Audiobookshelf works best when you have an organized directory structure like shown below. This is because information is taken from your folder names. This includes the author name, series name, book title, publish year, series sequence, and subtitle. However, you can enable scanner settings to prefer using your audio file ID3 tags or an OPF file over using folder names.

Join our Discord server or Matrix space.

If you are interested in integrating with Audiobookshelf, visit the API documentation.

version: "3.7"
services:
  audiobookshelf:
    image: ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf:latest
    ports:
      - 13378:80
    volumes:
      - </path/to/audiobooks>:/audiobooks
      - </path/to/podcasts>:/podcasts
      - </path/to/config>:/config
      - </path/to/metadata>:/metadata

Volume mappings

• /config will contain the database (users/books/libraries/settings). Beginning with 2.3.x, this needs to be on the same machine you are running ABS on.
• /metadata will contain cache, streams, covers, downloads, backups and logs
• Map any other directories you want to use for your book and podcast collections (ebooks supported)

Still confused about Docker? Check out this FAQ

💡 Prefer the CLI? This is our docker run command. YMMV

docker pull ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf

docker run -d \
 -p 13378:80 \
 -v </path/to/config>:/config \
 -v </path/to/metadata>:/metadata \
 -v </path/to/audiobooks>:/audiobooks \
 -v </path/to/podcasts>:/podcasts \
 --name audiobookshelf \
 ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf

⚠️ Windows users will need to remove the \ and run this as a single line

For Debian based systems, you can activate the official Audiobookshelf repository and install the Debian package.

tagInstallation

Activate the repository:

sudo apt install gnupg curl
wget -O- https://advplyr.github.io/audiobookshelf-ppa/KEY.gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/adb-archive-keyring.gpg
sudo curl -s -o /etc/apt/sources.list.d/audiobookshelf.list https://advplyr.github.io/audiobookshelf-ppa/audiobookshelf.list

Install Audiobookshelf:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install audiobookshelf

tagConfiguration

The Audiobookshelf service will use the config file localted at /etc/default/audiobookshelf. The default configuration is as follows:

METADATA_PATH=/usr/share/audiobookshelf/metadata
CONFIG_PATH=/usr/share/audiobookshelf/config
FFMPEG_PATH=/usr/lib/audiobookshelf-ffmpeg/ffmpeg
FFPROBE_PATH=/usr/lib/audiobookshelf-ffmpeg/ffprobe
TONE_PATH=/usr/lib/audiobookshelf-ffmpeg/tone
PORT=13378

If you update the configuration, restart the service by running:

sudo systemctl restart audiobookshelf.service

tagInstallation

To activate the repository, run:

dnf install -y "https://github.com/lkiesow/audiobookshelf-rpm/raw/el$(rpm -E %rhel)/audiobookshelf-repository-1-1.el$(rpm -E %rhel).noarch.rpm"

You can now install Audiobookshelf. All dependencies will be installed automatically:

dnf install audiobookshelf

tagConfiguration

You can configure Audiobookshelf in /etc/default/audiobookshelf. Here you can add the same configuration options you would pass to the Docker container.

METADATA_PATH=/var/lib/audiobookshelf/metadata
CONFIG_PATH=/var/lib/audiobookshelf/config
PORT=13378
HOST=127.0.0.1

By default, Audiobookshelf will listen to localhost only. This should be sufficient if you install a reverse proxy (you should!). If you want to listen to all network interfaces, set HOST=0.0.0.0 instead.

tagStart Audiobookshelf

To run Audiobookshelf and ensure it will be started automatically after a reboot, run:

systemctl start audiobookshelf.service
systemctl enable audiobookshelf.service

To check the current status of the service, run:

systemctl status audiobookshelf.service

tagInstallation

Imperative installation:

nix-env -iA audiobookshelf

Declarative installation:

environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
  audiobookshelf
];

tagConfiguration

You can configure Audiobookshelf using the parameters to the executable. It supports the same configuration options you would pass to the Docker container, the options below are the defaults if the option is missing.

audiobookshelf --metadata "$(pwd)/metadata" \
  --config "$(pwd)/config" \
  --port 8000 \
  --host 0.0.0.0

If you use a reverse proxy (you should!) listing on localhost only would be enough. In this case set --host 127.0.0.1 instead.

tagStart Audiobookshelf

You can create a simple systemd service in your configuration.nix to automatically start audiobookshelf:

services.audiobookshelf {
  enable = true;
  port = 8234;
};

For further options, see the NixOS options page.

To configure a reverse nginx proxy, add the following:

services.nginx = {
  enable = true;
  virtualHosts."your.hostname.org" = {
    locations."/" = {
      proxyPass = "http://localhost:8234/";
    };
  };
};

To check the current status of the service, run:

systemctl status audiobookshelf.service

Windows installer is not yet available. However...

You can install audiobookshelf on Windows using Docker. Check out the user-contributed guide for installing on Windows and join our Discord/Matrix server for support.

We are looking for a .NET developer familiar with building Windows installers to help!

See Github readme for user-contributed reverse proxy configs

The mobile apps are open source on Github. Report bugs and suggest features there.

tagAndroid

Install from the Google Play Store.

tagiOS

Join Test Flight beta testing and install the app.

tagDeploying audiobookshelf on Easypanel

Easypanel it's a modern server control panel. You can use it to deploy audiobookshelf on your own server.

tagInstructions

1. Create a VM that runs Ubuntu on your cloud provider.
2. Install Easypanel using the instructions from the website.
3. Create a new project.
4. Install audiobookshelf using the dedicated template.

To upgrade the server to the newest version, you just need to pull the new docker image and restart the container.

Still confused about Docker? Check out this FAQ

If you used docker compose, you just need to make sure the tag is either the version you want or latest if you want the newest release. If you want to run a specific release, such as older version, change the tag to the desired version number.

Then, you can just run the following commands.

docker-compose pull
docker-compose down
docker-compose up --detach

Still confused about Docker? Check out this FAQ

Audiobookshelf is configured via environment variables. You can pass them to your Docker container using -e VARIABLE=VALUE or set them in /etc/default/audiobookshelf if you install audiobookshelf via packages.

Here is a list of all available options:

tagFilesystem

• CONFIG_PATH (default: ./config)
  • Path to the config directory.
  • It will contain the database (users/books/libraries/settings).
• METADATA_PATH (default: ./metadata)
  • Path to the metadata directory.
  • It will contain cache, streams, covers, downloads, backups and logs.

tagExternal Tools

• FFMPEG_PATH (default: ffmpeg)
  • Path to the ffmpeg binary.
  • If no path is set, Audiobookshelf will assume the binary to exist in the system path.
• FFPROBE_PATH (default: ffprobe)
  • Path to the ffprobe binary.
  • If no path is set, Audiobookshelf will assume the binary to exist in the system path.
• TONE_PATH (default: tone)
  • Path to the tone binary.
  • If no path is set, Audiobookshelf will assume the binary to exist in the system path.

tagNetwork

• HOST
  • The host Audiobookshelf binds to. Most commonly, this will be 127.0.0.1 if you want the service to listen to localhost only, or left unset if you want to listen to all interfaces (both IPv4 and IPv6).
• PORT
  • The TCP port Audiobookshelf will listen on.

tagSecurity

• TOKEN_SECRET
  • Secret used for generating the JSON Web Tokens.
  • If none is provided, a secure random token is generated automatically. That will usually be sufficient.

tagOther

• SOURCE
  • Installation source. Will be shown in the web client.
  • Usually set to docker, debian or rpm.