Audiobooks

Listen to audiobooks with chapters, your place kept and your choice of speed, combine files into one book, and sync them to an iPod.

Audiobooks, in the sidebar's library section, shows your books as covers. Each book keeps your place, has its chapters, plays at the speed you choose, and goes to the iPod's Audiobooks menu.

#Adding audiobooks

Add audiobooks the same way as music, with File › Add Music or Videos to Library… (⌘O) or by dragging files in. These go to Audiobooks by themselves:

• .m4b files,
• files iTunes marked as audiobooks,
• files whose genre is "Audiobook",
• audiobooks imported from the Music app or from an iPod.

To move other songs to Audiobooks, right-click them (or their album) and choose Organize › Mark as Audiobook. To move a book back to Music, right-click it in Audiobooks and choose Mark as Music.

A book is a set of audiobook files that share an album name. A book can be a single file with chapters inside it, or many files (one per chapter, say).

#The Audiobooks grid

Books you're partway through come first, then the rest by title. Under each cover is the book's title, author and where you are: "Not started" with its length, how much is left, or "Finished". A bar across the cover shows how far you've got.

Hover over a cover and click the play button to carry on listening, or click the cover to open the book.

#A book's page

The book's page shows its cover, title and author, the narrator (taken from the composer), its length and how many chapters it has, and how far you've got.

• Play (or Resume) starts from the beginning, or carries on from where you stopped.
• Speed sets the playback speed.
• More has the book's other commands (see below).

Below is the list of chapters, each with its length. The chapter playing is highlighted. Double-click a chapter, or right-click it and choose Play from Here, to play from it.

Chapters come from the files themselves. A file with no chapters counts as one chapter, named after its title.

The Audiobooks back button in the toolbar returns to the grid.

#Book commands

Right-click a book in the grid, or click More on its page:

#Keeping your place

Audiobooks remember where you stopped, whether you pause, play something else or quit. The next time you play the book, it carries on there, in the right file. To turn this off for a book, select its files, choose File › Get Info (⌘I), click Options and turn off Remember playback position.

Your place also travels with the iPod: where you got to on the iPod comes back at the next sync, and where you got to on the Mac goes to the iPod.

#Playback speed

Click Speed in the toolbar or on a book's page to play audiobooks at 0.75×, 1×, 1.25×, 1.5×, 1.75× or 2×. Voices keep their normal pitch. The speed applies to every audiobook (and is kept for each library); music always plays at normal speed.

#Combine a book into one file

A book made of many files can become one .m4b audiobook, with a chapter for each file. On the iPod it's then listed once, keeps your place across the whole book, and you can skip between chapters.

1. Right-click the book and choose Combine into One Audiobook….
2. Choose a Quality: Spoken word (64 kbps per channel) or High (128 kbps per channel).
3. Click Combine.

Your place, the book's details and its cover are kept. The separate files inside the library go to the Trash.

#Audiobooks on the iPod

On the iPod, books go to the Audiobooks menu with their chapters, keep your place, and are left out of shuffle.

Each iPod chooses its own audiobooks in its Sync Options: Sync audiobooks turns them on or off, and Choose… lists your books so you can untick ones to leave off. See Syncing.

#From AppleScript and Shortcuts

Scripts can set the audiobook speed, and move tracks between Music and Audiobooks with media kind:

tell application "ClassicTunes"
    set audiobook speed to 1.25
    set media kind of (every track whose album is "Great Expectations") to audiobook
    if current track is not missing value then log bookmark of current track
end tell

bookmark is where a track carries on from, in seconds. start playing plays your current audiobook when the Play key setting is My current audiobook. See AppleScript.

In Shortcuts (macOS 13 and later), use Set Audiobook Speed. See Shortcuts.