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Audiobook libraries

An audiobook library adds chapter navigation, variable playback speed, per-book bookmarks, resume, and a sleep timer on top of the audio engine. Single-file books (M4B), multi-file books, and multi-part (Part/Disc) layouts are all detected automatically.

This page covers how to lay out the files. To create the library, add an audiobook root under Admin → Libraries (see Your library).

The audiobook ingester discovers files under configured roots. Embedded tags are preferred; folder names are used as fallbacks for series, title, and edition parsing.

Supported layouts

Audiobooks/
  Series Name (by Author) - Subtitle (read by Narrator)/
    Book 1 - Title/
      01 - Chapter Title.mp3
      02 - Chapter Title.mp3

Single-file audiobook (M4B/M4A)

Audiobooks/
  Book Title/
    Book Title.m4b

A directory is treated as a single-file audiobook when it contains exactly one .m4b or .m4a and no multi-file formats.

Multi-file audiobooks can use .mp3, .flac, .opus, .ogg, .aac, .wma.

Multi-part merge (Part/Disc folders)

If a directory has no direct audio files, at least two non-excluded subfolders, and all of those subfolders are part-like, those parts are merged into one audiobook:

Audiobooks/
  Book Title/
    Part 1/
      01 - Chapter.mp3
    Part 2/
      01 - Chapter.mp3

Only audio files directly inside each part folder are included (nested folders are ignored).

Recognized part-like names: Part N, Disc N, Disk N, CD N, Side N, Side A–D.

Folder naming rules

Series folder patterns (trailing tags like [FLAC], (Unabridged), (2019) are ignored):

Series Name (by Author) - Subtitle (read by Narrator)
Series Name by Author
Author - Series Name

Book folder patterns (edition tags and year suffixes are ignored):

Book 1 - Title
#1 - Title
Title (Book 2)
01 - Title
01. Title

Cover art lookup

  • Embedded art in the first audio file is preferred.
  • Otherwise, any .jpg, .jpeg, or .png in the book folder may be used; the most square image is chosen.
  • For multi-file audiobooks, the parent folder is also checked for images.

Chapters

Chapters come from embedded chapter markers (common in M4B) when present; multi-file and multi-part books fall back to one chapter per file. The player exposes chapter navigation, a sleep timer, and adjustable speed, and remembers your position per book.

Next steps

  • Podcasts — subscribe to RSS shows alongside your books.
  • Metadata plugins — book metadata comes from OpenLibrary and Google Books.