Frequently Asked Questions

FableFrog is a native iOS client for Audiobookshelf, the open-source self-hosted audiobook server. It connects to your existing Audiobookshelf server and provides a polished, feature-rich listening experience on your iPhone.

Yes. FableFrog is a client app that connects to your self-hosted Audiobookshelf instance. If you don't have one yet, check out audiobookshelf.org to get started.

iOS 17 or later for the full app. A few advanced on-device features — transcription, Follow Along, Recap, and content skipping — require iOS 26, and Recap additionally requires a device with Apple Intelligence enabled. On earlier devices those sections simply don't appear; everything else works normally.

FableFrog is not open source, but it's built for the open-source Audiobookshelf ecosystem. The Audiobookshelf server itself is open source.

FableFrog is fully localized in 19 languages across 23 locales: English (US, UK, Australia, Canada), German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), Finnish, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, and Russian. This includes full right-to-left support for Arabic and Hebrew.

Yes. Open Upcoming Releases, tap the 3-dot menu, and choose Manage Followed Series to see every series in your current library with covers, alpha-scroll, and cross-field search across title, author, narrator, and contained book titles. Tap to follow or unfollow individually. The header shows your most recent follows as quick-jump chips.

That was a bug, fixed in 1.11. Release dates come from Audible's public series pages, and Audible had started serving an anti-bot page in place of the real one. FableFrog read a page it couldn't parse as a series with no books in it, marked every series Up to Date, and cached that for a day. A page that can't be read now counts as a failure rather than an empty series, a cached zero-book answer is never trusted, and the checks go out spread across the day instead of all at once. Update and your series will re-check on their own.

Enter your server URL in the login screen, pick how you want to authenticate — username/password, API key, or OIDC/SSO — and sign in. See our connection guide in the documentation for detailed instructions.

Yes. FableFrog supports custom HTTP headers, making it compatible with Caddy, Nginx, Traefik, and other reverse proxy setups.

Yes. FableFrog supports OpenID Connect authentication. It works with Keycloak, Authelia, Authentik, and other OIDC-compliant identity providers. A dedicated auth mode picker on the login screen makes it easy to switch between SSO and other auth methods.

Yes. Generate an API key in your Audiobookshelf server settings, then choose "API Key" from the auth mode picker on the login screen. FableFrog validates the token on refresh so revoked keys are caught immediately.

Currently, FableFrog connects to one server at a time. You can switch between libraries on the same server without signing out — right from the Home toolbar using the inline library switcher, or from Settings.

If FableFrog can renew your session, an inline reauth sheet slides up over the current screen so you can sign back in without losing context — you don't get bounced back to the login screen. If it can't (you're offline, or the server rejected the session entirely and there's no way to complete sign-in), FableFrog drops into Limited Access Mode: a focused Downloads-and-Settings view where your downloaded books stay browsable and playable until you're back online. If the server is simply unreachable — your network dropped, the server is down — a small banner surfaces so you know it's the connection rather than the app stuck in a loop.

Offline downloads, Smart Downloads, the Reading List, listening statistics, customizable home screen and navigation bar, unlimited series tracking, premium home screen widgets (Daily Goal, Stats, Streak), 16 additional themes, six alternate app icons, customizable lock screen widget icons, Server Admin tools (including the Split Genres library cleanup utility), and — on iOS 26 — on-device transcription, Follow Along, Recap, and content skipping.

$12 one-time (lifetime) or $8/year. The free tier includes full streaming, playback controls, bookmarks, playlists, series tracking (up to 3 series), CarPlay, home screen widgets (Now Playing, Continue Listening, Upcoming Books), and all 4 free themes.

The annual option is a subscription managed by Apple. The lifetime option is a one-time purchase with no recurring charges. Both options provide the same features.

Yes. Both the lifetime purchase and the annual subscription support Apple Family Sharing, so one purchase unlocks Premium for everyone in your Family group at no extra cost. There is nothing to configure inside FableFrog — enable sharing for the purchase in the App Store and family members are entitled automatically. If someone is still showing as free, have them tap Restore Purchases on the Premium screen.

