this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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Selfhosted

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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Reminder that "self hosting" media is an extra step, you can do the same with "saving media locally and playing it"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 37 minutes ago

The author actually explains that his original solution was just saving them locally on his phone and playing them from there, but that was too much legwork for his wife to want to switch from a cloud service like Audible. So the whole self hosting part is to become “Audible” for his wife lol.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

But how will I bring up my NAS in conversations at parties?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago

Tell them you'll bring the music but instead play books at them during quiet times...lord of the rings anyone?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

what is thisyarty thing

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Prologue on iOS does a great job of device syncing my Plex audiobook library. And no subscription requirement for once.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I just wish their official app would get out of beta already. It’s been stuck in limbo forever.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 46 minutes ago

Thanks for the heads up! Tired of trying to make the Emby app work for audiobooks.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 hours ago

Nice.

I was paying for a family subscription for a major audiobook provider for a while. That changed after I used a 3rd party app to listen to their audiobooks and apparently broke their eula, and they were threatening to sue me and my 7 year old kid for it. Kinda killed the spirit to pay for their service.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 hours ago

If you want a nicer looking (though less feature complete) app I can really recommend Lissen.

[–] [email protected] 74 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

Shoutout to Libation, that allows you to download and deDRM your Audible library.

https://github.com/rmcrackan/Libation

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (4 children)

Oooooo, but there be dragons.

Documentation? Yer lookin' at it This is a single-developer personal passion project. Support, response, updates, enhancements, bug fixes etc are as my free time allows I have a full-time job, a life, and a finite attention span. Therefore a lot of time can potentially go by with no improvements of any kind

[–] [email protected] 22 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Actually good for the developer. He is doing it out of his passion and faith in OSS. What more should we want of him? The dude is already a hero.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

It's just a warning not to get into it unless you're capable of helping yourself.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

That's true of all self-hosting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

De-DRMing audible audio books and self hosting are not inextricably linked. I just wanted to repost it to make sure people saw it before diving in.

The origins of the phrase "here be dragons" is one of placing a warning of caution on an unexplored area of the map. It says nothing negative about the developer.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 hours ago

You don't really need much documentation. You set it up on windows once, which is pretty intuitive and then you copy the config to your server and run it headless. It pulls your library in fixed intervals. I haven't touched it once in the year it is running now

[–] [email protected] 25 points 15 hours ago

It's good they put it up front though. There can be a lot of entitlement with oss users sometimes and setting expectations can help alleviate that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

It works now, even if later he gets tired of it and walks away it still works now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago

I actually used a Windows app, de audible I think to get all mine out years ago. But I am always glad to see alternatives.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago

Thank you for this

[–] [email protected] 78 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (4 children)

In addition to self-hosting, I'll throw out a few other alternatives:

Free:

Paid:

  • For a user experience closer to Audible, I went with libro.fm. You can pick a local, independent bookstore that gets a portion of the sales. Their catalog is pretty extensive as well, have been able to find most books I'm interested in. Books are DRM-free and you can pause your membership.
  • Downpour - DRM-free as well

DRM-free is important IMO because otherwise you're at the mercy of the platform and if the company ever changes its Terms of Use or wipes your account, you lose your purchases. Amazon have remotely deleted books from users' libraries in the past or replaced them with modified copies (e.g. Roald Dahl books). Kindle announced last month they won't let you download your eBooks via USB so it's possible Audible could see changes for the worse in the future as well.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 19 hours ago

I always mention whenever I see libro.fm brought up: if you don't have a local store you want to support for whatever reasons, Firestorm in Asheville, North Carolina is a fantastic refuge for the local queer community, it's a worker cooperative, and they're struggling to survive. Please consider them if there isn't another local place in your own community. With the big book stores and then Amazon, a lot of communities don't have a physical local shop anymore, so if someone has a plug for their local, I think it's worth making on these kinds of threads.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago (4 children)

Anyone does this with jellyfin?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

No, but plex has terrible support for audiobooks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

If it’s anything like Emby, it blows for audiobooks. Lacking essential features, and regularly loses its place.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 hours ago

Ive tried for a wile, but the features are just lacking. Finamp is good for music now. But for audiobook i am firm on audiobookshelf.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Doesn't work, I feel. I've been looking at alternatives, gonna take a look at this audiobookshelf now.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago

Nice article! I've been using Audiobookshelf (win) for a year and a bit. Works great with one exception, I can't upgrade it past 2.17.16 on my Win11 box (non-docker). Any attempt to take it past that gives a non-responsive server. Not a big deal because that version is pretty stable.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

For those on iOS looking for a companion app, check out plappa for a great app to access your Audiobookshelf/jellyfin instance. It works flawlessly for me, no data collection, and it allows downloading books in advance for on the go if you choose not to have external access to your server.

https://plappa.me/

[–] [email protected] 7 points 16 hours ago

For any other Audiobookshelf users looking at that article and thinking, "Wait, how did they get that nice wooden shelf look in the UI?"

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