One Player. Every Device. Any Backend.

Audiobook Librarian is a fully skinnable, cross-platform audiobook player for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux. Bring your own books by connecting to a self-hosted server, Audiobookshelf, Plex, Google Drive, or Dropbox — download them to your phone for offline listening, and pick up exactly where you left off on every device you own.

Get the App See How It Works
Cross-platform Android, iOS & Desktop
Fully skinnable Make it truly yours
Sync everywhere Pick up where you left off
Bring your own backend Self-hosted or cloud, your call

How it works

The app is the product. The backend is just where your books live.

1

Get the app

Install Audiobook Librarian on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, or Linux. Not ready to connect your own library yet? Explore the read-only live demo server first, with zero setup.

2

Point it at your books

Connect to whatever already holds your audiobooks — a self-hosted Ablibrarian Server, Audiobookshelf, Plex, or a Google Drive or Dropbox folder. Scan a QR code or enter a URL. If your backend doesn't already sync your progress and stats across devices, pair it with Ablibrarian Lite to add that.

3

Make it yours

Change the player's entire look with the built-in skin editor and live preview, or browse and fork designs from the community gallery. Your position, bookmarks, and stats sync across every device automatically.

A player built around how you actually listen

The client app is the core product — backends are just the plumbing behind it.

One app, every platform

Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux from a single shared codebase, so the experience — and your library — feels the same no matter which device you pick up.

Playback controls built for audiobooks

Variable speed from 0.5x to 3x (up to 5x in precise mode) with independent pitch control, a sleep timer with fade-out or end-of-chapter stop, chapter navigation, configurable skip intervals, bookmarks, and smart rewind when you resume. Built for long-form audio, not music.

Deep skin customization

A full visual editor with live preview lets you reposition, recolor, and restyle every element of the player — buttons, progress bars, backgrounds, fonts, and animations. Set up skins that switch automatically by book, time of day, or battery level.

Sync across every device

Start on your phone during your commute, pick up on your desktop at home. Position, bookmarks, and listening history sync automatically, with an offline queue and conflict resolution so a dead connection never costs you your place.

Bring your own backend

Connect to a self-hosted Ablibrarian Server, Audiobookshelf, Plex, Google Drive, or Dropbox as your library source, then add Ablibrarian Lite alongside it if you want cross-device sync and stats it doesn't already provide. The full Ablibrarian Server already includes sync and stats, so Lite isn't needed there. Every backend besides the full Ablibrarian Server is alpha-quality right now — full support is coming soon.

Download for offline listening

Pull books from any connected backend straight onto your device before you lose signal — on a flight, a hike, or a subway commute. Progress keeps recording locally and syncs the moment you're back online.

Drive Mode

A large-button overlay with play/pause and skip controls that works on top of any skin, plus a hold-to-unlock lock screen. Bright and dark variants for day or night driving — fiddling with tiny buttons at 60 mph is a terrible idea.

Listening statistics

Track your listening habits with daily, weekly, and yearly trends. See your top books, streaks, badges, and time spent listening — all synced across every device you use.

Self-hosted server option

Want full control over your library? Run the open-source Ablibrarian Server on your own hardware. It serves M4B, M4A, MP3, AAC, WAV, and FLAC directly from your storage, with AI-powered metadata imports, multi-library support, and sync/stats already built in — no monthly fees, no one else deciding what you can listen to. Learn more.

Free books via LibriVox

The self-hosted Ablibrarian Server can import LibriVox's entire public-domain catalog straight into your library with one command, giving you — and anyone you invite — thousands of free audiobooks alongside your own collection.

Private by default

No advertising networks, no analytics dashboards, no selling your listening habits. Self-host your backend and your data never leaves your infrastructure.

Open-source backends

The Ablibrarian Server and Ablibrarian Lite are both open source under the AGPL-3.0 license — audit them, modify them, or self-host them exactly as published, with no vendor lock-in. The Audiobook Librarian client apps themselves are closed source, distributed free through the app stores and as direct downloads.

Bring Your Own Books

Audiobook Librarian doesn't ship its own book store, and it doesn't force you into one hosting arrangement. Pick one backend as your library's source, and the client connects to it — you decide how, and where, your library lives.

The full Ablibrarian Server exists for one purpose: hosting your own audiobook library — the files you already own, imported with AI-assisted metadata, on hardware you control. It's not a shared catalog or a store; every install is a private library for you and anyone you choose to give access to. It's also the only backend with sync, stats, and achievements built in, so it's the only one that never needs a Lite companion alongside it.

  • Ablibrarian Server — open source, hosts your own files, Docker-ready with a zero-config SQLite option or your own MySQL/Postgres, on a home server, NAS, or VPS. Can also import LibriVox's free public-domain catalog with one command
  • Ablibrarian Lite — open source, doesn't host any books; add it alongside a backend that lacks cross-device sync and stats Alpha
  • Audiobookshelf or Plex — already running one? Connect directly, no migration needed Alpha
  • Google Drive or Dropbox — point at a folder of audio files, no server required at all Alpha

Alpha backends are usable today, but full support is still coming — the Ablibrarian Server is the only backend we consider production-ready right now.