No. FableFrog does not collect, store, or transmit any user data to us. All data flows directly between your device and your Audiobookshelf server. No analytics, no telemetry, no ads. Our App Store privacy label is "Data Not Collected."

In the iOS Keychain, using the kSecAttrAccessibleAfterFirstUnlockThisDeviceOnly protection level. Credentials are never stored in files, UserDefaults, or databases.

Credentials, cached library metadata, progress, and bookmarks are wiped. Your per-book settings (playback speed, skip intervals), ratings, playlists, favorites, Reading List, and series following are preserved but isolated to your account — other users on the same device won't see them. Downloaded audiobook files are also preserved.

Yes. FableFrog isolates per-user local data (book settings, ratings, playlists, favorites, Reading List, series following) by account. When a different user signs in on the same device, they cannot see your data. Your data is preserved and automatically restored when you sign back in.

iOS includes FableFrog's data in iCloud and iTunes/Finder backups automatically, so your favorites, playlists, per-book settings, ratings, and downloaded audiobooks all transfer to your new device when you restore from a backup. The one caveat is your login credentials: they only transfer with encrypted (password-protected) backups. If you restore from an unencrypted backup, you'll need to sign in again, but all your local data will be there waiting.

Yes. Some features — including favorites, series following, playlists, your Reading List, and per-book playback settings — are stored locally on your device because the Audiobookshelf API does not support them. This data is tenanted: it's isolated to your account and server combination, so other users on the same device never see it. It persists across sign-out and is automatically restored when you sign back in.

Go to Settings > Diagnostic Logs to see how much storage the rolling log is using, then tap Export to share a slice via the share sheet. You can pick how far back to export — including 5- and 15-minute windows for grabbing the moments right around an incident, or the full 48 hours. The same menu is also available from the library selection screen, so you can grab logs even when you're stuck before picking a library. Tokens and bearer values are scrubbed before they ever hit disk, so you can safely send the export to support. A Clear button wipes the store with confirmation.

0.5x to 3.0x in 0.25x increments. You can set a global default and override it per book.

Volume boost amplifies the audio output from 0% to 200% above normal. Useful for quietly narrated audiobooks. Can be set globally or per book.

Yes. FableFrog includes a dedicated CarPlay interface optimized for safe in-car use, with three tabs — Recent, Downloaded, and Library — plus the system Now Playing button. Recent and Library paint from the local cache first so a slow server never leaves you staring at an empty screen.

Yes. The Downloaded tab reads straight off your device's storage, so a cold launch in a parking garage still lists every downloaded book, plays it from your saved position, shows its cover, and records the drive's progress for the next time you're online. The list is ordered newest download first.

Yes. The player includes a built-in AirPlay route picker.

FableFrog offers six home screen widgets: Now Playing, Continue Listening, and Upcoming Books are free. Daily Goal, Listening Stats, and Streak require Premium. There's also a dedicated StandBy mode widget with playback controls for nightstand use. All widgets come in multiple sizes.

Yes. Mark any book or series as abandoned from its detail page or context menu. Abandoned items are visually marked, can be filtered out of your library, and appear in a dedicated Abandoned list. You can also hide abandoned items entirely with a toggle in Settings.

Single press plays or pauses. Double-press is configurable (create a bookmark or skip to the next chapter). Triple-press is also configurable — by default it skips backward by your configured Skip Backward seconds (matching Overcast, Castro, Pocket Casts, and Apple Books), and can be switched to "Previous Chapter." Both gestures can be overridden per book from Book Settings.

Yes. Go to Settings > Playback > Player Actions to pick which actions appear in the bottom row of your player — Speed, Volume Boost, Sleep Timer, Car Mode, Bookmark, Listening Activity, or Book Details. Set a global default or override the layout per book from Book Settings.

Yes. Turn on "Automatic Sleep Timer" in Playback Settings and set a time window (e.g. 10 PM to 6 AM). Whenever you start playback during that window, a timer is set for you. Choose between Duration and End-of-Chapter modes, with per-book overrides. Manual timers you set yourself always take precedence.

