Reading List

Keep one to-read queue for your account with FableFrog's Reading List - books you own and books you don't yet, added by Audible link or ASIN, with a Home shelf, a navigation tab, whole-series adds, automatic adds from the series you follow, and an end-of-book "what's next" menu.

Overview

The Reading List is your to-read queue: one ordered list, per account, of the books you intend to get to next. It answers the question you actually have at the end of a book, which is not "what's in my library" but "what do I want next?"

Two things make it different from a plain list of library books:

• It holds books you don't own yet. An audiobook you've spotted on Audible but haven't bought can sit in the queue right next to the ones already on your server.
• It's a single list. There's exactly one Reading List per server you connect to, which is what lets FableFrog give you an unambiguous answer when a book ends.

The Reading List is a Premium feature. See Premium for what else is included.

Owned and Unowned Books

Every book on your Reading List is in one of two states, and FableFrog works this out live rather than storing it:

• Owned - the book resolves to something in your Audiobookshelf library. The row shows a chevron, and tapping it opens the book's detail page, the same as tapping a cover anywhere else in the app.
• Unowned - the book isn't in your library. It's an Audible title identified by its ASIN. The row shows a cart icon, and tapping it opens the book at your configured external link provider, Audible by default. It can't be played, because you don't have it yet.

An unowned row also carries the book's release date as published by Audible. If that date is still ahead, the row leads with a countdown - Releases in 12 days - and falls back to the plain date once the day arrives. Owned rows don't carry a date, because once a book is in your library, your library is the source of truth.

Each entry keeps its own snapshot of the title, author, cover, series, and sequence number, so it renders properly whether or not the book is in your library and whether or not you're online.

Books Upgrade Themselves

This is the part worth knowing about. When a book you queued as unowned later shows up in your Audiobookshelf library - you bought it, or your server imported it - FableFrog matches it by ASIN and flips the entry to owned automatically, keeping its position in the queue.

There's no prompt and nothing to confirm. As soon as FableFrog sees the book - a Home refresh is enough, you don't have to run Sync Library by hand - the cart icon becomes a play button and the book is ready. You don't end up with a duplicate, and you don't lose your place in the queue.

Adding the owned copy of a book that's already on your list as unowned does the same thing: the two merge into one entry that keeps the original position.

Adding Books

There are six ways onto the list. The first four respect your add position preference; the last two place books by release date or at the bottom, as described below.

From a Book

A book's detail page has an Add to Reading List button in its action row, beside Play, Read and Download. Tap it and it fills in to show the book is queued; tap it again to remove it.

The same action is in every book's context menu - long-press a cover anywhere in the app, or use the 3-dot menu on a book's detail page. There the row is a toggle: for a book that's already queued, it reads Remove from Reading List instead.

If you have cover icons turned on, queued books show a small books badge on their cover so you can see at a glance what's already in the queue while you browse.

A Whole Series

Open a series page and tap the book with a plus button in the toolbar. This queues every unfinished book in the series in one go, in sequence order:

1. The books you own and haven't finished (including ones you're partway through), then
2. The upcoming books you don't own, pulled from the same external release data that powers Upcoming Books.

Books you've already finished are skipped, and so is anything already on your list. A toast confirms the add.

A Book You Don't Own Yet

From Upcoming Books, open any upcoming or unreleased title and tap Add to Reading List in its detail sheet. The book is queued by ASIN as an unowned entry, ready to upgrade itself when it lands in your library.

Automatically When a Download Finishes

Turn on Add Downloads You Start in Settings → Reading List and any book that finishes downloading is queued for you. Smart Downloads count as downloads you started. This is off by default - it's a convenience for people whose download queue is their to-read queue.

The setting was called Add Downloads Automatically through 1.12.

Automatically From the Series You Follow

Turn on Add Upcoming Releases in Settings → Reading List and a newly announced book from any series you follow joins the queue on its own, as an unowned entry with its release date. Off by default.

This one places books differently from every other add path, because a stack of unreleased books sorted to the top or the bottom would be useless either way:

• A new book merges into the run of unreleased entries at the end of your list, in release-date order. Given a queue ending September, October, December, a new November release lands between October and December.
• Everything above that run - the part of the queue you ordered by hand - is never touched.
• A candidate with no announced release date is skipped, because there's no position that would be right for it. It's picked up on a later check, once Audible publishes a date.

