Apple Watch
Control FableFrog from your wrist with the watchOS app and the Now Playing complication - play, skip, chapters, sleep timer, and speed, in all 19 of FableFrog's languages.
What the Watch App Is
FableFrog's Apple Watch app is a remote control for the app on your phone. It shows what's playing and lets you act on it: play and pause, skip, jump to a chapter, set a sleep timer, and change speed.
It does not play audio itself, and it never talks to your Audiobookshelf server. Every command travels to your iPhone, your iPhone does the work, and the result comes back to your wrist. Audio keeps coming out of wherever it already was - your phone's speaker, your headphones, your car.
The watch app is free for everyone. It is not a Premium feature. It's also beta as of v1.14, so if something looks wrong, Settings > About > Report a Bug on the phone goes straight to the tracker.
Requirements
- watchOS 10 or later
- The FableFrog iPhone app, signed in
- Your iPhone within Bluetooth or Wi-Fi range of the watch
Installing It
The watch app installs alongside the iPhone app. If automatic app install is on in the Watch app on your iPhone, it arrives on its own. Otherwise open the Watch app on your iPhone, scroll to FableFrog, and tap Install.
Now Playing
The main screen shows:
- Cover art, title, and author for the book that's playing
- Which chapter you're in, as "Chapter 5 of 22"
- Chapter progress, with elapsed and remaining time for the current chapter
- Skip back, play/pause, and skip forward, using the skip durations you configured on your phone
- A secondary row with the chapter list, the current speed, and the sleep timer
If nothing is playing, the screen reads "Open Fable Frog on iPhone to start listening." Start a book on your phone and the watch catches up.
Digital Crown Skip
Turn the Digital Crown on the Now Playing screen to skip. The direction and the distance follow your phone's skip settings, so a crown turn moves you the same amount a button tap would.
Chapters
Tap the chapter button to open the full chapter list for the current book. The chapter you're in is highlighted, and the list opens scrolled to it. Tap any chapter to jump there.
Sleep Timer
Tap the moon to open the sleep timer. It offers:
- Your timer presets - the same durations the player offers, including a per-book override if the book you're listening to has one
- End of Chapter - stops when the current chapter finishes
- Cancel Timer - when one is already running
Durations are formatted for your language and region, so a 30-minute timer reads the way it reads everywhere else in the app.
Speed
Tap the speed label to open the speed picker. You get a grid of the eight quick speeds - 0.75x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, 2x, 2.5x, 3x - and the Digital Crown for everything in between, across the same 0.25x to 3.5x range the phone supports.
The speed you pick on your wrist is the same setting you'd pick on your phone, so a per-book speed override changes from the watch too.
The Now Playing Complication
FableFrog includes a Now Playing complication for your watch face. It shows the book that's playing and how far through it you are. Tap it to open the watch app.
Supported Families
- Circular - a progress gauge, for the corners of most faces
- Corner - a curved gauge for the corner slots on Infograph and similar faces
- Rectangular - the wide slot, with room for the title alongside the progress
- Inline - the single line of text at the top of a face
Adding It
Press and hold your watch face, tap Edit, swipe to the complications screen, tap a slot, and pick FableFrog > Now Playing.
Theming
The complication takes its tint from the watch face it sits on, not from your app theme. This is deliberate: a complication that imposed its own color would break a face you'd already put together.
How Often It Refreshes
The complication refreshes when the watch app receives new information from your phone, and on its own schedule about every 15 minutes otherwise. Progress-only updates are limited to one a minute, because watchOS budgets complication refreshes and spending them on a second-by-second countdown means running out of them later in the day.
Themes on the Watch
The watch app uses your phone's theme accent. Your green stays your green.
The background does not follow a light theme, though. watchOS draws on a black canvas, and a light theme's own text colors land at roughly 1.3:1 against black - readable in a screenshot, not on a wrist outdoors. So a light theme on the phone pairs its accent with the dark palette on the watch. Every accent FableFrog ships clears 3:1 against black.
Languages
The watch app is translated everywhere the phone app is, across all 19 of FableFrog's languages. That includes the durations and the speed labels, which are formatted by your locale rather than assembled from an English template.
When the iPhone Isn't There
The watch app needs your phone. When it can't reach it, a banner reads "iPhone not connected" and commands are dropped rather than queued.
Dropping them is on purpose. A tap you made two minutes ago, replayed when the phone comes back, would act on a book you're no longer listening to. The next time your phone is in range, it pushes its current state and the watch corrects itself.
The complication keeps showing what it last knew until the watch app runs again and gets something newer.
Privacy
The watch never contacts your Audiobookshelf server. It has no URL for it, no token, and no credentials. See Privacy & Security for what the phone does send.