Prologue can come with you to Audiobookshelf
Moving from Plex to Audiobookshelf doesn’t automatically mean leaving Prologue. It supports both servers, including using them together. If part of your collection still lives in Plex, that’s a good reason to keep it installed.
SoundLeaf is built for Audiobookshelf. You bring your server and your books; we concentrate on how that library works on the iPhone, in the car and away from a connection. For a collection already in Audiobookshelf, you can try SoundLeaf without moving the media again.
A player you can settle into
Prologue puts plenty of control around the audiobook: per-book settings, an equalizer, Voice Boost, smart rewind and chapter or duration sleep timers. Its reading list keeps upcoming listens organized, and listening history helps you look back over what you’ve finished.
If you adjust sound for different narrators or want settings attached to a particular book, those are useful reasons to prefer Prologue. They affect the part of the app you use every time you press play.
SoundLeaf’s player gives you book and chapter progress, bookmarks, voice boost and auto rewind, with the reader and queue close by. Its design continues from the library into the player rather than changing character when the cover opens. Themes are a matter of taste; the screenshots are there so you can judge that taste for yourself.
The chapter you fell asleep halfway through
A sleep timer solves the problem of audio running all night. Finding your place the next morning is a separate problem.
SoundLeaf’s Smart Sleep can start a timer when you begin listening during chosen night hours. It can restart the countdown when you interact, fade the audio out, and return to where the fade began. Bookmarks around the session give you places to look when the last thing you remember is somewhere before the timer stopped.
You choose which behaviors to enable. If bedtime listening is a daily habit, setting those preferences once can save the repeated routine of starting a timer, extending it and hunting backward in the morning. Prologue also has a sleep timer; SoundLeaf’s particular appeal is the way these bedtime choices work together.
A reading list and reading the book
Prologue’s reading list helps organize audiobooks you intend to hear. SoundLeaf’s EPUB reader adds the text itself to the listening experience.
With a matching ebook, Read Along follows the narrator and turns pages automatically. You can glance at a name, reread a sentence or switch to quiet reading. Font, spacing and page colors can be adjusted independently of the app theme, and synchronization runs on the iPhone.
That’s a reason to choose SoundLeaf if you already own both formats. You don’t need to make the book an audio-only activity just because you started it with headphones. Different editions and abridged recordings can make matching unreliable, so the EPUB should correspond to the narration.
Between books, there are podcasts
Prologue’s focus is audiobooks. SoundLeaf gives podcasts a full place in the same app: a separate home, queue and downloaded view, with rules for each subscription.
A daily news show and a long interview series can use different speeds, episode order and retention. You can limit automatic downloads, decide when played files are removed and send newly downloaded episodes into Up Next. Published timed transcripts can follow the conversation and stay with the episode offline.
For someone who alternates a novel with a morning briefing and a weekend interview, that may be a bigger difference than any individual playback button. It’s also free in SoundLeaf, along with manual downloads, the EPUB reader and the Watch app. Pro adds audiobook Smart Downloads and premium customization. Prologue offers Premium and a separate Watch upgrade.
Bring your place, and keep your history
Prologue can store bookmarks, history, listening sessions and its reading list in iCloud. Those records are not necessarily the same as the progress another app can retrieve from Audiobookshelf. Before switching, let Prologue sync and check your current position in the server’s web player. Keep it installed until you’ve accounted for the records you care about.
There’s a good case for staying if you rely on Plex, Prologue’s equalizer or per-book controls. SoundLeaf makes more sense if you want reading beside the audio, podcasts with their own rules, and a library that remains browsable away from the server. Try a familiar book through an evening, including the part where you put the phone down.