Quick verdict
- What it is
- Store information collected; independent summary not yet available.
- At a glance
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- $5.99
Categories and search queries
Official categories
- Books
- Entertainment
AppCorpus categories
Key functions
| Function | Availability | Access | Scope | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Family Sharing | Yes | Unknown | App Store | Store published |
| Siri Shortcuts | Yes | Unknown | App Store | Store published |
Screens
No screenshots collected yet.
Pricing & paywalls
App Store
Shown for US
- Price: $5.99
Ratings & reviews
App Store
Shown for US
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4/5Almost perfect!
This app is getting really really close to perfect. It's the only one that handles seasons well! My only advice regards the mini-player animation. It is SO cool that you have emulated Apple's shrinking album cover effect (I'm geeking out about it!), but I'm not sure it's really ready for release. Until it's smooth and snappy, I'd rather have the whole player slide down off the bottom of the screen quickly and smoothly than have a fancy animation that feels slow and finicky. If it weren't for that, I could easily be convinced this app was built by the Apple devs themselves! 👏👏👏
brrttsmth · 31 Jul 2026
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3/5Disappointing
I expected a lot more from a $5 app that is written to take advantage of the latest iOS features. While the interface generally looks nice, it is actually less user friendly and less functional than the first party Audiobookshelf app (beta is unfortunately full and it’s not yet on the App Store). Just in the first week of use, I noticed a number of issues that really need to be addressed: * Mysterious slowdowns that bring the app to a crawl such that force closing and restarting the app was the only option (encountered while queuing multiple downloads) * Mostly unusable search; searching anything other than author just doesn’t work (searches for title and other metadata just run indefinitely, never returning results) * The interface, while pretty, is just not at all intuitively designed. Finding settings was difficult, for example
Raptorious Dan · 31 Jul 2026
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5/5The best Audiobookshelf experience
There are now several great options for listening to audiobooks from an Audiobookshelf server on iOS. ShelfPlayer is my favorite by a lot. The design is great, and it’s ridiculously full featured. For example it’s the only app I’ve found that can add books to Collections, something I’d previously only been able to do on the browser version of Audiobookshelf. Quick tip: the app can be extensively customized. Many of its more fiddly settings are in the Settings app rather than directly in the ShelfPlayer app, which I like. I run this app on iPhone, iPad, and occasionally even on my Mac (as an iPad app) and it’s a great tool on all of them. Many thanks to this awesome developer for a polished and beautiful app.
Raygan · 31 Jul 2026
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2/5Finally fixed the background crashing, but many other issues added in the process
Previous update finally solved the background crashing issue, but caused numerous other issues. 1. Trying to play a completed episode without first explicitly resetting progress causes an instant crash 2. If you have used the sleep timer, you must set to random value, then cancels, then set again. Otherwise it will show a negative number in the thousands and prevent podcasts from playing 3. The latest field has disappeared from CarPlay with no discernible way to get it back. 4. Double click AirPods no longer skips forward, but instead SKIPS TO THE NEXT EPISODE unlike every other audio app in existence. There seems to be no way to change this 5. The currently playing display at the bottom of the screen with occasionally stop working and require a force close 6. Occasionally will crash when queueing multiple episodes To users - maybe just use plappa. It’s clunky and less pretty, but it actually works consistently To the dev - maybe layoff the vibes. Random things are breaking and changing in every update. Kinda bums me out
Imtnt · 31 Jul 2026
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2/5Constantly losing podcast/audiobook progress
Using the sleep timer function for several 20 minute podcast series and audio books. When the timer runs through several episodes or chapters over the course of an hour long timer I constantly find the shelf player app not saving progress to ABS on timer end and starting right back where the last session began. I’m losing multiple episodes or chapters of progress and taking up a lot of time constantly re-marking episodes complete or trying to figure out where to resume an audiobook before continuing listening sessions. The UI is very nice but this functionality flaw is heavily detracting from the experience
MZQP327 · 31 Jul 2026
Privacy & accessibility
App Store
Privacy
- Data Not Linked to You — Analytics — Identifiers — Device ID Developer declared
- Data Not Linked to You — Third-Party Advertising — Usage Data — Advertising Data Developer declared
- Data Not Linked to You — Identifiers Developer declared
- Data Not Linked to You — Usage Data Developer declared
- Data Used to Track You — Identifiers — Device ID Developer declared
- Data Used to Track You — Identifiers Developer declared
- Data Used to Track You — Usage Data — Advertising Data Developer declared
- Data Used to Track You — Usage Data Developer declared
Accessibility
- Dark Interface — SUPPORTED Store published
- Larger Text — SUPPORTED Store published
- Voice Control — SUPPORTED Store published
- VoiceOver — SUPPORTED Store published
Versions
App Store
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2.3.3
Added OpenID Connect login Improve accessibility
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2.3.4
Fixed a bug that caused podcast episodes to crash the app
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2.3.5
This update fixes some bugs and - improves series sorting - allows you to set custom http headers - lock the now playing bar
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2.3.6
- Fix series matching - Display buffering indicator in now playing bar - Downloaded items will now contribute to your listening statistics - Long press the skip buttons to seek to the previous / next chapter - New now playing animation - Added bookmark support
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2.3.7
- Fixed the position of new bookmarks - Fixed a podcast filter translation
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2.4.0
This update adds a native iPadOS app - Added 20 seconds seek option - Fix tips - Fix progress indicator - Make progress easier to read - Make padding consistent
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2.4.1
- Rework Siri integration You can now setup shortcuts for recently listened items. More general actions are planned. - Notifications and the player can now link to items - Improved the layout on iPadOS and added hover effect - Show remaining time in chapter in the notable moments sheets when the option "Show chapter track" is disabled - Listen to all skip & seek events - Clarify some translations - Hide bookmark button when playing episodes - Added support for images with aspect ratios other than 1:1 - Layout fixes & improvements - Added custom tint options - Added option to disable serif fonts
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2.4.2
- Added a download progress indicator - Remember audiobook & episode playback rate - Custom playback rate & default playback rate - Account sheet overhaul - The progress indicator is now solid white
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2.4.3
Updated the search component to reflect the latest Audiobookshelf-API changes.
