4

As the new Music application in iOS 5 seems to have an extremely broken behavior for some audiobooks, I am looking for alternatives.

I have several audio books that have a series of many MP3 files, one for each chapter (e.g http://www.amazon.com/dp/1455826235/). In iTunes I had all files for these audio books set to have the 'Audiobook' kind.

It seems like the new behavior for the Music application is to play the current selected track until the finish, and then stop playing, it does not continue on to the next track like on a music album.

I do not want to revert back to an earlier version of iOS, and I would like to avoid having to change all my audiobooks to be seen by iTunes as music, but how can I listen to my audiobooks?

I have also tried playing the audio books through the Audible app, and through Bookmark. But neither of them show that I have any audiobooks on my device, but I am certain I have them, since I can play them in the music app, one chapter at a time. I was able to see them and play them using those apps before I upgraded to iOS 5.

Is there any fixes for this? Is there any external apps that can actually play audiobooks syced from iTunes in iOS 5.

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
2

The Audible app will play any audiobooks in your iTunes (now Music) library on your iPhone. To make this work, select the "My Library" menu item and then click the button for the "iPod Library". Clicking either "iPod Library" or "Audiobooks" will then show all of the books in your library, including non-Audible.com books...i.e. books synced from iTunes.

Improve this answer
3
  • As I mentioned, on my IOS 5 device I do not see any of my audiobooks in the audible application, have you double checked on your device?
    – Zoredache
    Oct 14, 2011 at 5:33
  • Yes...I have several audiobooks that I ripped from the CDs, and they show up in the Audible app just fine. Have you tried changing both the Kind and Genre to Audiobook? I make sure that all of my Audiobooks are set up this way. Prior to iTunes implementing the "Kind" = Audiobook feature, audiobooks were differentiated in iTunes via the genre tag.
    – freerangemonkey
    Oct 14, 2011 at 5:55
  • Since you claimed it worked for you I decided to go with the drastic approach. I deleted, the iPad2,3_5.0_9A334_Restore.ipsw, and did restore re-download and re-install of iOS 5 again, and then did a restore. After doing a restore Audible actually showed my audiobooks and is able to play them. Maybe I had a bad download, or something got screwed up in the first upgrade attempt.
    – Zoredache
    Oct 14, 2011 at 7:37
1

I have the same problem with audio books. But there is a workaround until Apple hopefully fixes this problem:

Create a play-list and add the entire audio book to the play-list. Then it can play the chapters continuously.

If this doesn't address the issue there is another method that does work:

When an Audiobook firstly copied to iTunes library and after that either dragged to iPhone / iPod or synched it can resume from the last stop when you return to your audiobook after playing other files.

However, there is one limitation - your Audiobook MUST have chapters. If it is one large not chapter-divided M4B file the "Music" app can't remember the last stop.

There is a PC program to make chapters for audiobooks called Chapter Master

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .