Where are my Audiobook playlists in ios 8.4?

So now it's iOS 9, and while track/chapter names have at least returned to iBooks, I still can't see any playlist functionality. Am I missing something?

I was about to post the same thing. Having the correct chapter titles helps a bit, although I've yet to check whether it also displays on the car dash over Bluetooth. It's also a bit quirky with its parsing; I have a book whose parts (not technically chapters) I renamed as "{Title} : Part 1", "{Title} : Part 2" etc. and iOS has tried to be clever and removed the {Title} bit but left the colon. So all my tracks are displayed as ": Part 1", ": Part 2" etc. Nothing that can't be changed in ten minutes in iTunes but annoying nonetheless.

The lack of playlists is more serious. It's something I can probably learn to live with, given that the workaround (having most of my radio shows as Music and using the Grouping flag to separate them) was almost as annoying as the problem it solved, but it's still a surprising omission. Given that iTunes can use playlists to decide which audiobooks to sync, not having the actual playlists on the actual device is bizarre.

And I've just discovered that Siri can play audiobooks by asking her to "play audiobook {title}" which is kind of cool. I don't know if that's new or just something I missed before, but it will help immensely while driving as long as I can remember the title of the last thing I was listening to. 😉

FWIW the things I've found that come closest -- and it's a distant closeness -- to replicating playlists in the iBooks app are:

The Categories tab. This seems to be iBooks' term for Genres, because that's how my library is broken down when I have this tab selected. For instance I have Comedy, Documentary, Historical Fiction and Science Fiction visible , with relevant books (and in my case radio shows) listed below.

Collections, which are very broadly analogous to non-Smart playlists for a specific subset of functions. By creating a new Category with a name of your choosing and using the Select menu you can move audiobooks into any number of "subfolders". (Technically they're shortcuts rather than movements since the books still appear in the overall Audiobooks Collection too).

Sadly, neither of these break the titles down by chapter (or in my case, episode). They only list the actual title of the work, and clicking on it starts playing from where it left off and continues through the parts until completion unless you tap the "three lines" button to see the list of parts. So if like me you used to have Smart Playlists that were ordered by release date or addition date, so you could play a part of one audiobook followed immediately by a part of another, then I think we're SOL.

Still, at least the chapter names display now. So well done Apple! 😕

Yeah, adding the titles solves some of the bigger problems I was having - at least now I can choose what to listen to. The main remaining issue is for the audiobooks that basically need playlists. For example, I've got language lesson playlists where I repeat the short dialogue file three times, then play the longer lesson talking about the dialogue once, then play the dialogue file again, and then a final review file. With Audiobooks as it currently stands, that's impossible. (And keeping those dialogue files in Music also renders iCloud Music Library unusable for me, because they won't sync over.) It looks like MagnusB's Audiobook Browser should provide playlist functionality, but at the moment at least it's not working for me - I guess maybe it needs to be updated for iOS 9.

And like you, I miss being able to alternate chapters from different books - or in my case, podcast episodes from different series. A few years back I started renaming most of my podcasts as audiobooks, because Apple totally messed up playlists in Podcasts. That doesn't sound like a familiar issue at all, does it?

Lost in Asia wrote:

It looks like MagnusB's Audiobook Browser should provide playlist functionality, but at the moment at least it's not working for me - I guess maybe it needs to be updated for iOS 9.

Yes, I meant to mention MagnusB's app. I tried the free version but while it displays the playlists themselves, any attempt to actually play anything crashes the app. Like you said, maybe it's an iOS 9 thing. I have a couple of other apps with pending updates that crash immediately on iOS 9, so maybe Audiobook Browser just needs a patch too. It looks like an interesting solution.

Even in its non-working state it's interesting that it can actually display the playlists though. It means they're in there somewhere, buried in the iOS file system. Which makes Apple's decision not to use them in the native app even more bizarre.

A few years back I started renaming most of my podcasts as audiobooks, because Apple totally messed up playlists in Podcasts. That doesn't sound like a familiar issue at all, does it?

Amen to that. I ended up divorcing podcasts from iTunes completely and just downloading and curating them using the built-in app, which to be fair works pretty well in its current iteration. It did take several releases of the app to get there though. The first few versions were awful.

Sometimes I feel as though I've been through every workaround possible during my seven years with Apple, coming up with new ways of approaching problems and writing ever more complicated Smart Playlist rules because Apple keep moving the goalposts. As I've said a couple of times, my biggest fear is that they will one day decide that Smart Playlists are more trouble than they're worth and/or are only used by a fraction of iOS users, and will remove them from iTunes altogether. I don't know what the **** I'll do then. Nearly all of my music is curated through Smart Playlists. I'd struggle to find anything without them.

Audiobook Browser Free does seem to have some issues with iOS9. I am on the case today and hopefully will submit a new version to apple ASAP. Should be out in about a week if their review process operates at the normal rate. Thanks for looking at it!

Magnus

Audiobook Browser and Audiobook Browser Free are now updated for iOS9. New versions (1.4) are under review by Apple and should appear in a few days. Sorry for the issues for those already updated to iOS9 - I only have one iPhone myself and can't run multiple OS versions on it for testing!

MagnusB

Thanks for the feedback. I know this is a mad time of year for iOS developers trying to get updates through the review process. I'll give your app another try as soon as the update is available.

I spent ages waiting for MagnusB's app to update, only to realise it had updated but I didn't have it in my PC's iTunes library. (I had it on my iPhone, but have automatic updates turned off on that device).

Anyway I've now given it a try and while it solves some of the issues it's not a perfect solution for me. For instance it doesn't seem to automatically play through playlists; the user has to select and play each track individually. And while the text of the current track displays on my car's head unit over Bluetooth (nice) the next and previous track buttons cause playback to stop and the car's display to blank. To be fair this may be a restriction imposed by Apple rather than a shortcoming of the app.

Nonetheless I have bought the full version, partly to get rid of the ads which were getting in the way of my experimentation but also because the app at least partially fills a niche created when Apple started screwing around with Audiobooks in 8.4. I may not use it much in the car (unless I'm just starting a long book and leaving it to it) but I can imagine using it a fair bit in work where I tend to listen to playlists of mixed audiobooks when I'm not listening to podcasts.

I certainly recommend anyone who hasn't to try this app. It might not solve all of your issues (every one of us uses our devices slightly differently) but it might just solve enough of them to be useful.