# Audiobookshelf progress jumped back or got lost: causes and fixes > Audiobookshelf progress jumps back when an app sends an old position or a book becomes a new item. Find your spot in Listening Sessions and stop it recurring. Source: https://soundleafapp.com/server/audiobookshelf-progress-lost/ Published: 2026-10-18 --- When Audiobookshelf progress jumps back, it's often an app sending an older position, or the book turning into a new item on the server. Your listening sessions are usually still there, so you can find the right spot again. Audiobookshelf keeps one position per book for each user. Every app you listen with reports its position to the server, and the server keeps what it's told. The causes below are the common ways that goes wrong, with the fix for each. ## How do I find my old position again? Your listening sessions are the record of where you've been. Each one holds the book, the device, how long you listened and where you stopped. If you're an admin: 1. Open the Audiobookshelf web app and go to **Settings** > **Listening Sessions**. To see one person only, go to **Settings** > **Users**, pick the user and choose **View All** next to their listening sessions. 2. Find the book. The **Last Time** column is where each session stopped, and **Last Update** is when. 3. For your own sessions, click the time in **Last Time**. Audiobookshelf asks **Start playback for "Book" at 1:23:45?**. Say yes, and the web player starts there and saves that position. 4. For someone else's session, clicking the time plays it in your own account, not theirs. Give them the time instead, and they can skip to it in their app. If you're not an admin, **Your Stats** lists your recent sessions with how long each one was, but not where it stopped. Ask your admin, or use your app's own history (see below). The official Android app also has **Listen History**: open the three-dot menu on a book and choose **History**, then tap a timestamp to jump there. Its documentation says this helps "if the server syncs and overwrites the local progress". ## Why did my progress jump back after listening offline? An app that was offline holds your listening until it can reach the server again. What happens next depends on the app. When an app sends a downloaded book's offline listening as a session of its own, Audiobookshelf compares times (as of v2.37.1). It ignores the session's position if the server already holds a more recent one, so an old offline session shouldn't move you back. When an app reports through a playback session that's open on the server, the server takes the position it's given, newer or not. An app that comes back online and carries on from an old spot can overwrite your newer place. It can go the other way too: the official app's documentation talks about the server syncing and overwriting the progress on the phone. The fix is the same either way: find the right spot in your listening sessions (above). Before you pick up on another device, pause on the one you used last and let it connect to the server for a moment, so its position gets there first. ## Why is my progress back at an old spot after I reopened the book? One user reported a book's progress on the server going from 75% back to 39% when they opened it again later. They traced it to an older playback session that was left open when the app was closed without stopping playback, and was only closed when the book was opened again. The cause isn't confirmed yet, and the issue is open as of October 2026 ([#5627](https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf/issues/5627), reported on v2.37.0). Admins can see sessions that are still open under **Open Listening Sessions** on the **Settings** > **Listening Sessions** page. If it happens to you, look for a newer session for the book in the list and check its **Last Time**. ## Why does Continue Listening show a book twice, or stop updating? Some setups ended up with two progress entries for the same book. From v2.26.0, Audiobookshelf removes duplicate progress entries every time it starts and keeps the newest one. Update to v2.26.0 or later and restart the server. v2.26.0 also fixed Continue Listening not updating after mobile apps synced offline listening, a bug that came in with v2.24.0 ([#4366](https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf/issues/4366)). To clear one book's progress by hand, open the book's page in the web app. The **Your Progress** box has a small x in its corner. Click it and confirm **Are you sure you want to reset your progress?**. To take a book off the shelf without losing your place, use **Remove from Continue Listening** in the book card's menu instead. ## Why did the official app stop syncing after I changed the server address? The official app ties each download to the connection profile (the user and the address) it was downloaded with. Its [connection profiles documentation](https://www.audiobookshelf.org/docs/documentation/mobile-apps/connection-profiles) says progress "will only be synced when connected to the server using the same profile". If you added the same server once for your home address and once for your VPN address, listening on one profile doesn't sync while you're connected through the other. Use one profile for your server where you can, and download through the profile you'll use most. ## Why did I lose progress after renaming or moving a book folder? Progress belongs to the library item, not to the files. If a scan doesn't recognise a renamed or moved folder as the same book, it marks the old item missing and adds a new one with no progress. Your progress and finished mark stay with the missing item. Audiobookshelf first looks for the book at the same path. When the path has changed, it matches the book by the folder's identity on disk (its inode). Renaming or moving a folder in place on a local drive normally keeps that identity, so the book keeps its progress. Some network mounts behave differently. When the path has changed, these can give the folder a new identity, so Audiobookshelf treats it as a new book: - Making a new folder and moving the files into it, which is what some library tools do - Copying the folder and deleting the old one - Moving the folder to another drive or share - A network mount that changes the identity on every rename (reported with an rclone mount) This is an open issue as of October 2026 ([#5379](https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf/issues/5379)), with proposed fixes in review. Until it's fixed: - Rename book folders in place rather than rebuilding them. [Folder structure](https://soundleafapp.com/server/audiobookshelf-folder-structure/) shows which moves keep progress. - If a book has already come back as new, putting the folder back at its old path brings the old item and its progress back on the next scan, as long as you haven't removed the missing item. ## How does SoundLeaf handle progress? SoundLeaf keeps each listening session on the phone until your server confirms it has it, and starts from the newest position, whichever device saved it. After some big jumps, a **Go back** button takes you back, and every book has a **History** tab so you can pick a session and play from where it stopped. You can save a home address and an away address for the same server, so downloads and progress stay together. The details are in [Progress sync](https://soundleafapp.com/docs/progress-sync/).