A small, focused companion service. It doesn't host your audiobooks — it just syncs your listening position, stats, bookmarks, and achievements across devices, for whichever backend you're actually getting your books from.
Some backends — Google Drive, Dropbox, or a plain folder of audio files — are great at holding your books but don't track anything about how you're listening to them across devices. Ablibrarian Lite fills exactly that gap, and nothing more.
It's deliberately narrow: sync listening events and playback position, calculate stats and streaks, award and sync achievement badges, and sync bookmarks, tags, listening goals, and friend connections. It does not host audiobook files or catalog metadata, import media, or provide skins, themes, or recommendations — that's what the full Ablibrarian Server is for.
Playback position and listening events sync across every device you use, even though the actual audio files live somewhere else entirely.
Listening statistics and streaks are calculated from your synced listening events, the same way they work on the full server.
Badges are awarded and kept in sync across devices as you hit listening milestones.
Bookmarks, reading tags, and listening goals sync the same way position and stats do.
Connect with other Lite users to share listening milestones and goals.
Lite never stores an audiobook file or catalog entry — that keeps it small, cheap to run, and easy to self-host on nearly anything.
Self-hosting is the primary way to run Lite — it's small enough to deploy with
a single docker compose up, using a bundled SQLite database (MySQL
also supported), on almost anything: a home server, a NAS, or a low-cost VPS.
A hosted, subscription version of Lite is coming soon — $12/year, just to cover hosting costs — for people who'd rather not run even Lite themselves. It's meant as an alternative for the rare case where self-hosting isn't an option, not the primary way we expect people to use it: we still expect most people to self-host either Lite or the full Ablibrarian Server for themselves and the friends and family they share access with. There will not be a hosted version of the full Ablibrarian Server, since that would mean hosting other people's copyrighted audiobook files.
View Lite on GitHubWant to host your own audiobook files too, not just sync and stats?
See the full Ablibrarian Server