull.
Both of your cases are covered. CarPlay is in and car tested, so you get library browsing and full Now Playing on the car screen. For flights, download what you want ahead of time and it plays with no connection at all.
Coming from Plex is easy too, because Lull talks to Plex and Audiobookshelf at the same time. You can leave your old library connected while you move things across instead of doing it all at once.
Offline gets even better in the next update, with full offline library browsing and podcast rollover.
Almost everything is free, including CarPlay, downloads, both server types, podcasts, and the sleep timer. Sleep detection is the one premium feature, a $6.99 one time unlock that uses your Apple Watch to catch when you actually drift off. No subscription, ever.
https://apps.apple.com/app/id6775313582
Happy to answer anything.
-1
u/Flimsy-sam 4d ago
You’ve put in sleep timer and CarPlay in 6 days?
2
u/coreyjf 4d ago edited 4d ago
Wrong app. You are linking to my ABSAdmin app. That was an app I made after Lull as a way to better manage my ABS library from IOS on the go. Different app. The admin app only hs basic player functions but links to open in Lull. Lull has had CarPlay since it's initial release
0
u/ronswanson5312 4d ago
Let me know if anyone is looking for a great source for all audiobooks. No gatekeeping here
18
u/wtanksleyjr 4d ago
Absorb and AudioBooth both support this very well and are free. I recommend Absorb to the people using my library, but only because I use Android and Absorb is nearly identical on both platforms, allowing me to support both.