In redesigning the iOS Music application for iOS 8.4, Apple removed support for audiobooks from the app, electing to move it to the iBooks app. iBooks itself has gained an all-new audio player with support for swiping gestures to fast forward or rewind, view a chapter list, and more.
The Collections list in iBooks now has a separate setting for audiobooks that allows you to quickly separate them from the rest of your library. After selecting an audiobook, you’ll see a new player screen that resembles that of the new Music app.
There are a few key differences between the iBooks player and the Music player. A button in the upper right corner opens up a chapter list that allows you to jump to any point in the book. Settings for speed and a sleep timer are also present, and a share button allows you to send a link to your current book to your friends. The share button also works for books from sources like Audible, but doesn’t include the link, which makes it a bit useless in those cases.
The skip-ahead and skip-back options that prevoiusly existed are also still here, but no have gesture controls that can optionally be used to trigger them. By swiping left or ride on the album cover at the top of the screen, you can quickly jump backwards or forwards by 15 seconds. By dragging and holding the artwork in either direction, you can accelerate the fast forward rate, eventually skipping over more than a minute at a time.
Audiobooks now also display in their own application on the iOS CarPlay interface. It features the iBooks icon on the home screen and support for typical playback controls like skipping ahead 15 seconds at a time.
iOS 8.4 was released to developers in beta yesterday and will lay the groundwork for Apple’s revamped Beats Music-based streaming service, which is expected to debut at WWDC on June 8th.
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Nice info, Mike – thanks! Any word on whether audiobooks purchased through iTunes / iBooks are now redownloadable? To date, they are not, so if you delete your local copy, you have to go through customer service to get it back. Additionally, if you buy an audiobook through iTunes on your Mac today, and download it there, the only way to get it onto your phone is via the whole iTunes sync thing (nightmare). I’m wondering if the method of getting audiobooks from Mac to iPhone is easier in the 8.4 beta (maybe they just show up automatically via iCloud?)
“The skip-ahead and skip-back options that prevoiusly existed are also still here, but no have gesture controls that can optionally be used to trigger them. By swiping left or ride on the album cover at the top of the screen, you can quickly jump backwards or forwards by 15 seconds.”
Proof read please…”but no have” and “swiping left or ride”
When I read this article’s title, I thought it meant that iOS now has a CarPlay app separate from Settings…
How is this swipe and hold on the book cover going to work on German car systems that don’t have touch screens, instead preferring a control wheel ?
Chapter support has been missing since iOS 7. There’s a very lengthy thread on the Apple User Forum, mostly complaints and cries of disbelief that Apple was refusing to acknowledge the dropping of chapters. This will be a welcome return for audiobook readers who were frustrated trying to navigate without chapters.
I keep hearing this and I don’t understand why it’s important. I listen to audiobooks every day (and have been doing so for years). I have never had the need to jump to a specific chapter. A specific page/passage, or being able to keep position between the audiobook and an ebook (like Amazon’s whispersync)
Personally, I wish the scrubbing tools were better suited to moving back a minute, or 10 min instead of jumping to random blocks based on my very inaccurate finger lift timing. Really wish a “virtual” scroll wheel would be added back. It’s the perfect UI for navigating arbitrarily large lists that Apple threw away. Call me bitter :)
What is the use-case you have where chapter jumps are useful?
A lot of audiobook readers like a visual list of chapters for accurate navigation. For collections of short stories, each story is a chapter. Also since the scrubbing feature is a relatively small progress bar, backing up to a particular location is hit or miss (say you fell asleep while listening and wake up the next day 8 hours later in the book; how do you get back). There are other apps, like Book Mobile and Book Mower, that will enable returning easily to where you last started listening before you dozed off. But mostly audiobook readers like the visual feedback of picking a particular chapter, and then scrubbing in that more limited timeline to find their place, or to re-read 9listen) to a particular passage again.. I gave up using my iPhone for audiobooks, and stuck with an iPod Touch 4th generation that can’t use iOS 7.
I listen to them every day as well. If you accidently hit the ‘next’ or ‘back’ buttons, or had to do a device restore or your iPhone generally just spazzes out, then you lose your place. Trying to navigate back to where you were while playing a 50+ hour file along a 1.5 – 2 inch timeline was an absolute nightmare when the smallest increments would jump you all about in rather large time increments. At least now you can fairly reliably get back to about where you were without all the stuffing about.
Sometimes I zone out too and want to go back. Again, a chapter selection is easier to deal with at times than the timeline button, particularly for longer books.
It’s useful if you have a collection of audio/radio dramas. For instance I listen to the Doctor Who stories by Big Finish and they are usually 2 hours long and are divided into 4 episodes. The 4 episodes are joined into a single m4b file and it was very useful to have the chapter list (missing in iOS 7) list the episode names.
It would be like going on netflix and instead of dividing a tv season into episodes they just had one long track for the entire season. Netflix remembers where you were right? :P
I haven’t tried 8.4 yet, but know that the audiobooks are now in the iBooks app instead of the Music app. Perhaps Apple has restored chapter support.
I tested the new iBooks implementation. I selected a book (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell) that I recently read and knew to have chapters; not only chapters, but ones with unique titles. While 8.4’s update for audiobooks via iBooks does show chapters (calling them “tracks”), the chapter names are just a sequential list of numbers. Also the app lacks the “now playing” button that made finding what chapter you were on easier. So no prize, Apple.
how do I get this Audiobooks app on my carplay head unit? Just updating to latest iOS on my iPhone?
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I like this. Can’t wait till Apple releases a competitive service to Audible. While I like Audible, they could use some competition :)
Audio Books put me to sleep. Something that would not be good behind the wheel of a car…
I’m considering making my own implementation of an app that plays audiobooks/audiodramas. Any feature requests?
Well they are half way there… It is true the list of chapters are now back but unfortunately they are labeled as track 1, track 2 etc instead of actually having the chapter names… The most infuriating part of this is that the system that they had for iOS 6 was perfect and then they “improved it” which in this case means totally fucking it up.
I ended up creating Undulib to solve the iOS 8.4 audiobook issues. Undulib.com https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/app/undulib/id1024718755?mt=8
This new update is driving me NUTS! Every time I change from an audio book to music or video or am not playing the book when I get into my car. The book rewinds 15 to 30 minutes. It’s very random and extremely upsetting. Any suggestions on how to fix this issue?