Where are my Audiobook playlists in ios 8.4?

Moved to iBooks app.

Sorry I misunderstood your question. I just looked and could not find any way to view or manage playlists in iBooks.

There is a Mac app I use called Audiobook Builder that lets you string audio files into one Audiobook. You could try that as a last resort.

Nope, as you've discovered Apple has removed support for audiobook playlists in 8.4. Yet another slow erosion of the more useful "power user" features of iTunes.

I used to have several audiobooks on the go, depending on mood, along with hours of radio drama and comedy which I imported into iTunes and defined as audiobooks to keep them out of my music collection. All of these were curated using some quite complex Smart Playlists, then the unplayed stuff (plays=0) was synced to the iPhone.

All of this is now broken. If I want to listen to the next unplayed audiobooks or radio shows I have to either pre-select them in iTunes before syncing, or sync everything then select them manually in the iBooks app. It's a massive step backwards. It also appears that I can't use Siri hands-free in the car to select audiobooks. I could do this when they were in the Music app, by requesting their playlists. So thanks for that, Apple.

I've partially worked around the radio shows problem by defining them as podcasts rather than audiobooks. I can select them in the Podcasts app, and also via Siri. But when I sync them it also copies all of the "real" podcasts from my phone back to iTunes. Less than ideal. And the "album art" doesn't display either. And it's no help for genuine audiobooks.

My brief dalliance with Apple Music was disastrous too -- all of my album art got screwed up and for every track I'd given a star rating iTunes saw fit to give the same rating to the whole album, so my "favourites" (four- and five-star) playlist jumped from 130 tracks to over 2000 because every album got added to it. Took nearly two hours to sort that out.

I get the distinct impression that Apple doesn't want people curating their own media collections any more. They want everyone to sign up for iTunes Match / Apple Music and just let Apple do everything. And while I know this works wonderfully for some people, especially those without a PC who don't use iTunes, it's just frustrating for those of us used to doing things our own way.

I find it difficult to believe that none of the beta testers mentioned the Smart Playlists / audiobook / iBooks problem during the test phase, so can only assume that Apple simply ignored those people and ploughed these changes through anyway. I now fear that we are one, maybe two new iTunes releases away from losing Smart Playlists altogether. They'll just remove that feature. At which point iTunes will become practically useless to me. 😟

Well, after buggering about with this for a couple of days I've come to the conclusion that Apple's new audiobooks-within-iBooks feature is crap. Not only are relevant playlists not present on the device (even though the playlists are used as criteriafor which books are synced) but the "books" themselves have their "chapter" titles replaced with "Track 1", "Track 2" etc. which is practically useless for episodic shows, or even compilation audiobooks.

For now I've gone old-school for managing my radio shows and other spoken word miscellanea. Instead of flagging them as audiobooks I've gone back to flagging them as music, but with the text "Radio" added to the Grouping field. Then by adding the rule "Grouping is Radio" to my old radio playlists and "Grouping is not Radio" to my music playlists, I can keep them separated within the Music app while maintaining iBooks just for actual audiobooks. It's less than ideal, but not much more of a kludge than what I had to do with podcasts when Apple saw fit to drag those kicking and screaming out of the Music app.

And this way I can carry on using Siri to select playlists in the car.

My main concern, mentioned above, is that every time Apple has cocked something up with an unannounced "improvement" it has always been rule-heavy Smart Playlists synced through iTunes that have allowed me to affect a workaround. And I live in constant fear of the day that Smart Playlist syncing goes away for good (seriously, what percentage of Apple's users actually create Smart Playlists?) and I'm left with a £700 device that I have absolutely no control over.

When Apple stuff "just works" (and to be fair it often does) it's an absolute joy to use. But when they change things for the worse, which seems to be happening with more and more frequency, it's horrific.

I do not usually write on forums, but this update has made me do it.

I would also like to add my disappointment that AudioBook Playlists have been deleted. I think the developers need to look at making an App just for AudioBooks instead of moving it from one App to another.

