my audiobook playlists have disappeared in ios 8.4

I did not even think of ibooks. Yes ibooks does play the audiobooks I downloaded from audible.com! However SpeedUp Player Pro will not play them and gives me an error "Can not play DRM- protected or iCloud track." At least ibooks works so my problem is solved. I will use SpeedUp for books I loaded from CDs.

I used to listen to a few audio books on my iPhone while in the car. Now.... fast forward to today on 8.4IOS the Audiobooks are no longer in the Music App like before. Lame. Open iBooks and find the BOOKS. When I click Audio Books the list is empty. I used to listen to them on this very phone so not sure HOW to get the Audiobook back? I don't have time to read a book on my tiny iPhone screen 👿

After making the switch to iOS 8.4, my audio books appeared in iTunes but not on iPhone. Tried to synch, but no still had a blank list in iBooks.

On the phone, did a Spotlight search for an audiobook title and saw the title appear in the search results. After selecting the title, the book launched in iBooks, and appeared in iBooks title list -- along with all of the other titles that I synched earlier.

Thanks dp9,

This worked for me. It's frustrating that we need to spend hours trying to come up with a fix. Wish I came across yours first. 😉

Redownload or transfer your iTunes Store purchases from an iPhone, iPad or iPod to a computer - Apple Support

iPhone: Where are my audiobooks now?

Solution

I finally found the audiobooks on my iphone: In iBooks, look at the top of menu-bar where it says "All Books." There is a pull down menu/triangle. Click on that and you can narrow to your list of Audiobooks.

Hope this helps some of you..

I'm finding the changes in iTunes very un-intuitive, non-user-friendly. I suppose it's somehow money-driven to move us to iCloud, not sure how.

Etana

I had the same problem. I found that when I went into itunes and checked the "get info" tab on my audiobooks - they had been switched back to "music" under the options tab. When I changed them back to "audiobooks" (remember to also select the two options under playback) and then synced my phone again - all the audiobooks showed up under the ibooks app.

My problem is not, that the audiobooks disappeared. They can be found in iBooks, not an issue.

My Problem is that I like to listen to them on long drives, obviously in sequence. Therefore, I have my playlist of about 40 books sorted by publication year. that way, multiple books in a series appear in the order they were written. When I open iBooks, the books appear in order of author then title, which is completely useless. There are a few options, but the end result is always the same: the books don't appear in the right order.

How can that be fixed?

The 3rd party player, Speedup Player, has 3 modes: library, playlist and player. In the Library mode you can add books to the playlist in any order you'd like. The feature I like is that it the user can jump back or forward a user determined number of seconds with a down or up swipe of the finger.

To Chrup -

The only other solution I can come up with is... Under the ibooks app when the Authors tab is selected - the books list alphabetically by author. You could go in under a specific author and change the title of the books by adding an "A" at the title of the first one in the series .... a "B" before the title of the second one and so forth and then they would list in that order. That sounds like a lot of work if you have lots of books. I only have about 30 books on my list so it would be doable.

Two workarounds seem to be available:

1) Manually fudge the titles of your audiobooks to force the sort order you want in iBooks, as Breel21 suggests. This will make iBooks list things in your preferred order. But if you want them to actually play in sequence, you're SOL -- iBooks stops at the end and sits there, no auto-advance. So regardless the order they're listed in you'll have to open up the app and select the next one you want to start listening to. It's very annoying, and not at all good behavior when you listen to audiobooks mostly while driving.

2) To make playlists & ordering work properly, you have to force the files back into the Music app. You can do this in iTunes by changing the "File type" from Audiobook to Music. (Then make sure your sync is set up to load "music" from your audiobook playlist -- I went through some confusion when the files initially didn't want to transfer back to my phone.) As long as you've set it to remember your playback position, all should be well. You lose a little of the special audiobook functionality -- that handy 15 sec forward/back is gone when it's "music" -- but playlists work and it doesn't seem to lose its place anymore.

Neither option is perfect, but the 3rd party apps aren't that great either.

Hi,

I found exactly this problem too. I didn't really like the way any of the third party apps worked, particularly having to load in books, so I made my own, called "Audiobook Browser"!

It has taken a while to get it through app review etc, but it is now available: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/gb/app/audiobook-browser-free/id1020961830?mt=8

Please do check it out and let me know what you think. It is a simple app for browsing audiobooks already in your media library by playlist, genre, auther or album and also for playing them and seeing the individual chapter titles. The free (ad supported) version is available now, and there is a paid version still coming through app review that has no ads. If you have feedback, let me know.

downloaded the $1.99 version. Yes I can browse the audio books. Can't find a way to play them though. If I tap on a book the sectons are displayed then tap on a section then my phone just goes back to desktop. Not much help. Most of my audiobooks are downloaded from Audible and are in sections.

Just wanna add my tuppence on this issue.

ARghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Not only can I no longer play my audiobooks on my iPhone but I can't easily listen to them on the PC either. I'd spent ages, over time, creating audiobook playlists, primarily for use on the PC and now they've all gone - deleted by either iTunes or by the Apple music app on the phone during the sync.

Apple - you're taking the michael - please sort this out ASAP.

Hi,

I've been away on holiday, but now I'm back I'll take a look at your problem. I haven't had any reported crashes of Audiobook Browser from Apple analytics in the last two weeks, so I guess it is working for most people. Can you turn on "Share Data with App Developers" under Settings>Privacy>Diagnostics and Usage, so that I can get a report on what is causing your issue.

If anyone else has tried Audiobook Browser, or Audiobook Browser Free, please let me know what you think and if it is working for you.

Thanks

Magnus