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Playing a book

Tap Listen on any book and the player opens. On a phone it's a full-screen view; on a desktop-sized window it lives in a panel beside the book's details. A mini player bar also floats at the bottom of every screen while something is playing - tap it to bring the full player back.

The full player screen with cover, seek bar, and transport controls

The controls​

  • Play / pause - the big pink button.
  • Skip back / skip forward - the two round buttons beside it, labelled with the number of seconds they jump (15s back and 30s forward out of the box). You can change both, from 5 to 120 seconds, in Settings.
  • Previous / next chapter - the small arrows either side of the chapter title.
  • Chapter list - tap the chapter title itself to open the full list of chapters (or files) and jump anywhere. On the book's detail page, tapping a chapter row does the same.
  • Seek bar - the scrubber is chapter-relative: it spans the current chapter, with the chapter's elapsed and remaining time at each end. The centre readout shows time left in the whole book at your current speed, e.g. "5h 12m left (1.25×)".

Along the bottom of the player: playback speed, history, notes, and the sleep timer. The bookmark button sits at the top right.

The player on a phone

Playback speed​

Tap the speed readout (e.g. 1×) to open the speed control. Speed goes from 0.5× to 2× in 0.05 steps, with pitch correction so voices don't go squeaky.

The speed you choose for a book is remembered per book - switch back to a slow narrator and your speed comes back with them. New books start at your default speed from Settings.

Sleep timer​

Tap the moon icon to set a sleep timer. You can stop:

  • after a set time - 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, or 60 minutes;
  • at the end of a chapter - the current one or any of the next few;
  • at the end of the book, for books without chapters.

While a timer runs, a countdown shows on the moon icon and on the cover, and the sheet offers Cancel timer. When it fires, playback simply pauses - nothing is lost. In the mobile apps you can also shake your phone to cancel a running timer without looking.

tip

The countdown is real ("wall clock") time: listening at 2× speed, an end-of-chapter timer shows how long the chapter actually takes to reach at that speed.

Bookmarks, notes, and history​

  • Bookmarks - tap the bookmark icon, then Add bookmark at 1:23:45 to pin the current moment. Bookmarks are listed there and on the book's detail page; tap one to jump back.
  • Notes - free-form notes on the book (markdown supported), for quotes or thoughts.
  • History - your past listening sessions on this book, labelled by chapter.

All three are saved to your account, not the device.

Your position follows you​

AudioSilo saves your position to the server every 15 seconds while playing, and immediately whenever you pause, seek, change speed, or stop. Start a book on your phone in the car, open the web player at your desk, and it's sitting on the home screen's Continue listening shelf at the right spot.

A few protections work behind the scenes so you never lose your place:

  • Your position is stored on the server and on the device, and the most recent one wins - so a flaky connection can't quietly rewind you.
  • A book never silently restarts from the beginning. If a streamed book can't confirm your resume position (say, the server is briefly unreachable), the player shows an error with a Retry button rather than starting at zero.
  • Even if playback did slip back somehow, the app refuses to overwrite your real progress with a much earlier position - only a deliberate seek backwards counts.
  • Auto-rewind on resume: after a pause, playback backs up a few seconds (5 by default, adjustable up to 30 or off) so you regain the thread of the sentence.

Listening while offline​

If the connection drops mid-listen:

  • A downloaded book keeps playing as if nothing happened - see Offline downloads.
  • A streamed book will pause with an error and a Retry button once its buffer runs out.
  • Either way, an "Offline - changes sync when reconnected" banner appears, and any progress, bookmarks, or finished-marks you make are queued on the device and synced automatically when the server is reachable again.

Lock-screen and headphone controls​

In the mobile apps, playback continues in the background and shows up everywhere your system shows media:

  • Android - the lock screen and notification give you the full audiobook row: previous chapter, a chapter-relative scrubber you can drag, next chapter, and 30-second skip back/forward buttons.
  • iOS - the lock screen and Control Centre show play/pause, a scrubber, and skip back/forward buttons that use the same skip lengths you chose in Settings.
  • Headphones and earbuds - play/pause and skip buttons work as you'd expect, and playback pauses politely for interruptions (a phone call, a navigation prompt) and resumes afterwards only if it was playing before.

See The mobile apps for more on the native apps.

Books without chapters​

A long audiobook that's a single file with no chapter markers still gets chapter-style navigation: the player divides it into virtual chapters (every 30 minutes by default - adjustable from 5 to 60 minutes in Settings), so the chapter skips, the chapter list, and end-of-chapter sleep timers all work.