r/audiobookshelf

Moving a personal audiobook collection into Audiobookshelf, and the same annoying step keeps tripping me up before files ever reach the server.

Audiobookshelf is fine. The pain is everything I do to make a folder of audio actually look like a book in the library:

• MP3 folders that should be one book
• M4B files with no usable chapters
• covers that show in one player but vanish in another
• series and book number missing or inconsistent
• empty narrator fields
• chapter names like "Track 01" instead of real titles

Right now I bounce between ffmpeg, a tag editor, the occasional m4b-tool command, and a lot of squinting at the player to see if anything stuck. It works. It also feels like way too many steps for something that boils down to "make this behave like a proper audiobook before I import it."

Is the pre-import cleanup common around here, or is my library just messier than most?

How do you handle it today?

1. m4b-tool?
2. mp3tag, kid3, MusicBrainz Picard?
3. ffmpeg scripts?
4. Audiobookshelf's own metadata tools after import?
5. something else?

Full disclosure, I am building a free tool around this cleanup workflow. DRM-free audio in, chaptered M4B out, cover and metadata fixed before import. No launch link, no signup. Mostly I want to know what actually hurts for people maintaining their own libraries.

If you could fix one part of the pre-import workflow, what would it be?

Hi,

I’ve got an old iPad for a relative I want to set up with Audiobookshelf, but can’t load the web page- does anyone know if there’s a client on iOS that supports iOS 12?

Edit: Audiobookshelf, Plappa and Audiobooth all require newer versions of iOS. and Safari, Chrome and Firefox all don't render the page properly. Meaning I can't navigate to books or podcasts to listen. I'm guessing it's a no go (Short of vibe coding an alternate web frontend but I'm not down for that)

I have an iPhone and I know the app I use does not have a Samsung version. One of my users is having trouble with the official audiobookshelf app for Samsung so looking for some suggestions for her.

I have a larger library (around 2k) of audiobooks.

CarPlay support (this is where she is having issues) and offline downloads are two features we are after.

I'm new to Audiobookshelf and one thing I noticed is that there are Series that get created but they are incomplete even though the missing books are in my library.

What metadata field is used to determine a series?

Thanks.

So I've been thinking about this and want to see if it's just me. I've got 200+ titles on Audible at this point. Years of listening. And my bookshelf is mostly empty because almost everything I "read" is on my phone.

And it kind of bums me out? My physical books used to be a thing I'd look at, friends would notice, I'd remember what I'd read just walking past the shelf. None of that happens with audiobooks.

I'm trying to figure out if other people feel this way or if I'm just being weird. Put together a 2-minute survey if anyone's willing no email required unless you want to stay in the loop. Just trying to validate the problem before I build the wrong thing.

EDIT: A few people are reading this as "do you forget what you've listened to" that's not what I mean at all. I love audiobooks, I'm not questioning them as a format. I'm asking if anyone else misses having their library visible in their physical space the way physical books are. The phone-screen library is great but invisible.

Does anyone know of any client where you can listen and read at the same time? the app doesnt have to sync things. i guess i got addicted to doing that in lingq for language learning purposes and wouldnt mind getting kinda close with my own library sans lingq.

MatchTab

ItemsPage

This UserScript will add new features directly into the AudioBookshelf web interface.

Adding features through a UserScript allows anyone to have have simple and immediate access to these new features, without having to perform any server-side changes or wait for them to be implemented by the Audiobookshelf team.

The ABSidekick Settings Panel can be accessed by clicking the 🛠️ emoji in the Audiobookshelf app bar.

For the full introduction and instruction, see the GitHub

We all know the struggle—some of our favorite niche books never get an audiobook version, even though they’d be perfect to listen to while doing chores, commuting, or feeding our tiny yappy dogs.

That’s why we’re opening this friendly discussion for readers to share the books they wish had an audiobook version—because we might just be able to make one for you!

Special Requests Available!

Have a specific book you want as an audiobook? Send us your requests and we’ll do our best to create it for you.

This might be a stretch, but hoping someone else is a data hoarder like myself. Love Audiobookshelf, and it's great for streaming my books. I've also taken adding in all sorts of books (Tolkien's non mainline LOTR books, Audible productions, etc).

I can view the defaults like "Has Ebook", but I want to clean up/complete my library by finding "Missing Audiobook" for the text only files, "Missing Ebook" for the audiobooks that don't have their accompanying text, or "Complete" for the content that is Audiobook only (Audio Immersion Tunnels for example) or Ebook only (Comics, PDFs, etc).

Tried passing it through an LLM and a script compiled by Gemini but the time it actually started working with the API it was supposed to it started modifying the wrong library entries.

Question is whether anyone has had luck with LLMs managing their library or know of any plugins I could leverage for this. I've been using Gemini to write Python because I don't understand but keep getting JSON results where it either sees no files, only one format, or incorrectly reports the content altogether.

