Audiobookshelf is an open-source self-hosted media server for your audiobooks and podcasts.

Features include...

• Companion android and iOS app w/ offline listening (in beta)
• Multi-user support w/ custom permissions
• Keeps progress per user and syncs across devices
• Lookup and apply metadata and cover art from several providers
• Audiobook chapter editor w/ chapter lookup
• Audiobook tools: Embed metadata in audio files & merge multiple audio files to a single m4b
• Search and add podcasts to download episodes w/ auto-download
• Open RSS feeds for audiobooks and podcast episodes
• Backups with automated backup scheduling
• Basic ebook support and ereader (epub, pdf, cbr, cbz) + send to device (i.e. Kindle)
• And much more...

Join our Discord server.

If you are interested in integrating with Audiobookshelf, visit the API documentation.

The source for this documentation can be found at the Audiobookshelf GitHub repository. Contributions to this documentation can be made through a pull request.

Demo

Check out the web client demo: https://audiobooks.dev/ (thanks for hosting @Vito0912!)

Username/password: demo/demo (user account)

services:
  audiobookshelf:
    image: ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf:latest
    ports:
      - 13378:80
    volumes:
      - </path/to/audiobooks>:/audiobooks
      - </path/to/podcasts>:/podcasts
      - </path/to/config>:/config
      - </path/to/metadata>:/metadata
    environment:
      - TZ=America/Toronto

Volume mappings

• /config will contain the database (users/books/libraries/settings). Beginning with 2.3.x, this needs to be on the same machine you are running ABS on.
• /metadata will contain cache, streams, covers, downloads, backups and logs
• Map any other directories you want to use for your book and podcast collections (ebooks supported) Still confused about Docker? Check out this FAQ

💡 Prefer the CLI? This is our docker run command. YMMV

docker pull ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf

docker run -d \
 -p 13378:80 \
 -v </path/to/config>:/config \
 -v </path/to/metadata>:/metadata \
 -v </path/to/audiobooks>:/audiobooks \
 -v </path/to/podcasts>:/podcasts \
 --name audiobookshelf \
 -e TZ="America/Toronto" \
 ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf

⚠️ Windows users will need to remove the \ and run this as a single line

For Debian based systems, you can activate the official Audiobookshelf repository and install the Debian package.

tagInstallation

Activate the repository:

sudo apt install gnupg curl
wget -O- https://advplyr.github.io/audiobookshelf-ppa/KEY.gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/adb-archive-keyring.gpg
sudo curl -s -o /etc/apt/sources.list.d/audiobookshelf.list https://advplyr.github.io/audiobookshelf-ppa/audiobookshelf.list

Install Audiobookshelf:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install audiobookshelf

tagConfiguration

The Audiobookshelf service will use the config file localted at /etc/default/audiobookshelf. The default configuration is as follows:

METADATA_PATH=/usr/share/audiobookshelf/metadata
CONFIG_PATH=/usr/share/audiobookshelf/config
FFMPEG_PATH=/usr/lib/audiobookshelf-ffmpeg/ffmpeg
FFPROBE_PATH=/usr/lib/audiobookshelf-ffmpeg/ffprobe
TONE_PATH=/usr/lib/audiobookshelf-ffmpeg/tone
PORT=13378

If you update the configuration, restart the service by running:

sudo systemctl restart audiobookshelf.service

tagInstallation

To activate the repository, run:

dnf install -y "https://github.com/lkiesow/audiobookshelf-rpm/raw/el$(rpm -E %rhel)/audiobookshelf-repository-1-1.el$(rpm -E %rhel).noarch.rpm"

You can now install Audiobookshelf. All dependencies will be installed automatically:

dnf install audiobookshelf

tagConfiguration

You can configure Audiobookshelf in /etc/default/audiobookshelf. Here you can add the same configuration options you would pass to the Docker container.