Get the Server on GitHub

Try It First — Live Demo

Want to see the full server before you install anything? Explore a live demo at demo.ablibrarian.com:

  • Regular user account — user / user
  • Admin account, to see the library-management tools — admin / admin

The demo is shared publicly and read-only — browse, search, and listen freely, but you can't add, edit, or delete books, and any account changes won't be saved. When you're ready to host your own library, get the open-source server above.

Open the Demo

Free Books with LibriVox

LibriVox is a volunteer project that produces free public-domain audiobook recordings. LibriVox import is built into the self-hosted Ablibrarian Server — run the import command and their entire catalog becomes part of your library, alongside your own files.

All LibriVox recordings are released into the public domain worldwide — free to use, forever. Once imported, stream them, download them for offline listening, and they sync just like the rest of your library.

Hosted Lite — Coming Soon

Don't want to run even the lightweight Lite server yourself? A hosted version is coming soon for $12/year, just to cover hosting costs. It's an alternative for people who'd rather not self-host at all — we still expect most people to self-host Lite or the full Ablibrarian Server for themselves and the people they share access with. Like self-hosted Lite, the hosted version never stores your audiobook files.

Get the App

Connect to your backend of choice — on any device.

Android

Public beta on Google Play

Join the Beta

iOS

Apple App Store

Coming Soon

Desktop

Windows, macOS & Linux

Coming Soon

Frequently Asked Questions

The stuff people actually want to know.

Some backend always sits behind your library, but it doesn't have to be one you personally run. Connect to an Audiobookshelf or Plex server someone else already manages, or point the app at a Google Drive or Dropbox folder. To get full library management, AI-powered imports, shared libraries, and the option to import LibriVox's free public-domain catalog, self-host the open-source Ablibrarian Server yourself.

Yes — this is the point of the app. Connect to the self-hosted Ablibrarian Server, Audiobookshelf, Plex, Google Drive, or Dropbox as your library source (all currently alpha-quality except the full Ablibrarian Server, with full support coming soon). The client connects to one primary backend at a time; the one exception is Ablibrarian Lite, which isn't a library source at all — you can add it alongside another backend to bring in cross-device sync and stats that backend doesn't already have. The full Ablibrarian Server already includes sync and stats, so there's no need to pair it with Lite.

The client apps play M4B, M4A, MP3, AAC, WAV, and FLAC across Android, iOS, and desktop platforms. M4B is the primary format with full chapter extraction. A self-hosted Ablibrarian Server serves these directly from your storage — no conversion required.

The app syncs your position, bookmarks, and listening history immediately when you finish a session or a book, in the background every 30 seconds while you're actively listening, and whenever you open or close the app. If you go offline, changes queue up locally and flush the moment you reconnect. If two devices report different positions, you get a conflict resolution dialog to choose which one to keep.

Skins are shareable packages that completely change the player's visual appearance — backgrounds, colors, fonts, button shapes, progress-bar styles, and animations, down to the position of every individual element. Themes are color schemes that work across skins. You can set up rules so a skin auto-switches based on the book you're listening to, the time of day, or battery level. Build your own with the in-app visual editor and live preview, browse the community gallery, or fork any existing design to make it yours. Drive Mode is a large-button overlay that works on top of any skin.

If you self-host the Ablibrarian Server, yes. As the administrator, you can invite other users to access your collection. Each user gets their own account with independent playback progress, bookmarks, playlists, and listening stats — all against the same shared library. Role-based permissions control who can do what.

This is a feature of the self-hosted Ablibrarian Server: point it at a directory of audiobooks and it can extract titles, authors, narrators, series names, series numbers, and genres from filenames and audio file tags. It supports multiple AI providers (Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, OpenAI) and flags low-confidence results for manual review. You can also pull metadata from Google Books, Audible, and other external sources.

It depends on the backend you choose. When you self-host the Ablibrarian Server, your audiobook files, listening history, and personal data never leave your own infrastructure — no advertising networks, no analytics, no third-party tracking. If you connect a third-party backend like Audiobookshelf, Plex, Google Drive, or Dropbox, that service's own privacy practices apply. The server and Lite code are open source so you can verify exactly what they do; the client apps are closed source.

The client apps are free with no subscription or in-app purchases. If you self-host the Ablibrarian Server or Ablibrarian Lite, you only need hardware to run it — any Linux machine will do, from a home server to a cloud VPS. If you use AI-powered imports on the full server, you'll need an API key from a supported provider (Gemini has a free tier). If you'd rather not self-host even Lite, a hosted Lite subscription is coming soon for $12/year, just to cover hosting costs — it never stores audiobook files, only sync and stats. There's no hosted version of the full Ablibrarian Server; hosting other people's audiobook files brings storage and copyright issues we're not taking on.

Yes. The client apps can download books from any connected backend — your self-hosted server, Audiobookshelf, Plex, Google Drive, or Dropbox — straight to your device for offline listening. Playback progress is recorded locally and syncs automatically the moment you reconnect.