Hello people, I need to ask the swarm intelligence for some suggestions for my problem:
I am hosting my eBooks and some downloaded research papers (best idea ever btw) on a calibre instance at home. My gf loves to listen to audio books and it seems like calibre has support for them as well (did not test that yet). Now I need an Android app, preferably open-source, that can connect to calibre and pull and play audio books and ideally also ebooks in case she wants to read. For me, KOReader does a decent job but the audio book part is sth I was unable to solve so far. Does somebody have a similar use case and solution? Thanks in advance!
Just spin up Audiobookshelf for audiobooks it’s the perfect solution
Thank you, I will look into that, any recommendations about the client or is there only a single one?
I just use the Audiobookshelf client idk if anything else works
For audiobooks I can recommend Voice.
I keep my books in AudioBookShelf and use the android app to download to my phone. But, AudioBookShelf doesn’t work on Android Auto, so I use Voice to play the books in my car. They can share storage which makes it nice.
I don’t use Calibre for this (but I do for epub and pdf ebooks). I use Plex and use Plexamp for my music collection. For audio books I used to have Chronicle Audiobook Player installed (which is open source, but not actively maintained) but am now trying out Listen Audiobook Player (which is not open source as a heads up). Both of those allow me to download books wherever I am.
If you have no interest in running a Plex server neither of them are suitable for you, but I just wanted to mention this solution in case you’re not dead set on using Calibre. Plex has a cost factor which may come into play (an obvious non starter for some). I have had Plex Pass for a long time so it was natural for me to use it, but might not be for you.
With all the privacy and corporate issues around Plex Jellyfin may be a better option tho
I already have a Jellyfin server, won’t switch to plex but maybe I find a comoatible client for that one, thanks for the pointer!
I’m not sure about the “audiobooks” part but you can use your browser from android to connect to calibre https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#over-the-air
BTW I used for many years Moon+ Reader to read aloud my ebook on android. Not quite as a real audiobook but good enough https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flyersoft.moonreader