Frequently asked questions

SoundLeaf is an iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch app for Audiobookshelf. It connects to your own Audiobookshelf server and plays your audiobooks and podcasts, with downloads, CarPlay, an ebook reader and widgets. It also runs on Apple silicon Macs as the iPad app.

Read more in the launch announcement on Reddit.

Audiobookshelf is a free, open-source audiobook and podcast server you run yourself. It keeps your library, its details and your listening progress, and streams them to your devices.

See the Audiobookshelf GitHub repository or the official website to learn more.

Yes. SoundLeaf is an app for Audiobookshelf, so you need an account on an Audiobookshelf server, either your own or one someone runs for you. The server quick start gets one running.

No. SoundLeaf is a separate app for Audiobookshelf, not the official one. The official Audiobookshelf iPhone app is in beta on TestFlight, and that beta is often full.

SoundLeaf is on the App Store now. Download SoundLeaf on the App Store. More on your choices in is there an Audiobookshelf iPhone app?

No. SoundLeaf is only for Apple devices: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, CarPlay, and Mac through the iPad app.

SoundLeaf needs iOS 17.6 or later on iPhone, or iPadOS 17.6 or later on iPad. The Apple Watch app needs watchOS 11 or later. On a Mac with Apple silicon, the iPad app runs too. See iPad and Mac.

Yes. The iPad version of SoundLeaf runs on Macs with Apple silicon, from the App Store on your Mac. The ebook reader can show two pages side by side, and the arrow keys turn pages. See iPad and Mac.

Yes, SoundLeaf is free to download and use. Everything that plays, syncs or downloads is free: downloads, Smart Downloads, podcasts and auto-download, the ebook reader and Read Along, the Apple Watch app, CarPlay, widgets, Siri Shortcuts, SharePlay and listening stats.

Pro and Supporter add themes and app icons, and Supporter adds a badge and an optional spot on the Hall of Supporters. See Pro and Supporter.

SoundLeaf Pro is a one-time purchase that unlocks 21 more themes, including Forest, Espresso and the four Catppuccin themes, and 19 more app icons. It works with Family Sharing. Nothing else is behind it. Prices are in Settings > Premium and vary by country. See Pro and Supporter.

Supporter is for people who want to back ongoing development. It includes everything in Pro, plus 8 Supporter themes, 33 Supporter app icons on four shelves (Botanical, Precious, Artisan and Nocturne), a Supporter badge, and a spot on the Hall of Supporters if you want one.

You can pay monthly, yearly, or once for permanent Supporter access with no renewal. Prices are in Settings > Premium and vary by country. Permanent Supporter comes in three amounts, and all three unlock the same things. Paying more is optional.

After permanent Supporter, you can leave an optional one-time tip. A tip doesn't unlock anything extra.

SoundLeaf Pro does. Buy it once and up to five family members in your Apple Family Sharing group get the Pro themes and icons at no extra cost, as long as purchase sharing is turned on. Supporter (monthly, yearly or permanent) and tips are not shared. See Pro and Supporter.

SoundLeaf plays your Audiobookshelf books and podcasts, downloads them for offline listening, and syncs your progress. The full list:

• Audiobook and podcast libraries, with series, authors, genres and collections
• Up Next for books and episodes, playlists, and the next book in a series playing on its own
• Free downloads and Smart Downloads, and a library that still opens with no connection
• Progress sync with your Audiobookshelf server
• Several accounts and servers, switched without signing out
• An Apple Watch app that plays with the phone left at home
• CarPlay, with library and account switching, Up Next and a downloads-only filter
• An ebook reader for EPUBs, with Read Along and Play from this page
• Optional ebooks from Calibre or BookOrbit, and KOReader position sync
• Podcast Discover, transcripts, Favorites and your own groups
• SharePlay, to listen together over FaceTime
• A sleep timer that fades out, stops at the end of this or the next chapter, and can start itself at night
• Speed up to 5x, per book, series or show
• Auto rewind, Voice Boost, bookmarks and chapter navigation
• Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, and Siri Shortcuts
• Listening stats, streaks and goals
• Tap your phone on an NFC tag (a small sticker it can read), or scan a QR code, to start a book
• Customize Home, separate light and dark themes, seven font styles, and 55 app icons

The newest saved position wins. There's no prompt to choose. If your server has a position more than a minute away from yours while you're paused, SoundLeaf moves there.

