+1 for audiobooks here. I’ve got mine as “Music” in my library but the resume and inability to sync is a killer
@Luq07, try my method above and classify it as home movie, resume and sync will then work fine.
Yes, we all could do that, but we shouldn’t have to do that.
@FlexusPlexus said:
Yes, we all could do that, but we shouldn’t have to do that.
Seriously. This.
[soapbox]
While I appreciate the sentiment of offering possible workarounds and I’d be surprised if no one found them useful; yet, when I think about it, implying that we should embrace complicated workarounds as a solution is not too terribly different from suggesting that we “make your own app.”
I believe that the point of choosing Plex versus something else is to AVOID needing to jury-rig my entire library, or code the config file, or change the registry, etc. The value is from the ability to install Plex, point it to my media, and have it… that’s right, “just work” and do so “right out of the box.”
Offering workaround advice to maybe hold us over until a feature is added is appreciated, but it in no way makes the app “work just fine” and will never substitute for a dedicated feature, otherwise we all may as well just “make our own app”.
[/soapbox]
Sorry if I’m being an ass. I guess I feel like the Workaround Evangelists come on a little strong sometimes.
1 Like
@icarrizal said:
Sorry if I’m being an ass. I guess I feel like the Workaround Evangelists come on a little strong sometimes.
While I have offered a workaround (involving simply renaming mp3s to m4vs which effectively creates a media file with no video track) I actually agree with your sentiment. Plex should support audiobooks by at least providing FF/RW/Resume features. It really should not be very hard as the files do already play on every client and if treated as media without video they even have full functionality as far as FF/RW/Resume goes on many devices. (If you try it be sure it direct plays as transcoding does not work for those kind of files right now)
I have my workaround in place but I do not actually use it because, although I like Plex, Plex just does not work with audio books correctly and that means that any workaround is a kludge that could cease functioning at any time and that is NOT the way I want to use Plex.
Plex should just make it happen. We were told some time ago that “it was coming” but we were never given a time frame and it is still not here.
It is not really acceptable for Plex to have no support of audiobooks particularly when it would be so easy to have the needed support. I do not buy the “it is too complicated” excuse because Plex is based on a computer and there are a large number of programs that have full functionality for audio playback and that implies that it really can’t be that hard.
I think it simply does not fit into Plex’s plans because it does nothing to make Plex prettier. More functional? Yes. Prettier? No. Plex has become all about making the clients look good but adding new/improved abilities, particularly those that are not needed by most, is far on the back burner and that back burner is set at the lowest setting possible.
It really, from an ex-programmers perspective, should be doable. If needed just use the transcode function to add a dummy video stream and then send the resulting stream out to play. That should be a great deal easier than many of the other tasks the server does and Plex would not even have to worry about AV sync.
Come on Plex, make it happen or tell us that it won’t happen but do NOT leave us wondering what is going on.
I should have said that my finger was not pointed at anyone specifically, in this thread or any other. I appreciate the thought. Lemme tell ya, someone who contributes to the community as prolifically as you doesn’t owe any kind of explanation, certainly not to the likes of me. My hats off to you. 
This would be great to have in plex. I would start using plex during my commuting time if I had this feature.
+1 please
I BEG YOU! Please Add this feature! I have Soooo many audio books I just don’t bother listening to because its just not worth the hassle to use crappy workarounds.
@senigami said:
@Luq07, try my method above and classify it as home movie, resume and sync will then work fine.
This is a terrible method. WHen I am in my car driving…I do not want to keep the screen open to listen to an audiobook. If its a movie it pausing if the screen is closed. The idea that most people listen to audiobooks while sitting in front of a TV/Computer Screen is absurd.
I would like to see this.
Okay I know this post is a prime candidate for tl;dr but it just had to be said. :)>-
I know that a resume feature is supposedly in the works and to all of us, who are not writing the code, it seems as simple as; asking the user if they would prefer to resume or play from the beginning if an “Enable Resume” box is ticked under the Library Settings for audio files. Perhaps there is a bit more to it than just adding a resume option. For better or for worse Plex authors do not push out half-assed features and it may take time to get it right due to some earlier programming decisions that are making a resume feature difficult now. As a programmer myself I understand the plight of something that should be simple but instead is terribly complicated due to how things were set up in the past when things were moving in a different direction.