METADATA_PATH=/var/lib/audiobookshelf/metadata
CONFIG_PATH=/var/lib/audiobookshelf/config
PORT=13378
HOST=127.0.0.1

By default, Audiobookshelf will listen to localhost only. This should be sufficient if you install a reverse proxy (you should!). If you want to listen to all network interfaces, set HOST=0.0.0.0 instead.

tagStart Audiobookshelf

To run Audiobookshelf and ensure it will be started automatically after a reboot, run:

systemctl start audiobookshelf.service
systemctl enable audiobookshelf.service

To check the current status of the service, run:

systemctl status audiobookshelf.service

tagInstallation

Declarative installation:

environment.systemPackages = [
  pkgs.audiobookshelf
];

tagConfiguration

You can configure audiobookshelf using the parameters to the executable. It supports the same configuration options you would pass to the Docker container, the options below are the defaults if the option is missing.

audiobookshelf --metadata "$(pwd)/metadata" \
  --config "$(pwd)/config" \
  --port 8000 \
  --host 0.0.0.0

If you use a reverse proxy (you should!) listing on localhost only would be enough. In this case set --host 127.0.0.1 instead.

tagStart audiobookshelf

You can create a simple systemd service in your configuration.nix to automatically start audiobookshelf:

services.audiobookshelf.enable = true;

For further options, see the NixOS options page.

To configure a reverse nginx proxy, add the following:

services.nginx = {
  enable = true;
  recommendedProxySettings = true;
  virtualHosts."your.hostname.org" = {
    forceSSL = true; # Optional, but highly recommended
    locations."/" = {
      proxyPass = "http://127.0.0.1:${builtins.toString config.services.audiobookshelf.port}";
      proxyWebsockets = true;
      extraConfig = ''
        proxy_redirect http:// $scheme://;
      '';
    };
    useACMEHost = "[attribute name from security.acme.certs]"; # Optional, but highly recommended
  };
};

To check the current status of the service, run:

systemctl status audiobookshelf.service

View latest release

See project repo for more information: https://github.com/mikiher/audiobookshelf-windows

Note: Requires Windows 10 64-bit or later

Issues with the installer or Windows tray app should be opened here.

You can also install audiobookshelf on Windows using Docker. Check out the user-contributed guide for installing on Windows and join our Discord server for support.

See Github readme for user-contributed reverse proxy configs

tagDeploying audiobookshelf on Easypanel

Easypanel it's a modern server control panel. You can use it to deploy audiobookshelf on your own server.

tagInstructions

1. Create a VM that runs Ubuntu on your cloud provider.
2. Install Easypanel using the instructions from the website.
3. Create a new project.
4. Install audiobookshelf using the dedicated template.

Quadlet Container (Requires Podman version 4.4 or above)

# audiobookshelf.container
[Container]
ContainerName=audiobookshelf
Image=ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf:latest
AutoUpdate=registry
NoNewPrivileges=true
PublishPort=13378:80
Volume=</path/to/audiobooks>:/audiobooks
Volume=</path/to/books>:/books
Volume=</path/to/podcasts>:/podcasts
Volume=</path/to/config>:/config
Volume=</path/to/metadata>:/metadata

[Service]
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Volume mappings

• /config will contain the database (users/books/libraries/settings). Beginning with 2.3.x, this needs to be on the same machine you are running ABS on.
• /metadata will contain cache, streams, covers, downloads, backups and logs
• Map any other directories you want to use for your book and podcast collections (ebooks supported) Still confused about containers? Check out this FAQ (It is about Docker, but the concept is the same)

💡 Prefer the CLI? This is our podman run command. YMMV

podman pull ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf

podman run -d \
 -p 13378:80 \
 -v </path/to/config>:/config \
 -v </path/to/metadata>:/metadata \
 -v </path/to/audiobooks>:/audiobooks \
 -v </path/to/books>:/books \
 -v </path/to/podcasts>:/podcasts \
 --name audiobookshelf \
 -e TZ="America/Toronto" \
 ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf

The mobile apps are open source on Github. Report bugs and suggest features there.

tagAndroid

Install from the Google Play Store.

tagiOS

Join Test Flight beta testing and install the app.

To upgrade the server to the newest version, you just need to pull the new docker image and restart the container. If you are using Portainer or Docker Desktop, you can just update the stack and pull the new image. If you are using a pinned version number, you will need to update that version number.

Still confused about Docker? Check out this FAQ

If you used docker compose, you just need to make sure the tag is either the version you want or latest if you want the newest release. If you want to run a specific release, such as older version, change the tag to the desired version number.