A smaller move says "Picked up at (time) from another device". A move of five minutes or more shows a Before sync bar with Go back instead, for 30 seconds of playback. See how progress syncs.

No. Up Next stays on the device. Playlists and book bookmarks sync with your Audiobookshelf server. Podcast episode bookmarks stay on the device. See queue, playlists and bookmarks.

There's no setting to turn off the progress bar on the iPhone lock screen. For books with chapters, switching the player's progress bar to Chapter limits the lock screen bar to the current chapter, so a stray swipe can only move you within it. See player settings.

Yes. Downloaded books and episodes play with no signal at all, and SoundLeaf keeps a copy of your library on the phone so you can still browse it. Progress you make offline syncs to your server when you're back online. See listen offline.

Smart Downloads downloads a book for you once you've listened to it for a set time, 10 minutes to start with. It's free, and you turn it on in Settings.

Yes, and downloads are free for everyone. Tap the download button on a book or episode and it plays with no connection. Podcast auto-download is free too. See downloads.

Yes. In the car you can browse your books on shelves, open your podcasts, see Up Next, switch library or account, and show only what's downloaded. You can change speed and save a bookmark from the car screen too.

See the CarPlay guide.

Yes. The library switcher moves between libraries in a couple of taps, with no signing out. Wherever the tab bar shows, press and hold it to open the library list. You can switch from the CarPlay screen too.

Yes. Save as many accounts as you like, on one server or several, and switch between them without signing out. Each account keeps its own progress and downloads. See multiple accounts.

Yes. Browse, play and download episodes from your Audiobookshelf podcast libraries, with Up Next, transcripts, per-show settings and auto-download. Discover finds new shows, and a server admin can add them to the server straight from the app. See podcasts.

Yes, and reading is free. If a book on your server has an EPUB, a Read button appears on its screen and in the player. Your place syncs with the Audiobookshelf web reader. Read Along follows the narration on the page when the audiobook is downloaded and your device supports speech recognition. See the ebook reader guide.

No. SoundLeaf reads the EPUB attached to the book on your Audiobookshelf server. Calibre and BookOrbit are optional extra places to find an ebook for a book that doesn't have one. See Calibre and KOReader.

It moves the audio to the page you're reading. In the ebook reader, tap the ... button beside Read Along and choose Play from this page. SoundLeaf looks for that passage in the audio and plays from there. It needs the audiobook downloaded to your device.

Yes, free with SoundLeaf. Send a book or episode to the watch, and once it's downloaded you can listen with the phone left at home. The watch can also be a remote for the phone. Progress made on the watch syncs to your server when the watch app reconnects to your phone.

See the Apple Watch guide.

Yes. There are nine widgets, for the Home Screen and the Lock Screen: Now Playing, Recently Played, Listening, Goal, Your Listening, Library, By Library, Book Cover, and Cover & Progress. The sleep timer counts down on the lock screen, and Siri Shortcuts can resume your book hands-free.

See the widgets and Siri guide.

1. Type your server address, for example https://books.example.com or http://192.168.0.200:13378
2. Type your Audiobookshelf username and password, then tap Sign In
3. Or, if your server has single sign-on, tap its OpenID sign-in button instead

See getting started, and what to type as your server address.

There isn't one. The first time you open a new Audiobookshelf server in a browser, you create the root (admin) account and set its password. Audiobookshelf lets you leave it blank, but it's safer to set one. If you've forgotten a password, see reset an Audiobookshelf password.

No. SoundLeaf doesn't support API key login. Sign in with your Audiobookshelf username and password, or with OpenID if your server has it set up.

Yes, both HTTP and HTTPS work. If you leave off https:// or http://, the sign-in screen tries HTTPS first and then HTTP, so a plain HTTP server still connects. Typing http://192.168.0.200:13378 in full skips the failed try.

The home and away addresses in Server Details are used exactly as written, so they need http:// or https:// on the front.

