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my audiobook playlists have disappeared in ios 8.4

I've updated to ios 8.4 on my ipad air and now any audiobook playlists don;t appear on my device. When i check via itunes i can still see them on there. Is there a work around?


Thanks.

iPad Air, iOS 8.4

Posted on Jul 1, 2015 3:06 AM

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Posted on Jul 2, 2015 11:37 AM

Uplated to IOS 8.4 on iPad Air 2. Once again Apple has messed up audiobooks. Got a message saying they were all in iBooks - no they are not.


I travel by car a lot and listen to audioboois to pass the time. my car supports iPads and iPhones and I have a lot of audiobooks both from Apple & Audible. Just reinstalled them all after the last debacle and now they have all gone again. What has Apple got against audiobooks?

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Jul 2, 2015 11:37 AM in response to Henchelson

Uplated to IOS 8.4 on iPad Air 2. Once again Apple has messed up audiobooks. Got a message saying they were all in iBooks - no they are not.


I travel by car a lot and listen to audioboois to pass the time. my car supports iPads and iPhones and I have a lot of audiobooks both from Apple & Audible. Just reinstalled them all after the last debacle and now they have all gone again. What has Apple got against audiobooks?

Jul 2, 2015 9:35 PM in response to Henchelson

With iOS 8.4, Audiobooks now appear in iBooks as entire books, but the playlists created in iTunes that contain files designated as "audiobook" are missing. They are still in the iTunes library, but they don't sync to Music or iBooks on the iPhone. This is a disaster for people (like me) that have imported spoken word sound files (like recordings of webcasts or spoken word CDs), designated them as "audiobook" in the Get Info pane of iTunes (under Options), then put them in a playlist for easy retrieval and management. Apparently they are not accessible on the iphone through Apple's apps.


Let's hope Apple fixes this fast!


Fortunately, there is a fabulous app called Speed Up in the iOS store that can still see these audiobook files in the playlist library of the iPhone and can play them. See: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/speedup-player-pro/id385026296?mt=8

It's a bit of work to load them, but you get excellent control over speed of playback.

Jul 4, 2015 1:23 PM in response to Henchelson

I can't help with the playlists, but I did figure out how to get my ripped audiobooks* to appear in ibooks. When I upgraded to 8.4 they were wiped. I put them back on the phone manually through itunes by drag/dropping them back to the phone and although I could see them in Itunes I couldn't see them in ibooks. I turns out I just needed to sync (which, I know, defeats the purpose of manual drag and drop, but whatever).

*Note: I'm referring to audiobooks I ripped from CDs as AAC (.m4a) files and then renamed as m4b

Jul 7, 2015 10:07 PM in response to Henchelson

One workaround is to:

(1) convert all your audiobooks to podcasts [select item(s), File>Get Info, Options tab, set "media kind" to podcast],

(2) add selected playlists to podcasts synced to iPhone [select iPhone in iTunes, under the "settings" list on the left side select "sync podcasts", select "automatically include ALL episodes from SELECTED PODCASTS", and check the playlist(s) you want under the "Include Episodes from Playlists" menu],

(3) play on iPhone from podcasts app.

Jul 9, 2015 5:01 PM in response to Henchelson

My setup: iOS 8.4. on an iPhone 6, with iTunes 12.2.0 on a 2015 13" Macbook Pro


In my case, my three most recent purchases from the iTunes store *did* show up in iBooks. And (after much fooling around with AppleCare Support techs) it is also now clear to me that iBooks synch's w. iTunes on the Mac side, and those books transfer as commanded by my instructions in iTunes (on the Mac side).


But like others in this tread, none of my other, older purchases from the iTunes store show up in either iTunes (Mac side) or in iBooks (phone side). Much less any of the books that I generated from CD's using AudiobookBuilder. Those guys seem out there someplace in oblivion, apparently never to return.


By the way, the Apple support techs remain quite confused about this issue as of 7:00pm today (Thursday, July 7th). It took two techs a total of an hour to arrive at the fact that it's the iBooks app (not the "audiobooks" app that the first tech had me looking through) that I should be looking for to find my audiobooks. When we got to the correct app -iBooks- (which I've never used on my phone before... in three versions of the iPhone), it was clear sailing... at least for the three most recent iTunes store purchases. All others are apparently gone. That took over an hour on the phone with first a regular tech, and then a senior iTunes tech.


[Snarky comment alert] There's nothing quite like a software update to "improve our lives and our productivity."

Jul 13, 2015 8:35 AM in response to fabricedegraef

HOW COMES APPLE JUST FORGOT AUDIOBOOKS ???

They didn't forget them. They just thought the could be better listened to via iBooks and they were wrong. At least if this first attempt.


I'm finding Speedup Player to be more and more powerful than the Music app every was when it comes to playing audiobooks. One can set finger gestures so that a horizontal, one finger seen in either direction can jump a user determined number of seconds in either of the two directions. An up and down one finger sweep can jump forward and back by another user set no. of seconds. Great when you're not paying attention and you want to jump back 15 or 30 seconds to repeat.

my audiobook playlists have disappeared in ios 8.4

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