Listen Audiobook Player for Android
I like audiobooks a lot and prefer to listen to them instead of listening to music. While there is nothing wrong with music, (mostly) non-fictional audiobooks not only entertain me but also educate me at the same time.
I used to play audiobooks with the built-in Android music player and while that works just fine, it is lacking in several regards.
There is for instance no option to remember the play position of multiple audiobooks which often resulted in me having to use the position slider to find the position I stopped listening the last time.
Listen Audiobook Player for Android is not free -- it costs €0.99 -- but it is reasonably priced in my opinion. Plus, the app itself as a consequence does not feature ads or any form of in-app purchases for monetization. If you prefer a free alternative, check out Material Audiobook Player instead.
When you first start the application it asks you to pick a root audiobook folder on your device. It is recommended that each audiobook is in its own directory in that root folder, and if you want, you can exclude the books from being picked up by other media players on the system.
All audiobooks are then displayed in the main interface afterwards. For each, the total playtime, current position and percentage are displayed.
Covers get picked up automatically if stored in the same folder. The first time you tap on an audiobook without cover, you get the option to download it from the Internet.
This displays image search results that you can select an appropriate cover from with a tap.
The controls are basic but that is not necessarily a bad thing. The current position, play time and remaining play time is displayed at the top. You can long press here to jump to another position. The controls at the bottom allow you to go back and forward, while a tap anywhere else on the screen toggles play and pause.
Chapter navigation needs to be enabled in the settings before it becomes available. If you enable it, you find chapters listed under the forward and backward buttons then.
The options menu displays features related to the current audiobook. Here you can enable sleep mode which stops playback after a set period of time, change playback speed or playback volume.
The sleep settings alone fill more than a screen and include interesting options such as resetting the timer by shaking the device, enabling auto-sleep or setting the sleep time itself.
Especially the speed option can come in handy as you can speed up playback slightly to decrease the time it takes to listen to the audiobook.
The author of Listen Audiobook Player has built several other features into the application that improve playback. You can save bookmarks for example or access a position history which get synced across your devices. For that, it is necessary to link a Dropbox account as it is used by the app for the synchronization.
Automatic behaviors are available as well. The app will rewind automatically if the book has been on pause for a specific amount of time, or start to play automatically when it recognizes a bluetooth headset connection. It will furthermore pause if the headset is disconnected and displays options to configure auto resume (or not) after phone calls.
Verdict
Listen Audiobook Player is a great audiobook player for Android that ships with a rich set of features that leaves little to be desired.
In fact, there is only one feature that I can think of that it does not offer yet, and that is the ability to set multiple root folders for audiobooks.
Thanks for the tip Martin.
It is for these kinds of posts that I follow GHacks.
What’s up with the generic comment, are you a bot?
2G?
Where on the planet is that still in use? I was forced to give up using my RAZRV3 years ago because 2G was phased out by AT&T.
Everywhere 3G has been turned off and you don’t have LTE coverage, and believe me there are many developed countries where this is the case and if it weren’t for 2G you wouldn’t even be able to make a phone call.
Maybe I missed it, but I don’t believe tha term “2G” is in the article. Perhaps you are referring to “AGM G2”??
@Martin
Your website has gone insane.
When I the post button I then saw my comment posted on a different article page. When I opened this article again, it is here.
@Tachy @Martin Brinkmann
” Your website has gone insane. ”
Same here. Has happened several times.
@Tachy,
@Martin P.,
For over two weeks now,
I’ve been seeing “Comments” posted by subscribers appearing in different, unrelated articles.
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572991
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572951
For the time being,
it would be better to specify the “article name and URL” at the beginning of the post.
@tachy a lot of non-phone devices with a sim in them rely on 2G, at least here in europe.
Usually things reporting usage or errors/alarms on something remote that does not get day to day inspection in person. They are out there in vast numbers doing important work. Reliable, good range. The low datarate is no problem at all in those cases.
3G is gone or on its last legs everywhere, but this stuff still has too much use to cancel.
Anyhow, interesting that they would put that in. I can see the point if you suspect a hostile 2G environment (amateur eavesdroppers with laptop, ranging up to professional grade MITM fake towers while “strangely” not getting the stronger crypto voip 4G because it is being jammed, and back down to something as old ‘stingray’ devices fallen into the wrong hands).
But does this also mean that they have handled and rolled out a fix for that nasty 4G ‘pwn by broadcast’ problem you reported earlier this year? I had 4G disabled due to that, on the off chance that some of the local criminals would buy some cheap chinese gear, download a working exploit and probe every phone in range all over town in the hope of getting into phones of the police.
>”While most may never be attacked in stingrays, it is still recommended to disable 2G cellular connections, especially since it does not have any downsides.”
The downside would be losing connectivity. I spend a lot of time way out in the countryside where there’s often no service or almost none. My network allows 2G, and I need it sometimes. I have an option on the phone to disable 2G, I may do that when I’m in the city and I have good 5G connectivity, but not out in the country.
I would imagine that the stingray exploits, like most of the bad things in this world, are probably things you will run into in the crowded big cities.
I stopped using it in a mobile (Wi-Fi line) environment, so I’m almost ignorant of the actual situation,
But the recent reality in Japan makes me realize that “the infrastructure of the web is nothing more than a papier-mâché fiction”.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/17/google-chrome-to-enable-https-first-by-default-for-all-users/#comment-4572402
It is already beyond the scope of what an individual can do.
What we should be aware of is the reality that “governments and those in power want to control the world through the Web”, and efforts to counter (resist and prevent) such ambitions are necessary.
Why do you want people to disable the privacy features? Hmmmmm?
Now You: do you plan to keep the Ads privacy features enabled?
I’d like to tell you, but apparently if you make a post critical of Google, you get censored. * [Editor: removed, just try to bring your opinion across without attacking anyone]
@Martin
You website is still psychotic. Comments attach to random stories.
@Martin please do fix the comments, it’s completely insane commenting here! :[
@Martin
The comments are seriously messed up on gHacks now. These comments are mixed with the article at the below URL.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/18/android-how-to-disable-2g-cellular-connections-to-improve-security/
And comments on other articles are from as far back as 2010.
What does this article has anything to do with all the comments on this article? LOL I think this Websuite is ran by ChatGPT. every article is messed up. Some older comments from 2015 shown up in recant articles, LOL
The picture captioned “Clearing the Android Auto’s cache might resolve the issue” is from Apple Carplay ;)
How about other things that matter:
Drop survival?
Screen toughness?
Degree of water and dust protection?