ShelfPlayer is a powerful iOS app for listening to audiobooks and podcasts, built for people who run their own self-hosted Audiobookshelf libraries. Written in Swift 6 for iOS 18+, it's fast, privacy-respecting, and deeply integrated with the Apple ecosystem.
ShelfPlayer does not include any media content. A running Audiobookshelf instance is required to use the app.
Why Choose ShelfPlayer?
- One app for everything: A single native experience for audiobooks, podcasts, episodes, authors, narrators, series, collections, and playlists
- Connect your own libraries: Works with multiple Audiobookshelf servers and libraries at the same time
- Flexible sign-in: Supports both username/password and OpenID, plus custom HTTP headers for advanced setups
- Find anything fast: Global and per-library search across books, podcasts, people, series, and episodes
- Stay in sync: Listening progress and sessions stay synchronized with your Audiobookshelf server
- Made for Apple devices: Native iPhone and iPad layouts, CarPlay, Siri, Shortcuts, Spotlight, Home Screen widgets, Live Activities, and Dynamic Island
Features at a glance:
- Listen Now to continue and discover content across connected libraries
- Chapter navigation with quick-access controls in playback
- Configurable skip intervals for forward and backward jumps
- AirPlay and native Apple media controls
- Bookmarks with optional notes to save key moments
- Detailed, item-level listening history and daily listening goals
- Offline mode with manual and automatic background downloads
- Built-in tools to create, edit, and organize collections and playlists
- In-app PDF viewer for attached documents
- Customizable tabs, sorting, and filters
Premium features
ShelfPlayer subscription unlocks the following:
- Offline listening: Download audiobooks and episodes and keep listening without a connection
- Custom playback speed: Adjust the rate beyond the default 1×
- Flexible sleep timer: Choose any duration or a chapter-based timer, beyond the default 5 minutes
- Bookmarks: Save and revisit key moments with notes
- Add to queue: Build your own listening order with the main and Up Next queues
- Statistics: Track your listening time, streaks, and finished titles
Download ShelfPlayer today and get the most out of your Audiobookshelf library!
Subscribe to access premium app features; subscription details are the following:
- Length: weekly or yearly
- Free trial: only on selected subscriptions
- Your payment will be charged to your Apple Account as soon as you confirm your purchase
- You can manage your subscriptions and turn off auto-renewal from your Account Settings after the purchase
- Your subscription will renew automatically, unless you turn off auto-renew at least 24 hours before the end of the current period
- The cost of renewal will be charged to your account in the 24 hours prior to the end of the current period
- When canceling a subscription, your subscription will stay active until the end of the period. Auto-renewal will be disabled, but the current subscription will not be refunded
- Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when purchasing a subscription
Terms & Conditions:
https://magic-cake-e95.notion.site/Shelf-Player-Terms-Conditions-39ccf6557a0880139826d06e6b87f4eb
Privacy Policy:
https://magic-cake-e95.notion.site/Shelf-Player-Privacy-Policy-39ccf6557a088010979bc16876532f5c
If you have any questions, please contact us at aitools@gmail.com
This app is getting really really close to perfect. It's the only one that handles seasons well! My only advice regards the mini-player animation. It is SO cool that you have emulated Apple's shrinking album cover effect (I'm geeking out about it!), but I'm not sure it's really ready for release. Until it's smooth and snappy, I'd rather have the whole player slide down off the bottom of the screen quickly and smoothly than have a fancy animation that feels slow and finicky. If it weren't for that, I could easily be convinced this app was built by the Apple devs themselves! 👏👏👏
Disappointing
Raptorious Dan
I expected a lot more from a $5 app that is written to take advantage of the latest iOS features. While the interface generally looks nice, it is actually less user friendly and less functional than the first party Audiobookshelf app (beta is unfortunately full and it’s not yet on the App Store). Just in the first week of use, I noticed a number of issues that really need to be addressed:* Mysterious slowdowns that bring the app to a crawl such that force closing and restarting the app was the only option (encountered while queuing multiple downloads)* Mostly unusable search; searching anything other than author just doesn’t work (searches for title and other metadata just run indefinitely, never returning results)* The interface, while pretty, is just not at all intuitively designed. Finding settings was difficult, for example
Developer Response
Hey,there is some work being done to address these issues. ShelfPlayer's offline system has already been rewritten to offload work from the UI thread. There are many other useful changes coming.But I hope you can appreciate that large updates like this take their time, and it won't be ready available next week.The search functionality was broken due to me some breaking API changes from ABS, a fix will be released soon.If you have any other UX ideas please send them to git@rfk.io.I can understand why you are not happy with the app, but pleas give it another try after the next update is released!
The best Audiobookshelf experience
Raygan
There are now several great options for listening to audiobooks from an Audiobookshelf server on iOS. ShelfPlayer is my favorite by a lot. The design is great, and it’s ridiculously full featured. For example it’s the only app I’ve found that can add books to Collections, something I’d previously only been able to do on the browser version of Audiobookshelf. Quick tip: the app can be extensively customized. Many of its more fiddly settings are in the Settings app rather than directly in the ShelfPlayer app, which I like.I run this app on iPhone, iPad, and occasionally even on my Mac (as an iPad app) and it’s a great tool on all of them.Many thanks to this awesome developer for a polished and beautiful app.
Constantly losing podcast/audiobook progress
MZQP327
Using the sleep timer function for several 20 minute podcast series and audio books. When the timer runs through several episodes or chapters over the course of an hour long timer I constantly find the shelf player app not saving progress to ABS on timer end and starting right back where the last session began.I’m losing multiple episodes or chapters of progress and taking up a lot of time constantly re-marking episodes complete or trying to figure out where to resume an audiobook before continuing listening sessions.The UI is very nice but this functionality flaw is heavily detracting from the experience
Bug fixing and improvements
Version 3.3.1
The developer, AI Tools Apps SRL, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Used to Track You
The following data may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies:
Identifiers
Usage Data
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
Identifiers
Usage Data
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features. Learn More
Supported Features
VoiceOver
Voice Control
Larger Text
Dark Interface
Information
Seller
AI Tools Apps SRL
Size
65.1 MB
Category
Books
Compatibility
Requires iOS 26.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 26.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 26.0 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 26.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