Yes. If your Audiobookshelf server has OpenID set up, a sign-in button for it appears on the sign-in screen. Authelia, Authentik, Keycloak and others work.

Your server admin has to add soundleaf://oauth to Allowed Mobile Redirect URIs in Audiobookshelf's OpenID Connect settings first. Without it, sign-in fails. See OpenID sign-in.

Yes. Set a local address for your home Wi-Fi and one or more addresses for everywhere else, and SoundLeaf switches between them on its own. Open Settings > Servers, then tap Server Details under your server. See home and away addresses.

Yes. A plain Cloudflare tunnel works like any other address. If Cloudflare Access asks for an email code, make a service token, give it a Service Auth policy in Access, and add it in SoundLeaf as CF-Access-Client-Id and CF-Access-Client-Secret headers. SoundLeaf sends them whenever it talks to your Audiobookshelf server, including for downloads.

Step by step in the Cloudflare Access guide. Tailscale works too: see the Tailscale guide.

Port 13378. In Docker the container listens on port 80, and the usual mapping 13378:80 puts it on port 13378 of your computer, so the address is something like http://192.168.1.50:13378. See what port Audiobookshelf uses.

No. Audiobookshelf has no relay service like Plex, so your phone has to reach the server itself. Download books before you leave, or set up remote access. The usual choices are Tailscale (a private network for your own devices), a reverse proxy (a public address on your own domain, set up with HTTPS), or a Cloudflare Tunnel. See listen away from home.

Since v2.18.0 the Audiobookshelf web page lives at /audiobookshelf, and the server sends you there. Nothing is broken, and old links still work. Apps keep using the address you already have. See why Audiobookshelf adds /audiobookshelf.

No. Audiobookshelf can use the same audiobook folders as Plex, but it doesn't import anything from Plex, so every book starts unplayed. You can select many books in the Audiobookshelf web page and mark them finished together. See move from Plex to Audiobookshelf.

One cause is MP3 audio inside the M4B instead of AAC, which can play with no sound on iPhone. Open the book in the Audiobookshelf web page and check the codec in its audio files list. If it says mp3, re-encode the book to AAC. MP3 files, and M4B files with AAC inside, are the safe formats. See audiobook formats on iPhone.

Not in Audiobookshelf. There's no global setting: auto-download, and how many episodes to keep, are set on each show. See podcasts in Audiobookshelf.

The folder picker shows the folders inside the container, not the ones on your computer. Map your folder in the volumes: section of your compose file, then pick the inside path, usually /audiobooks. See can't see your folder.

Usually, yes, if you rename the folder in place. Making a new folder and moving the files into it, or copying the folder and deleting the old one, can make Audiobookshelf add the book again as new, with no progress. See folder structure.

It can land a little off in books that repeat similar phrasing. To point at a more specific passage, touch and hold the text, select at least three words, and choose Play audio from here. If the jump was a big one, the Go back banner returns you to where you were.

Usually not. It means the phone can't contact the watch app right now, so the dot is grey and not orange. iOS mostly reports the watch as connected while SoundLeaf is open on it and the watch is in range, so a closed watch app often reads as not connected.

To help queued transfers along, open SoundLeaf on the watch with your phone nearby.

Type http:// at the start of the address:

http://192.168.0.200:13378

Without it, the sign-in screen tries HTTPS first and only tries HTTP after that fails, so it looks like a hang before it works. If it still won't connect, check the port and open the same address in Safari on the phone. The connection troubleshooting guide goes through the rest.

Not yet. Swiping down on the full player shrinks it back to the mini player, but the mini player itself stays at the bottom of the screen.

A way to put away the mini player is on the list. Collections, Customize Home and playing the next book in a series have already shipped.

No dates. It's one person building this, and the list changes based on what people ask for on GitHub.

• Open an issue or a feature request on GitHub
• Join the discussion on the Audiobookshelf subreddit
• Post in the launch thread on Reddit

• Buy Pro, or become a Supporter
• Leave a review on the App Store
• Report bugs and send feedback
• Tell other Audiobookshelf users about SoundLeaf