However, it seems much more likely that this particular item is just too low on the priority list to get the needed development time. Like it or not the development wind is blowing in other directions like the new virtual reality video, as VR is considered to be highly profitable industry in the immediate future. It is painfully obvious that Plex’s major focus is on video before audio and will always take the driver’s seat when it comes to product feature development. Plus there is the recent focus on making Plex available on as many platforms as possible.
As much as we all wish for Plex to implement the resume feature, I wouldn’t hold my breath for it any time soon. Especially for having audio book support; this would require media scraping for it to be done right. And we know that Plex will either release it right or not at all. I’ve actually built a media scraper web page for myself which parses the audio Meta data and does a lookup on goodreads as well as Audible to gather information, covers, play time, and more. I use it to help rename and organize my books so I know what kind of effort it takes to really do it correctly. I would love to give it to Plex to help speed things along but contact with admins is virtually impossible and I doubt they would take any code from some random developer that wasn’t created in-house.
Some people have referred to suggestions like mine or @Elijah_Baley as the work of “Workaround Evangelists” and that “we shouldn’t have to” or it isn’t a solution and it should “just work”. While we all agree we would wish for it to be a certain way; the truth is that it isn’t here yet and may not be for quite some time, even years. Whining and complaining that we don’t want to have to make temporary adjustments will not change the fact that we only have what we have for now. “Workaround Evangelists” like me are trying to provide the simplest solution to provide a service for something that does not exist at present. I think calling it evangelism is a bit strong as in no way am I suggestion that I would rather have the workaround than a fix. However I would also prefer having a fix to nothing at all.
The work around method from my post may be slightly more involved than @Elijah_Baley 's simple renaming of the file but it also is the most compatible as it ensures working on all devices. If a simple rename works for you then go for it. If you have another method that you discover that is even easier than what is suggested I would LOVE to hear about it and possibly use it instead. To all of you who are begging and wishing that this feature was in now because you “absolutely need it,” and yet are not willing to try one of these work-arounds, I can only say that you must not need it as much as you say you do because neither of these Band-Aid set-ups require more than a couple of minutes of your time and actually work quite well. I know that the phone screen must stay on for it to work but it is set to blank to simulate off as much as possible to not drain your battery or burn in the screen.
Eventually someday, hopefully soon, Plex will release a resume or Audio Book option and none of this will be necessary. But until then we do what we can and work together in communities like these to find a way of limping along for now. Hopefully these types of discussions will eventually catch the eye of one of the developers and help move things along. Until then let’s work together to find ways of making things work and perhaps help influence the programmers to pick up an idea or two.
Actually, your response here throws into very sharp contrast an added element that I personally hadn’t before considered. It’s true that audiobook support, be it complicated or not, is not likely high on the priority list due to the recent proliferation of VR tech, better 4K support, platform ubiquity, etc… and so isn’t therefore going to be the quick fix we all hope it to be. However, these forums (hopefully) don’t exist in a vacuum; when we, as the user base, vocalize our hopes/dreams/needs/wants for features, the expectation is that Plex is listening, and possibly taking it into consideration. I know that we forum trolls aren’t really representative of the majority demographic various products/services cater to; however we’re vocal for a reason, and conscientious companies should be equipped to take all consumer perspectives into consideration.
There is a population of Plex users, many of us paying customers, who consider audiobook support to be a major gap in Plex’s product line, and openly advocate for its addition even more than other features. However, we’re not likely the majority, and I think that in our hearts we understand this. I think we also understand that lashing out at the so called “workaround evangelists” (never heard the term before) isn’t much more than lashing out. I’m personally just as interested to learn that workarounds exist as I am to hear what progress is(n’t?) being made towards a bonafide audiobook solution. For myself, however, I’m reluctant to try out these workarounds as I don’t want to create mistakes that I later have to undo when an official solution is rolled out, if ever (that, and I still have about 20-some Audible titles I need to burn through before anything else).