Playback stops (you choose whether it pauses or ends the session) and your position is saved. The player then offers to keep going, and you can also just shake your phone to extend the timer by its original duration — no unlocking, no opening the app. The shake gesture is armed by the timer itself, so it works with the player swiped away and the screen locked, and it reads shake intensity in any orientation, including a phone lying flat on a nightstand. Sensitivity is configurable in Settings > Playback > Shake to Extend, with a test button and per-book overrides.

Optionally. Enable notifications in Settings > Notifications and grant iOS permission to get alerts when a new book drops in any series you follow, plus heads-up reminders 1 week and 2 weeks before the release date so you can clear your queue. Granular per-type toggles let you opt in to exactly what you want. Release-day detection runs in the background and reschedules itself on app launch and on widget refresh, with per-server scheduling state so alerts stay straight across multiple Audiobookshelf instances. iOS gives that background check a limited slice of time, and FableFrog keeps every result it has already collected when the slice runs out, so following a long list of series costs you nothing.

Yes. FableFrog supports Siri and Shortcuts via Apple's App Intents framework. Voice phrases include Pause/Resume, Skip forward/backward, Next chapter, Set sleep timer (with a duration or end-of-chapter), Cancel sleep timer, Show upcoming books in [series], and Play [book] (which resumes from your last position). Open Settings > Voice Shortcuts to see every supported phrase with copy-able examples.

Long-press the FableFrog app icon on your home screen to see two shortcuts: Search (jumps straight to the Library tab with the search field active) and Now Playing (opens the player for your current book and resumes if it's paused). Now Playing shows the live book title and author when something is loaded.

The Reading List is your to-read queue: one ordered list, per account, of what you want to get to next. Unlike a playlist, it can hold books you don't own yet alongside the ones already in your library, and there's exactly one of it — which is what lets FableFrog give you a straight answer when a book ends. It's a Premium feature.

Yes. Open any upcoming or unreleased title from Upcoming Books and tap Add to Reading List. It's queued by its Audible ASIN and shows a cart icon that links out to Audible. When that book later appears in your Audiobookshelf library, FableFrog matches it and turns the entry into a playable book automatically, keeping its exact position in your queue. No prompt, no duplicate, no re-adding.

Four ways: from any book's context menu or detail page ("Add to Reading List"), from a series page to queue every unfinished book in the series at once, from an upcoming book's detail sheet for titles you don't own, and automatically when a download finishes (opt-in). You choose whether new books land at the top or bottom of the queue in Settings → Reading List.

Yes. Turn on "Add Upcoming Releases" in Settings → Reading List (off by default) and a newly announced book from any series you follow joins your queue on its own, with a countdown to release day. It merges into the run of unreleased books at the end of your list in release-date order, so the part of the queue you ordered by hand is never rearranged. Remove a book and it stays removed — FableFrog remembers, and only puts it back if you add it yourself.

Three places: a Reading List shelf on your Home screen showing the next ten covers with a "See All" link, an optional Reading List tab you can enable in Settings → Navigation Bar, and the full list page where you can drag to reorder and swipe to remove.

You get a "What's Next?" sheet offering up to two suggestions — the next unfinished book in the series you just finished, and the top of your Reading List. Each button names what it does rather than repeating the title above it: Continue the Series, or Keep Listening. The playable one is the prominent button, and an unowned suggestion becomes a link out to Audible instead. The book you just finished is removed from your Reading List automatically, with an Undo button right there if you disagree. You can also just dismiss the sheet and nothing happens.

Yes, on the two signals that mean you're done with a book: finishing it (whether by playing to the end or marking it finished by hand) and abandoning it. Both offer an undo. Removal is one-way though — reopening a finished book or un-abandoning an abandoned one won't put it back, so add it again yourself if you want it there.