Hello everyone! I am BRAND new to all this self-hosting stuff, so please be kind. I recently set up a ZimaOS server on an HP mini PC so I could run my plex server, and I was ecstatic when I learned about audiobookshelf for my library of de-amazoned audiobooks. However, I have been struggling with how to access it outside of my home network, as I most often listen to audiobooks when I am driving, and my partner wants to be able to listen to them while she is doordashing. I tried watching some youtube videos about how to install tailscale and make it work, but all of them started from the ABS github page or from docker directly- which ZimaOS just installs automatically. Has anyone used ABS with ZimaOS who would be willing to give me some advice?

Since there doesn't appear to be any Roku ABS clients, I figured I would have a go at making one. I have a large chunk of the work done, but there's still some road ahead of me. Is there any interest out there if I finish this and make it available?

Home screen

Library - grid view

Library - list view

Player

When I tried to listen to podcasts during my last car ride, I had the problem that the Audiobookshelf Android client and Android Auto apparently don't like each other very much. When I tried to access my podcasts, Android Auto disconnected altogether, and I had to reconnect the device repeatedly.

A look into the GitHub repository tells me that the existence of some problems with Android Auto is known and being worked on — but also not exactly a top priority.

Is there any alternative client that has a nice interface for listening to podcasts via Audiobookshelf and plays nice with Android Auto?

Anyone know if there’s something out there that would give me whispersync for my ebooks and audiobooks? It’s always been a killer feature back when I bought stuff but since I started self-hosting I’m missing this feature!!

I'm using plappa to stream and download the media, it does work fine but after i finish to listen to a book audible doesnt remove it from the currently listening list. i know it doesnt mark them as completed and it is easily explained online, but when from the web ui i try to remove it i have no response. is there anything i need to do for fixing it?

I, and I think, many others, will pay for a decent audio book player (especially one that access audiobookshelf) for AAOS. To date, there is not one.

Apologies for the all caps & bold, as when I discuss this on different forums, people just don't get it.

Android Automotive Operating System (AAOS) is DIFFERENT from Android Auto (AA).

AAOS is the standard operating system EVs from GM, Polestar, Volvo, Acura, Honda. SOME of these allow dual use with AA, others do not.

I don't know a single thing about programming, though I was pretty good with BASIC back in the 80s.

Per Google:
Android Auto and AAOS should be thought of as different products, not the same app in two places. Android Auto is phone-projected, while AAOS runs natively inside the car, so the app has to be designed for vehicle hardware, system bars, fixed screen behavior, car-specific UX limits, and the automotive Play distribution requirements. In practice, that means rebuilding around Google’s car app templates and quality rules, keeping driving tasks simple and safe, handling parked-only features where needed, testing in the AAOS environment, and meeting car-app standards like no blocked screens, no dead ends, fast response times, and category-specific restrictions before release.

Thanks in Advance!

So im stuck. Goal setup email to send to kindle. Read several post and help docs (to include the app doc page) on set. caveat im using @outlook.com email vice @gmail.com. But have it configure based on what i've found online (tried the alt as well) getting the following error when i try to test (aka test authentication).

Manually sent to my kindle via email, and kindle does receive (added to whitelist in amazon kindle list), so once i can figure out this authentication issue it will work.

Anyone who's figured this out, would be grateful for someone to say what i did wrong so it can be fixed and get it so i can send to my kindle via the app.

What i did.

1. see below for basic config for @outlook.com email in ABS and test (aka authentication) error i received

2. whitelisted email in amazon kindle list

3. manually sent via Thunderbird/outlook application on desktop, and successfully received on kindle

>[EmailManager] Failed to verify SMTP connection config Error: Invalid login: 535 5.7.139 Authentication unsuccessful, SmtpClientAuthentication is disabled for the Mailbox. Visit https://aka.ms/smtp\_auth\_disabled for more information. [BYAPR05CA0037.namprd05.prod.outlook.com 2026-05-03T02:44:36.923Z 08DEA8A6B5804658] at SMTPConnection._formatError (/app/node_modules/nodemailer/lib/smtp-connection/index.js:798:19) at SMTPConnection._actionAUTHComplete (/app/node_modules/nodemailer/lib/smtp-connection/index.js:1577:34) at SMTPConnection.<anonymous> (/app/node_modules/nodemailer/lib/smtp-connection/index.js:1531:18) at SMTPConnection._processResponse (/app/node_modules/nodemailer/lib/smtp-connection/index.js:982:20) at SMTPConnection._onData (/app/node_modules/nodemailer/lib/smtp-connection/index.js:763:14) at SMTPConnection._onSocketData (/app/node_modules/nodemailer/lib/smtp-connection/index.js:195:44) at TLSSocket.emit (node:events:524:28) at addChunk (node:internal/streams/readable:561:12) at readableAddChunkPushByteMode (node:internal/streams/readable:512:3) at Readable.push (node:internal/streams/readable:392:5) { code: 'EAUTH', response: '535 5.7.139 Authentication unsuccessful, SmtpClientAuthentication is disabled for the Mailbox. Visit https://aka.ms/smtp\_auth\_disabled for more information. [BYAPR05CA0037.namprd05.prod.outlook.com 2026-05-03T02:44:36.923Z 08DEA8A6B5804658]', responseCode: 535, command: 'AUTH LOGIN' }

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