Audiobooks ​

The Audiobooks plugin adds an Audiobooks library type and an in-browser player. Like books and comics, audiobooks live in the normal Library grid with their own series pages — there's no separate section to learn.

Setting up a shelf ​

Create a library of type Audiobooks (Settings → Library) and give it a folder of .m4b, .m4a or .mp3 files. The scan catalogs each one, taking the title and author from the usual Author/Title folder layout, then fills in covers, narrators, series, publisher and durations from the hosted metadata service. Matching is best-effort — a title that doesn't match still plays, it just keeps what the filenames gave it.

Scans are incremental and self-pruning, and run from the schedulable Scan audiobook libraries job. Books that belong to a series share one shelf rather than appearing as separate entries.

Listening ​

Open an audiobook and press play. The player takes over the series page and offers:

• Chapters — jump between chapters, when the source provides them.
• Playback speed, and skip forward / back.
• Sleep timer — for listening at bedtime.
• Bookmarks — save a moment with an optional note and return to it later.
• Resume — your position is saved per user, so any device continues where you stopped.

Listening progress and finished state are per account, so several people can work through the same title independently.

Adding audiobooks ​

With an Audiobooks library set up, the library's Add button gains an Audiobooks tab. Search the catalog by title or author; each result says whether it is already on the shelf, or already wanted. Add puts it on the wanted list and asks your download sources for it at once, and the button says what happened: downloading from which source, in the library, or wanted. One no source has yet stays wanted: the Fill wanted audiobooks job (System → Jobs) asks again on its schedule, and a scan that brings it in takes it off the list.

GET /api/audiobooks/wanted lists the wanted audiobooks and DELETE /api/audiobooks/wanted/<id> drops one (the Manage library permission, like adding).

Streaming, not downloading ​

Audiobooks are big — often around a gigabyte — so a registered source streams them rather than downloading them up front. Playback proxies range requests to the source, which means seeking works normally and nothing buffers the whole file into memory. The source's credentials stay on the server and are never exposed to the browser.

A remote catalog can also be synced as file-less entries: browsable titles with covers and details that stream on play. They're never counted as missing — they're there to listen to, just not on disk.

Mobile ​

Audiobooks are fully supported in the Android and iPhone and iPad apps, with offline downloads, a lock-screen player, chapter navigation, sleep timer and bookmarks. Progress syncs with the web player through your account, so you can start on your phone and finish in a browser.

Elsewhere in the app ​

• Two home rails — Continue listening and New audiobooks — appear on your home screen. Hide either from its ×, or toggle them on your Profile page; the choice is saved to your account.
• Shelves gives a large audiobook library faceted browsing by author, decade, format and listening status.
• Permission — Audiobooks (audiobooks.use, viewer tier) covers browsing and playback. Scanning and catalog curation ride the normal library-management permission.
• A source flagged as explicit marks its series mature, so it follows the same content restrictions as everything else.