Not yet. Audiobookshelf has no concept of a to-read queue, so there's nothing to sync it to on the server, and the list is stored on your device only. It's scoped to your account and server, preserved across sign-out, and included in your device backups. Cross-device sync is planned.

A playlist is one of many themed collections of books you own, and it holds only owned books. The Reading List is a single queue of what you intend to read next, and it can hold books you haven't got yet. A "Spooky October" collection is a playlist; your one blessed read-next queue is the Reading List.

Yes. If your Audiobookshelf library includes EPUB or PDF ebooks, you can read them directly in FableFrog. Open the reader with the Read button on a book's detail page, from the mini player, or from the player's menu while you're listening. EPUBs get the full reading experience — page turns, chapter list, typography settings, auto-scroll, and tap zones; PDFs render as fixed pages you pinch to zoom.

Yes. FableFrog saves where you are in an ebook and syncs it to your Audiobookshelf server alongside your listening progress, with a final save when you close the book. Close a book on your phone and open it on your iPad and the reader lands exactly where you stopped. For books that have both audio and an ebook, your reading place and listening place are tracked separately so neither overwrites the other.

Auto-scroll reads hands-free by scrolling an EPUB for you at a speed you set, from a gentle crawl up to a brisk pace. Turn on Scroll Mode in Reader Settings, then set the Auto-Scroll Speed slider. It pauses automatically while the toolbar is showing so text doesn't slide away while you reach for a control, and keeps your page counter and progress percentage accurate as it goes. You can also map a tap zone to Auto-Scroll Play / Pause to start and stop it with a tap.

Yes. Open Reader Settings > Edit Tap Zones to draw your own tap zones with a visual editor. Map any region of the page to Next / Previous Page, Play / Pause, Jump Forward / Back, or Auto-Scroll Play / Pause, then move, resize, or delete zones until the reader feels the way you want. Taps outside your zones show or hide the toolbar. By default the left quarter turns back and the right quarter turns forward.

Yes. Double-tap an Apple Pencil (2nd generation or later) to turn the page forward, or squeeze an Apple Pencil Pro to go back (requires iOS 17.5 or later). Both gestures follow whatever action you've set for your Pencil in the iOS Settings app.

Yes. Reader Settings lets you pick a reading theme (App Theme, Auto Light/Dark, or Sepia), font family (Serif, Sans Serif, or Monospace), font size and weight, column count, and page margins. Turn off "Use Publisher Styles" to unlock advanced typography controls for line height, paragraph spacing and indent, and word and letter spacing. Settings apply live and are shared across all your books.

Yes, with Premium. Download audiobooks over Wi-Fi (or cellular, if enabled) and listen without a network connection.

Smart Downloads automatically download a book after you've listened to it for a configurable amount of time (5-30 minutes), and optionally removes it when you finish. Set it and forget it.

When your session can't be renewed — you're offline in airplane mode, out at sea, in a subway tunnel, or the server rejected the session and there's no way to sign back in right now — FableFrog drops into Limited Access Mode instead of stranding you on empty, server-dependent screens. It's a focused two-tab experience (Downloads and Settings) where your downloaded books stay fully browsable and playable. The normal tabs and the sign-in sheet come back automatically the moment you're reachable again.

Yes. Open the tab bar's customize menu and add Downloads as a top-level tab so your offline library is always one tap away. It's opt-in — Downloads is never added to your tab bar by default.

Yes. On iOS 26, FableFrog transcribes your downloaded audiobooks into text in the background as you listen, entirely on your device. Open Follow Along to read along with the line being spoken highlighted in real time, and the reader auto-scrolls to keep pace with the narrator. This is a Premium feature.

No. Transcription runs entirely on your device using Apple's on-device speech recognition. Audio is never uploaded, transcripts are stored locally alongside your downloaded audio, and nothing leaves your phone. It stays consistent with our "Data Not Collected" privacy label.

Yes. FableFrog transcribes each book in its own language, taken from the language field in your Audiobookshelf metadata — a German book gets the German speech recognizer. It reads that field generously, so "de", "de-DE", "ger", "German", and "Deutsch" all resolve to German. If the model for that language isn't installed, FableFrog downloads it in the background (respecting your Wi-Fi Only setting) and picks the book up when it's ready.

