In iOS 8.3, did Siri loose control of audiobooks?

It is not just you, it broke for me probably before 8.3 even, on my iPhone 5. I was hoping that it would be fixed on my new iPhone 6 but no such luck. Why does Apple insist on breaking things that work great?? I can't tell you how convenient it was to be able to skip forward and backward hands-free. This is especially frustrating because the iPhone music player is notorious for losing its place in audiobooks. Thanks for not listening to your customers Apple. Quit Breaking things and calling it progress!!!!!!

That's good to know, Tommy, thanks for the update. I didn't even realize 8.4 was out (phone hasn't alerted me yet). I listen to a lot of audiobooks, so just after getting my new IP6 and posting my comment above I actually called Apple. They confirmed by digging through some tech notes that indeed this functionality was "purposely" removed, but couldn't tell me what that purpose was! I asked them to please log my request to ADD THIS FEATURE BACK ASAP and QUIT BREAKING THINGS! Of course I would be naive to think Apple actually listened and responded to me, but if even limited and/or erratic Siri control has been put back in for 8.4, perhaps Apple is at least self-correcting some of its obvious blunders.

I will report back on my experiences after installing 8.4. I remain quite surprised that this is the only thread I could find on this topic, and that only a couple of us are on the thread at that!

So I installed iOS 8.4 tonight. Just like you said, the voice commands to jump back/rewind, fast forward/advance are working again. But like you, the counter isn't showing accurately. When I give a voice command, it does indeed move the audiobook according to your command, but the change isn't reflected in the counter….it still shows the time that you were at before giving the command. Even when you skip around with the scrubber it seems to lose it's place. So if you are listening to a book and it's showing 1 hour into the book, then you move the slider around and then back to what is showing as 1 hour, you won't necessarily be back at the same place you started.

Don't have any single-file books with true chapter markers on my iPhone right now, so haven't been able to check to see how it behaves with chapterized M4b audiobooks. My mind wanders when listening sometimes, so it's nice to have hands free control again while driving, laying in bed etc.

Maybe next update 🙂

Well maybe I spoke too soon. When I first installed 8.4 last night and tested voice control it was working (despite issues with the counter being inaccurate and not reflecting position changes made via voice command). Then last night suddenly it's no longer working again! I tried deleting and resyncing the audiobook and even tried different audiobooks, no luck. It recognizes the voice command and goes through the motion, but as soon as the audio starts again, I'm listening to the same spot I was in before the voice command. This makes absolutely NO SENSE. Tommy, is it still working for you??

In my testing on my 8.4 iPhone 6+ just now it's been weirdly hit and miss, sometimes it works and other times it seems to tell me it's done the thing but just keeps playing wherever it was to start with anyway. Very confusing. Definteyl NOT working reliably.

Tommy: so issues with the slider and counter aside, is it responding reliably to Siri commands?

I'm not really having obvious issues with the slider, except as it fails to move when I order it to via Siri. But it behaves fine when I move it around manually or with the FF/Rewind buttons. My counter seems to work fine, but Siri control is what I really miss.

I was wondering the exact same thing, on the ios 8.2 I loved the audiobook siri integration and often used the skip back 30 seconds feature while I was using my apple remote. I noticed this feature not working anymore when I updated to 8.3 ; The weird thing is, if I change audiobook title to podcast, the skip feature works flawlessly so I gather that some programmer got sloppy and fiddled with the software code.

Audiobooks has been totally flawed now I updated to 8.4. The titles are simply named track 1 track 2 etc and also it doesnt remember which part of tracks have been listened to, position , I hope these issues will be addressed with the next update.

well I wish I'd known the podcast trick these last few months! Please follow rhis thread and let us know if u discover any other insight under 8.4.

I've actually been having issues with just simply skip forwarder and back. When i click it, it goes back 4-5 chapters and starts at the begining of that one. Also the timeline dosn't move when listening ><