Removing a book removes it for good. FableFrog records the removal, so the next check doesn't put it straight back. Adding the book again yourself clears that record - a deliberate re-add means you want it there. The record holds the book's identity and the time you removed it, nothing more, and it lives on your device with the rest of your Reading List.

Automatically When a New Release Downloads

Turn on Download New Releases in Settings → Storage & Cache and a book from a series you follow downloads itself when it lands in your library - and joins your Reading List at the same time, so the thing you were waiting for is queued and playable without your doing anything.

This path is not governed by Add Downloads You Start. It adds its books either way, on the reasoning that a book you asked to be fetched automatically is one you meant to read. The one exception is the removal record above: a book you took off the list by hand is still downloaded for you, it just isn't put back on the list. See Download New Releases.

Where to Find It

Home Shelf

A Reading List shelf on your Home screen shows the next ten books in the queue as covers, with a See All header that opens the full list. The shelf appears for Premium users and can be reordered or hidden like any other Home section - see Customization.

Navigation Tab

You can promote the Reading List to a top-level tab. Open Settings → Navigation Bar and enable Reading List. It's off by default.

The Full List

The Reading List page shows every entry in order with its cover, title, author, and series position. From here you can:

• Open an owned book's detail page by tapping its row, and play it from there.
• Open an unowned book at Audible by tapping its row.
• Reorder the queue - tap Edit, then drag entries by their handles.
• Move a book to the top with the jump-to-top button that appears on every row in edit mode, which beats dragging one up from the bottom of a long queue.
• Remove an entry by swiping it away, or with the delete control in edit mode.

When You Finish a Book

Finishing a book opens the What's Next? sheet. It replaces the plain "Start Next Book?" prompt that free users still see, and offers up to two suggestions:

• Next in series - the next book in the series you just finished, skipping any you've already finished.
• Next on your Reading List - the top entry of your queue, excluding the book you just finished.

If both slots resolve to the same book, it's shown once. Each button states what it does rather than repeating the book's title: Continue the Series for the next book in the series, Keep Listening for the top of your Reading List. Whichever suggestion you can actually play is the prominent one; an unowned suggestion becomes a link out to Audible instead.

Nothing is forced - you can dismiss the sheet with Done and nothing happens.

Books Leave the List on Their Own

A book is removed from your Reading List automatically when you're done with it, which means either of:

• Finishing it - whether playback ran to the end or you marked it finished by hand. Both behave identically.
• Abandoning it - on the transition into abandoned. See Abandoned Books & Series.

The What's Next sheet shows a Removed from Reading List row with an Undo button, so a book you're not actually done with is one tap from going back.

Removal is one-way: reopening a finished book, or un-abandoning an abandoned one, does not put it back on your list. Add it again yourself if you want it there.

Settings

Settings → Reading List holds three preferences that apply everywhere the list grows.

Add Position

Choose whether a newly added book goes to the Top of List or the Bottom of List. The default is the bottom.

This applies to every add - by hand, whole series, and automatic download adds. It does not affect books already on the list: adding a duplicate merges it into the existing entry and keeps that entry's position, regardless of this setting.

Add Downloads You Start

When on, a book joins the Reading List as soon as a download you started completes. Smart Downloads follow this setting too. Off by default.

Download New Releases does not follow it - those books are always added. Renamed from Add Downloads Automatically in 1.13 for exactly that reason.

Add Upcoming Releases

When on, a newly announced book from a series you follow joins the Reading List on its own, placed by release date among the other unreleased entries. Off by default. See Automatically From the Series You Follow.

How It Differs From Playlists and Followed Series

FableFrog has three list-like features, and they answer different questions:

A themed to-read list like "Spooky October" is a Playlist. Your single blessed read-next queue is the Reading List. And following a series tells you when a book exists, which is a different thing from wanting to read it next - though you can turn one into the other with a whole-series add, or standingly with Add Upcoming Releases.

Storage and Privacy

The Reading List is stored on your device only. Audiobookshelf has no concept of a to-read queue, so there's nothing to sync it to.

• It is scoped to your account and server, so on a shared device other users never see your list, and connecting to a different server gives you a different list.
• It is preserved when you sign out and restored when you sign back in, like your favorites, ratings, playlists, and per-book settings.
• It holds no credentials of any kind.
• It travels with your device backups - see Backup & Sync.

Because it lives on your device, your Reading List does not currently sync between your iPhone and iPad. Cross-device sync is planned. See Privacy & Security for FableFrog's full data handling.