Yes. On the book's detail page, tap the language row in the Transcription section and pick the right language, or choose Automatic to go back to using your server metadata. An override always wins over metadata, and changing it re-transcribes the book in the new language automatically — there's no separate redo step.

FableFrog tells you so — the book's detail page shows something like "German unavailable on this device" — and skips the book rather than transcribing it in English and labeling the result as something it isn't. English is only ever used as a fallback when the language metadata is missing or unrecognizable, never as a substitute for a language FableFrog identified. A transcript you can't trust is worse than no transcript.

Recap catches you up on the last 5, 10, or 15 minutes of a book without rewinding. It comes back in two parts: "Where things stand," a sentence or two placing you in the scene, then "What happened," an ordered list of the events that carried the story to your current position. It's produced on-device by Apple Intelligence from the transcribed words, in the language the book was transcribed in. Spoken Recap reads that same summary aloud, hands-free, and you can even ask Siri for it: the book pauses, the recap speaks, and playback resumes where you left off.

Yes. FableFrog reads up to 20 minutes of listening before your window, condenses it on-device into a short background note, and grounds the opening line on it — so a 10-minute recap can still mention the journey the characters set out on 20 minutes ago. Nothing past your current position is ever read, for the note or the recap, so a recap cannot spoil what you haven't heard yet. The notes are cached per book, and cleared with your transcripts on sign-out.

Probably not. When the on-device model itself is the problem, the sheet now says so rather than reporting a generic failure that reads like the book's fault, and its Try Again is worth tapping — FableFrog rebuilds its connection to the model before retrying, so the same passage can succeed the second time. Recap also re-checks whether your device is ready during a session, so if Apple Intelligence was still downloading its model when you opened the app, Recap turns on by itself without a relaunch.

It shouldn't any more. Apple's on-device guardrail screens the passage going in as well as the summary coming out, and ordinary genre-fiction violence used to trip it on every attempt. Recap now runs under the relaxed guardrails Apple ships for transforming text you already own. A refusal is still possible, and when it happens the sheet says so and points you at the window picker rather than retrying with smaller slices that would be refused identically.

These features require iOS 26 and FableFrog Premium. Recap and Spoken Recap additionally need a device that supports Apple Intelligence with it enabled, since the summary is generated by Apple's on-device language model. Transcription and Follow Along do not need Apple Intelligence. On earlier iOS versions these features simply don't appear.

Yes. On iOS 26 with Premium, content skipping detects LitRPG stat blocks — the recurring tables of levels and inventory — and shows a skip button on the cover as you approach one. You always tap to skip; nothing is ever skipped automatically. You decide which books are analyzed with a global default, an author allowlist, or per-book overrides.

Yes. From a book's detail page you can export its transcript as Plain Text, Timestamped Text, or subtitles (SRT or VTT) via the iOS share sheet. Everything is generated on-device.

ReadMeABook (RMAB) is a self-hosted audiobook request and acquisition service — think Radarr/Sonarr plus Overseerr, but for audiobooks. If you run one, you can connect it in Settings → ReadMeABook to search for audiobooks and request the ones you want, right inside FableFrog. ReadMeABook then acquires them and imports them into your Audiobookshelf library, where FableFrog plays them. It's completely optional.

No. Audiobookshelf remains your only playback backend — you still listen exactly as before. ReadMeABook is just an optional companion for requesting books. You connect it with a personal API token (it starts with rmab_), which is stored only in the iOS Keychain and cleared when you sign out.

The My Requests screen lists everything you've requested, grouped by status — active, waiting, completed, failed, and cancelled — with pull-to-refresh and paging. A request is "completed" once the book actually lands in your Audiobookshelf library, at which point you play it like any other book.

No. ReadMeABook is entirely opt-in. If you don't run one, nothing changes — FableFrog works exactly as it always has against your Audiobookshelf server.