NOT everybody is a Music fan. Having playlist allows me to listen to the "Full Series" of AudioBooks before having to change. There are a lot of us that would rather listen to a good AudioBook then DOOF DOOF DOOF.

I think Apple Developers are losing the plot in fancy gimmicks then functionally. Since the last upgrade I am very close to moving to and Andriod device and leaving Apple devices completely. Please don't start the no virus on Apple devices, the only reason I upgraded is TIFF and other files can be used as a hack. This is going by Apples upgade fixes list.

the loss of the playlist feature for audiobooks is quite annoying.

i had many playlists, for various things like different book series, the same book in different languages, vocabulary and verb declension files, poems and quotes for memorization, etc, etc.

now it is all one big chewed lump of generic apple flavored gum.

there is, however, a way to reorder the entire audiobook list in ibook.

from "ibooks":

choose "audiobooks" (not "all").

with the upper left hand toggle button, make sure you are in "list" display, not "book cover" display.

choose "bookshelf" from the menu bar at the top.

toggle the "select" button in the upper right corner.

if (and only if) you are in "bookshelf" mode, there will now be rows of three parallel lines in a square to the right of each book title.

touch and drag these squares to reorder the books to your liking.

when done, press "done" in the upper right.

i hope this helps.

Hello anorton

Thank for the information; however, it did not work for me.

I have series of AudioBooks, one being "The Chronicles of Narnia" which includes 7 AudioBooks and multiple Chapters.

NOW it is all in one (1) AudioBook with 37 Tracks, there is no separate AudioBooks or Chapters. This is only one of many series I have purchased as separate AudioBooks and they all have the same problem.

Thanks for you time.

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.

I too can't believe Apple screwed up such an enjoyable and productive user experience as Audiobook playlists. Redefining them as Music is not acceptable since I don't want music shuffles to start playing an audiobook track, duh. And iBooks isn't smart enough to handle customized playlists - it won't even display the track names! If iBooks was made as playlist friendly for audiobooks as iTunes is, maybe it would work, but it's woefully inadequate. C'mon Apple, get it right. At least don't discontinue Audiobook playlist support in iTunes until iBooks is good enough to take it over. Apple may still have a lot of fans, but what innovations have happened since Jobs is gone? Just resizing and rearranging of their existing products, that people are still buying, but it won't last forever if they keep ******* people off with taking away functionality like this without replacing it with something so awesome no one will care in return. Jobs wouldn't listen to market research because he intuitively knew what user experience people desired, but nowadays it looks like corporate-machine market research is all Apple is doing - which is all they have left when real innovation ends - different-sized iPhones, iPods, & iPads, iCloud storage, & subscription services for media. Apple is still riding the wave, but it won't last forever at this rate.

I'm really upset by this loss of audiobooks. I had dozens of interview files set up up as audiobooks so I could play them back at faster speed.

I agree completely. The loss of playlists for audiobooks in Ibooks is very disappointing and needs to be added back in the next release. It was much easier to remember the order of a series of books.

Another problem I don't like is that it doesn't seem to be possible to go and do anything else in Ibooks when a book is being played. Music still lets you arrow back & keeps playing but Ibooks doesn't.

I just "upgraded" to iOS 8.4. Turns out it was really a downgrade. I have many audiobooks that are now useless.

I had an audio Bible where each book of the Bible was a track and the chapters of each book were chapter markers in that track. Now it shows up in iBooks as a list of thousands of tracks named "Track [number]". There is absolutely no way to select which book or chapter you want. Unbelievable.

I sincerely hope this was a mistake and Apple is working on a solution. I have been an Apple user since 1988 and an Apple stock owner since 2006. I hope this is not a sign of things to come. This does not "just work".

Thank you! That app solves the problem.

BTW, I would be willing to pay for this app to get rid of the ads. Maybe you should have two versions. One ad-supported for free and one paid with no ads.

Thanks