Then, you can just run the following commands.

docker compose pull
docker compose down
docker compose up --detach

Still confused about Docker? Check out this FAQ

If AutoUpdate policy is set to registry, you can just execute the following command:

podman auto-update

Otherwise, you can manually update the container by pulling the new image and replacing the old one.

For rootless containers: (Containers not running as root)

To pull the new image:

podman pull ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf

To start the container with the new image:

systemctl --user restart audiobookshelf

For rootful containers: (Containers running as root)

To pull the new image:

sudo podman pull ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf

To start the container with the new image:

sudo systemctl restart audiobookshelf

If you are running the container with the podman run command, you can remove the old container and start it again with the new image:

podman stop audiobookshelf
podman rm audiobookshelf
podman run -d \
  -p 13378:80 \
  -v </path/to/config>:/config \
  -v </path/to/metadata>:/metadata \
  -v </path/to/audiobooks>:/audiobooks \
  -v </path/to/books>:/books \
  -v </path/to/podcasts>:/podcasts \
  --name audiobookshelf \
  -e TZ="America/Toronto" \
  ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf

Audiobookshelf is configured via environment variables. You can pass them to your Docker container using -e VARIABLE=VALUE or set them in /etc/default/audiobookshelf if you install audiobookshelf via packages.

Here is a list of all available options:

tagFilesystem

• CONFIG_PATH (default: ./config)
  • Path to the config directory.
  • It will contain the database (users/books/libraries/settings). This location must not be mounted over the network.
• METADATA_PATH (default: ./metadata)
  • Path to the metadata directory.
  • It will contain cache, streams, covers, downloads, backups and logs.
• BACKUP_PATH (default: ./metadata/backups)
  • Path to where backups are stored.
  • Backups contain a backup of the database in /config and images/metadata stored in ./metadata/items and ./metadata/authors

tagExternal Tools

• FFMPEG_PATH (default: ffmpeg)
  • Path to the ffmpeg binary.
  • If no path is set, Audiobookshelf will assume the binary to exist in the system path.
• FFPROBE_PATH (default: ffprobe)
  • Path to the ffprobe binary.
  • If no path is set, Audiobookshelf will assume the binary to exist in the system path.

tagNetwork

• HOST
  • The host Audiobookshelf binds to. Most commonly, this will be 127.0.0.1 if you want the service to listen to localhost only, or left unset if you want to listen to all interfaces (both IPv4 and IPv6).
• PORT
  • The TCP port Audiobookshelf will listen on.
• EXP_PROXY_SUPPORT
  • Experimental workaround to repsect the HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY environment variables. The SSRF request filter is also disablede by using thes environment variable

tagSecurity

• TOKEN_SECRET
  • Secret used for generating the JSON Web Tokens.
  • If none is provided, a secure random token is generated automatically. That will usually be sufficient.
• ALLOW_CORS (default: '0')
  • Allow Cross-Origin Resource Sharing if set to '1'.
• DISABLE_SSRF_REQUEST_FILTER (default: '0')
  • Disables the security of using the "Server Side Request Forgery" filter.
  • If you are self-hosting a podcast from the same server, you may need to disable the SSRF filter.
• SSRF_FILTER_REQUEST_WHITELIST
  • A comma-separated whitelist of domains to exclude from the SSRF filter
• ALLOW_IFRAME (default: '0')
  • Allow use of iframes. This can also be done at the reverse proxy level.

tagOther

• SOURCE
  • Installation source. Will be shown in the web client.
  • Usually set to docker, debian or rpm.
• NODE_ENV (default: production)
  • Type of deployment.
  • Should be production unless using development.
• PODCAST_DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT (default: 30 seconds)
  • Timeout to wait for a podcast to start downloading.
• QUERY_LOGGING
  • Debug information for logging SQL queries
  • Use log to log the queries, and benchmark to also log the runtime of each query.
• QUERY_PROFILING
  • Experimental profiling of specific database queries. Not implemented on most queries.
• SQLITE_MMAP_SIZE
  • Set the mmap_size pragma for the SQLite database
• SQLITE_CACHE_SIZE
  • Set the cache_size pragma for the SQLite database
• SQLITE_TEMP_STORE
  • Set the temp_store pragma for the SQLite database