Shoutout to Libation, that allows you to download and deDRM your Audible library.
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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Oooooo, but there be dragons.
Documentation? Yer lookin' at it This is a single-developer personal passion project. Support, response, updates, enhancements, bug fixes etc are as my free time allows I have a full-time job, a life, and a finite attention span. Therefore a lot of time can potentially go by with no improvements of any kind
It's good they put it up front though. There can be a lot of entitlement with oss users sometimes and setting expectations can help alleviate that.
Actually good for the developer. He is doing it out of his passion and faith in OSS. What more should we want of him? The dude is already a hero.
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You don't really need much documentation. You set it up on windows once, which is pretty intuitive and then you copy the config to your server and run it headless. It pulls your library in fixed intervals. I haven't touched it once in the year it is running now
It works now, even if later he gets tired of it and walks away it still works now.
I actually used a Windows app, de audible I think to get all mine out years ago. But I am always glad to see alternatives.
Thank you for this
Awesome.
In addition to self-hosting, I'll throw out a few other alternatives:
Free:
Paid:
- For a user experience closer to Audible, I went with libro.fm. You can pick a local, independent bookstore that gets a portion of the sales. Their catalog is pretty extensive as well, have been able to find most books I'm interested in. Books are DRM-free and you can pause your membership.
- Downpour - DRM-free as well
DRM-free is important IMO because otherwise you're at the mercy of the platform and if the company ever changes its Terms of Use or wipes your account, you lose your purchases. Amazon have remotely deleted books from users' libraries in the past or replaced them with modified copies (e.g. Roald Dahl books). Kindle announced last month they won't let you download your eBooks via USB so it's possible Audible could see changes for the worse in the future as well.
I always mention whenever I see libro.fm brought up: if you don't have a local store you want to support for whatever reasons, Firestorm in Asheville, North Carolina is a fantastic refuge for the local queer community, it's a worker cooperative, and they're struggling to survive. Please consider them if there isn't another local place in your own community. With the big book stores and then Amazon, a lot of communities don't have a physical local shop anymore, so if someone has a plug for their local, I think it's worth making on these kinds of threads.
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Reminder that "self hosting" media is an extra step, you can do the same with "saving media locally and playing it"
But how will I bring up my NAS in conversations at parties?
Tell them you'll bring the music but instead play books at them during quiet times...lord of the rings anyone?
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The author actually explains that his original solution was just saving them locally on his phone and playing them from there, but that was too much legwork for his wife to want to switch from a cloud service like Audible. So the whole self hosting part is to become “Audible” for his wife lol.
I feel like the answer to the question "why are you self-hosting" is almost always "because my significant other/family/friends use it"
One of the big draws for me is the scrobbling, across a lot of my self-hosted apps. Comics, shows, books, whatever. I love that I can watch some of a show, or read some of a comic series, then go months without worrying about where I was before picking it back up again. I can pick up where I left off, which is one area where simply having files on a file-system falls short.
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That's great, until you want to switch devices while still keeping your progress.
I love Audiobookshelf, my main complaint is the Android app crashes when killed by Android (so when I try to open it I get a message about it crashing and then have to reopen it). That might just be a me thing.
I used the tool Libation to download my Audible books. There was a Firefox extension to download audiobooks from Libby but it's no longer working because Libby changed something and the dev didn't have time to fight the battle, anyone have a good solution to that?
I love Audiobookshelf, my main complaint is the Android app crashes when killed by Android (so when I try to open it I get a message about it crashing and then have to reopen it). That might just be a me thing.
Hmm, I've been using Audiobookshelf on my Android phone(s) for at least the last year without issues like that. Are you using the F-droid or Play Store version? I'm using F-droid if that matters.
F-Droid. Might be relevant that I'm on GrapheneOS.
Hmm. Perhaps. I'm just on stock Android, so I couldn't even test further if I wanted to :( Sorry, mate.
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Also consider the Lissen app for audiobookshelf on F-Droid. I've been using it and find it to be a much more enjoyable experience
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Nice.
I was paying for a family subscription for a major audiobook provider for a while. That changed after I used a 3rd party app to listen to their audiobooks and apparently broke their eula, and they were threatening to sue me and my 7 year old kid for it. Kinda killed the spirit to pay for their service.
