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 20+ languages: English (US, UK, Australia, Canada), German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), Finnish, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew. 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.

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.

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 and lose what you were doing. If the server is 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, 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.

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, 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, 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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Recap generates a short written summary of the last 5, 10, or 15 minutes of a book — useful when you zoned out and want to catch up without rewinding. It's produced on-device by Apple Intelligence from the transcribed words. 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.

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.