The truth, I think, is that we’re frustrated. We don’t know the inherent complexity of the computing environment Plex is dealing with, and so we can only speculate how easy or hard it would be to add a working audiobook module into what is already such a staggeringly comprehensive media management suite. We don’t know when audiobooks will be implemented, we don’t know how they would do it, but we theorize how and find workarounds in the meantime.
The part I hadn’t considered before is that Plex could develop a solution much faster if they contracted the user community directly. You say you’ve programmed before, and even have some code Plex might benefit from. Why couldn’t Plex seriously jump on this? Issue a call to the mob to help draft a solution. Make it a contest - first one to develop the solution Plex ends up using gets a Plex Pass for life or something (insert reward here). Plex could devote less attention to the audiobook issue, and a solution could be developed faster. Now, I know this would mean Plex opening up some of their source code, and that may not be something Plex is interested in (consider how fast media apps and iTunes clones get scooped up by big companies), but then so-called “workaround evangelists” would be able to directly contribute to a viable solution.
Full disclosure, I’m not a programmer; I bang my head against computers until they do what I hoped they would do. So take what I have to say with a grain of salt. However, unless I’m wrong, the solution to this fix is actually the problem itself.
@senigami said:
@Luq07, try my method above and classify it as home movie, resume and sync will then work fine.
That would be ok for one or two books but I’ve got well over 1000 audiobooks (I haven’t counted but it takes up nearly 800GB of space and most are ripped at 90Kbps). I’ve been buying them for over 20 years due to my commute. Honestly, sync for offline use and resume is all that’s needed at this point. Most people can either figure out the metadata stuff or use an app to add metadata. There is plenty of freeware that will do this for MP3, M4A and M4B.
@FlexusPlexus - I agree with what you have to say and I appreciate the response to my long-winded post. #:-S I’m a lifetime Plex Pass subscriber myself. It’s easy to feel entitled to certain feature additions but I did know what I was purchasing, limitations and all, and felt it was worth it at the time and still do. From the start of using Plex I have wished for Audio Book support and even looked into the possibility of writing an add-in module for it. Too bad it isn’t set up in a way to add program extensibility or I’d probably start a GitHub repo for it.
Like @Luq07 I also have over 1000 audio books and it isn’t practical to put them all in to Plex. You mentioned
“I’m reluctant to try out these workarounds as I don’t want to create mistakes that I later have to undo when an official solution is rolled out”
That’s a legitimate concern and here is how I address these issues. Obviously I can’t listen to all my audio books at once so, even if I could, there isn’t a demand to load them all in at one time. So I take 2 or three that I want to listen to and convert them over. Even if I was driving all over the country constantly listening to books I wouldn’t need to convert more than 1 a day. (which takes only a few min). As far as worrying about undoing mistakes, the conversion makes a copy and does not affect the original. So I take the few books I’ve converted and place them in a special Plex Audio Books folder on my drive. If I’m done and don’t need them any more it’s not a big deal to delete them or keep them or whatever. (Not short on drive space at the moment.) Since they are in their own library apart from everything else as soon as a fix comes in to play I can simply delete the library and the folder and empty the trash. No harm done and nothing to undo!
@Luq07 - as far as adding metadata I should have clarified that it isn’t the process of adding metadata to files that I’m referring to but the auto gathering of book information and covers. I have looked everywhere for years and have yet to find a single program that can do that for me, free or paid. If you ever come across anything like that please tell me.
I really wish that the Plex admins could at least respond to these type of forum posts to let us know that they are even aware of our requests. I don’t care if they can’t say if it is even being worked on. I just want to know that they even know we want it. Come on guys is it that hard to write a post “we here you and have added it to our long term list of desired future features”?
Well apparently it was being worked on in October 2015 but since then there has been no update. Seems a long long time.
Adding my vote as well! This would be a killer feature that no one else has.
3 years later and we’re still asking for this. 
+1 I would love to have this
+1 please
We are not asking for something super complicated. The function already exists for TV Shows, so why not having it for Audiobooks. I can image you guys are very busy with the cross platform maintenance. But PLEASE it’s not a big deal and would make a lot of people VERY HAPPY