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2.4.4
Fixed an authorization issue that was caused by malformed progress entities
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2.4.5
Fix searching for audiobooks
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2.5.0
This update modernizes the systems that power ShelfPlayer. All parts of the app have been refined to improve their appearance and performance and reduce crashes. New features include: - New CarPlay implementation - Playback queue - Multiple-chapter sleep timer - Option to collapse series - Playback history - Improved Siri integration - Improved handling of multi-author & -series audiobooks - iOS 18 tab- & sidebar Translations: - New Swedish Translation: @AlexGustafsson (GitHub) - Updated Chinese Translation: @zhimiaoli (GitHub) - German & English: @rasmuslos (GitHub)
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2.5.1
Fix chapter sleep-timer edge case.
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2.5.2
- Remember CarPlay library - Show remaining time in book - Prevent crashes - Stop playback from ending abruptly
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2.5.3
Better handling of audio tracks without an index
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3.0.2
After several months of development, this major update introduces a complete internal rewrite of ShelfPlayer, laying the groundwork for improved performance, reliability, and future expansion. Alongside the new foundation, this release brings a wide range of new features, enhancements, and fixes. Below are some of the highlights: NEW FEATURES AND IMPROVEMENTS * Support for ABS 2.26+ authentication * Multi-user support * Sleep Timer Live Activity * Home screen widgets * App Intents integration * “Listened Today” – daily listening statistics * “Listen Now” – combines content from all libraries * Global search * Updated design and layout * Revamped Now Playing view with new animations * Smarter automatic downloads * Improved handling of multiple simultaneous downloads * More playback speed and sleep timer options * Audiobook PDF support * VoiceOver accessibility improvements FIXES * Resolved crashes from version 2.5.0 * Fixed Mac (Designed for iPad) application --- Versions 3.0.0 and 3.0.1 were not publicly released. Version 3.0.2 is the first public release in the 3.0+ series. This update marks a major milestone for ShelfPlayer, with a reengineered core and a more capable, future-ready foundation. Thank you for your continued support and patience throughout the development process. Special thanks to all translators and beta testers for their invaluable contributions!
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3.0.3
- Fix offline mode only accessible in airplane mode - Fix chapter title missing in now playing widget - Fix handling of non ascii usernames - Improve playback speed handling - Improved performance by implementing a on-disk cacheing mechanism - Various bug fixes Please make sure your server is up to date if you encounter any issues.
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3.0.4
- Added Russian translation (Nikita Kolmakov, @K1ndWha1e GitHub) - Updated Privacy and ToS - Minor bug fixes and improvements
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3.1.0
- Updated the Design for iOS 26 - Offline mode improvements - Various improvements and bug fixes
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3.1.1
Bug fixes
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3.1.2
Bug fixes and improvements
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3.1.4
- Replace LastPlayed with with StartWidget which has an configurable item parameter and can be added to the lock screen - Added "Start" panel which allows mixing Tabs from all libraries - Fix start race condition - Added playback bar placeholder - Bug fixes and improvements
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3.2.0
This release contains under-the-hood improvements to the Networking, Offline, and Progress subsystems of ShelfPlayer. Previously the offline mode existed mostly in the UI, which worked fine for servers that were always reachable or completely offline, but not for servers only accessible on the local network. The new offline mode works throughout the entire app and is based on actual reachability. The new network client is more efficient and supports queueing, so a maximum of five requests are currently dispatched concurrently. The progress system has also been improved to work more reliably in general and in certain edge cases. Other improvements include: - Crash fixes - WebSocket support for progress updates (more planned) - Episode chapter extraction - Updated and improved color extraction algorithm - More stable and easy-to-use CarPlay experience - Bookmark editing - Liquid Glass design updates - Caching, item, and image loading improvements - Updated project to Swift 6.2 (enabled approachable concurrency and default main actor isolation)
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3.2.1
- Crash fixes - Fix audio player selecting wrong audio track during startup - Show progress in % on the compact item row if enabled
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3.3.0
· 9 Jun 2026
This release introduces Podcast Channels support and a new Statistics sheet showing listening activity and goals. The Episode view has been redesigned, and the Now Playing screen now features an animated background. The Sleep Timer and playback speed picker have been reworked, and the home screen has a new customization editor. OpenID Connect authentication has been fixed, and library lookup is more reliable, with better genre handling and tag support. Settings have been redesigned, and iPadOS layout, accessibility, and CarPlay have all received polish, including a fix for physical wheel buttons that didn't work in some circumstances. Internally, event propagation has moved from NotificationCenter to Combine. Other changes include: - New Bookmark Export App Intent - Updated Intents and Shortcuts support - Better image aspect ratio handling - New marquee text for long titles - Increased offline mode timeout - Convenience Download subsystem rework - More WebSocket events for progress, sessions, and item updates - Memory leak fixes - Under-the-hood refactors and project structure cleanup - Translation updates - Various bug fixes
Alternatives
- Storyteller Reader — Same category + similar ratings
- Audra Books — Same category + similar ratings
Availability by market
- US
Data quality & evidence
- Page completeness
- Live store listing
- Last verified
- 31 Jul 2026
- Sources
- App Store
- Independent summary has not been published yet.
- Screenshots: not yet collected