For those on iOS looking for a companion app, check out plappa for a great app to access your Audiobookshelf/jellyfin instance. It works flawlessly for me, no data collection, and it allows downloading books in advance for on the go if you choose not to have external access to your server.
Yes, I am aware of where this is posted and am prepared for my inevitable crucifixion as a result of this observation. But, like... is this really a problem that requires a self hosting solution? That seems like quite the overcomplication to me unless you absolutely require access to your entire selection on multiple devices that will have 24/7 network connections for some reason. I imagine most people actually don't. And if you do, a simple file share is probably a less convoluted solution, and surely already exists on the server you already have.
MP3's take up negligible amounts of storage space on modern devices and can be played on anything, and can be easily taken with you anywhere including out of network range.
I guess teaching people how to drag-and-drop audio files onto their phone and open them with VLC would be a much shorter article.
(Ed: Punctuation.)
Yeeeah, gonna have to disagree with that. Having dead simple access to your library on any device is amazing. ABS syncs your listening position between devices, has offline downloading, supports rich metadata, collections, customized sleep timers, and quite a bit more.
Mostly agree. Audiobooks are not my thing, but of it were - I'd look for a way to resume where I left off, maybe some recommendation on what to listen to next.
In general - once you're into hosting stuff and past the initial barrier of setting everything up - adding another service is dead simple.
MP3s do not show artwork or keep your place, and they don't sync across devices.
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Yup. Audio books aren't very big once converted to a reasonable format and with the amount of space these days, I can comfortably keep a dozen on me at all times.
I'd much rather choose the book I want to listen to by clicking on the book's cover than look for it on one of my many harddrives
I've got 128GB on my phone and instead of compressing images and videos to 480p I sync them to my server with immich. Same for music and movies.
I only store the apps and local info on my device. Everything that has to be stored long term sits on a cheap hdd. I can select the audiobook whenever I want to instead of in advance.
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For any other Audiobookshelf users looking at that article and thinking, "Wait, how did they get that nice wooden shelf look in the UI?"
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Nice article! I've been using Audiobookshelf (win) for a year and a bit. Works great with one exception, I can't upgrade it past 2.17.16 on my Win11 box (non-docker). Any attempt to take it past that gives a non-responsive server. Not a big deal because that version is pretty stable.
Prologue on iOS does a great job of device syncing my Plex audiobook library. And no subscription requirement for once.
What I really want is a a similar project for epub files. I’ve not been able to find a web based library that allows easy download and auth based management.
Audiobookshelf supports EPUB files and other ebook formats. You can put them alongside audiobooks (offering a UI option to either read or listen) or use purely ebooks although obviously a little overkill if you aren't using the audio features at all
I use Calibre to manage my librairy on my NAS, and COPS (https://github.com/seblucas/cops) to access it from anywhere. COPS just read the Calibre database saved on the NAS, and displays it as a self-hosted web site with all categories (authors, ratings, languages,...) and download links.
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That's a solved problem, the answer is Calibre. If you want a nicer interface and some other fluff you can install calibre-web as a frontend for it. Calibre-web is very interesting if you have a Kobo e-reader because you can configure it as your store and get the books you add to calibre to magically appear on the e-reader with a nice download button next to it.
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I knew it was gonna be Audiobookshelf as soon as I saw the headline. Great software. My wife has all her books hosted on it on our NAS, and it barely takes any resources. I have it hosted alongside Plex in a VM on a teeny tiny Ryzen 5500u Mini-PC.
Edit - I'm even more amused that I have almost the same configuration as the article author, Proxmox server hosting the guest, just mine's an Ubuntu 24.04 server VM instead of LXC. That little server hosts Plex, Audiobookshelf, Lyrion, and AssetUPnP, pretty much handles all my media stuff, plus a separate Home Assistant VM, and has resources to spare.
I use the Voice app on Fdriod but it doesnt do syncing that I know about. I fully recommend instead of using Audible.
If you dont own the files, then you dont really own the media.
AudioAnchor + Syncthing for Android via F-Droid has been my mobile audiobook app stack. Takes some setting up and concatenating audiobook mp3s into mkv's for convenience, but I haven't had to touch it since... 2020?
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