Audiobookshelf
A self hosted server for your audiobooks and podcasts
Audiobookshelf serves your audiobook and podcast files to its web player and mobile apps, keeping your progress in sync across devices. It is GPL-3.0 and can also download and archive podcast episodes for you.
Best for when
- you own audiobooks as files and want a proper player with synced progress
- you want podcast episodes archived on your own disk
- you want offline listening on your phone
Watch out for
- the mobile apps differ between platforms, so test the one you use
- metadata matching for books is imperfect and needs manual fixes
- remote access needs a VPN or a tunnel, plus a plan for who can sign in
Built for listening, not watching
A general media server handles audiobooks awkwardly. Audiobookshelf understands chapters, series, narrators and progress per book, and its apps support offline downloads and sleep timers, which is what a listener actually needs.
It doubles as a podcast manager: subscribe to feeds and it downloads new episodes to your own disk, so episodes you care about do not vanish when a show removes them.
Running it
It is a single container with modest RAM needs. Storage is your audio library plus cached covers and metadata. Back up the config and metadata folders, since your listening progress lives there.
Remote listening is the point, so plan access: a VPN like Tailscale keeps it private and works with the mobile apps. The apps on iOS have been more limited than on Android, so check before you commit a family to it.
