Audiobook goes back to beginning of chapter

I had the same problem on my iPhone and after a lot of googling and searching the forums I tried the following, which WORKED! Everyone recommended choosing "Remember playback position" in iTunes but I couldn't select it because it was greyed out since the chapters were all audiobooks. To fix:

- Selected all chapters of all affected book in iTunes

- Command-I to edit info for multiple items

- Set media kind to Music (was Audiobook), apply

- Set "Remember Playback Position", apply

- Set media kind back to Audiobook, apply

Then I re-synced the phone and to my amazement it worked, the book remembered my position even after switching to music.

FlunkedFlank, doesn't work for me (iTunes 11.0.3, iPod shuffle 4th/5th gen). Anyway, once you've got some files marked as audiobook in media type, yes the remember position is greyed out, but greyed out as checked. Also the files need to be treated as a group of files. It's no good if the player resumes position on an individual track basis.

Seems to be a very basic bit of functionality which just doens't seem to work.

Also the files need to be treated as a group of files. It's no good if the player resumes position on an individual track basis.

Well, when it works it does treat them this way. If you go to the "album" (the book) you'll see an icon next to the "current" chapter, indicating the one in-progress that you last listened to. On an iPhone, in any case.

But since I wrote that response I've found it to be wildly unreliable in terms of registering as a "remember last position" book. If it works for a given sync then it will work continuously until the next sync, at which point it may or may not break again. Most of the time I find that I can fix it by completely un-syncing the book, then going through the above steps again (even if the box is already checked when greyed out), then re-syncing. But even after all that, sometimes it just doesn't work.

So long story short, yeah it is a very broken piece of functionality and maybe with some combinations of iTunes/iDevice doesn't ever work no matter what you do.

Also, you only need to worry about this for audiobooks that you download on your own as mp3s. I had a series of books that I listened to that way, but finished them up and now buy all audiobooks from Audible. I just do everything from the Audible app, including downloading and listening. You have to buy at audible.com but turn mp3 downloading off and then download from within the app. It's a wonderful app and has absolutely no problems saving your place! I think you may even be able to listen to mp3 audiobooks it sees in your iTunes library, try giving that a shot.

I also noticed in the app store that there's another audiobook app that lets you download and play public-domain audiobooks for free.

I have this exact same problem on my iPhone 5 and it is driving me up the wall. About 2/3 times I open the music section back up to play my audiobook it skips to the beginning of the chapter and I have to try to find my place again. I listen to audiobooks that I download for free using overdrive from my public library. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it or not. I can listen to those on Audible but only at 1X speed, not 2X like I'm used to.

This seems like a simple fix for Apple but I've been "suffering" from it since I had my iPhone 4. It started after one of the iOS upgrades after having worked perfectly before..

I highly doubt that this will ever be fixed. Agreed it used to work reliably. Maybe it'll be fixed in iOS 7, but I doubt it. The best you can do is submit an official bug report and hope that someone sees it and acts on it.

When did you last use the Audible app? The current version has many speeds when playing back Audible books, including 1.25, 1.5, and 2.0. I don't have any iTunes audio books on my iPhone right now so I can't test playing one, but I would hope that they give the same speed options for books from iTunes as they do for Audible books. If not, you'd probably have more luck asking Audible to add that than you would getting Apple to fix their bug!

Audible only lets you use alternate speeds with audiobooks purchased from Audible.com. I check mine out for free and download from my public library. For now I will just have to take screenshots every time I stop listening, unfortunately.

How do I submit an official bug report to Apple. I will do it every day!

Not consistantly working for me. I have .m4a files that I change the media kind from Music to Audiobook, and the Remember Playback Position is checked, but greyed out. While listening to the audiobook, then play another audiobook or song, then go back to my audiobook, it starts from the beginning.

This is not working for me since I upgraded to IOS7 yet worked perfectly before my upgrade. I am so regretting upgrading.

Just now I paused my audiobook, opened another app, then went back to the Music app and the audiobook started from the beginning. I have an iPHone 4, BTW.

i just emailed Apple at their feedback link, so I bet they are going to get right on this issue.

Theory: The computer's "remembered position" is being forced on remote devices via iCloud.

Try removing the check from any "sync" options in your copy of iTunes under the Store tab in Preferences. I'm seeing that .aa format audiobooks are working normally after doing that, followed by a physical data sync with my iPhone. I'm going to try this out for a while. Please report any results if you give this a spin.

This works!! Guys, the key here is to Select ALL of the chapters and edit ALL of the info for ALL of the chapters in the respective audiobook.

Give it a try.

- Select ALL of the chapters of the affected audiobook in iTunes even if you know the "Remember Playback Position" is already selected.

- Right click and select GET INFO

- Go to OPTIONS

- If Media Kind is not set to 'audiobook' set media to 'AUDIOBOOK'

- Set "Remember Playback Position" to 'YES'

- Hit 'Ok'

DONE!

I re-synced the phone and it worked, the book remembered my position for each chapter/track

iOS 7 solves this problem. I've been listening to audiobooks on the upgrade for the past week and haven't had my place lost once.

Ha!! Frankly, I'm amazed. Someone on the inside was listening!

Case closed.