OzzBooks User Guide

OzzBooks plays your audiobooks and reads your ebooks and comics. It doesn't sell or host books: you connect the place where yours already are, and everything appears in one library.

• Getting started
• Sources
• Listening
• Downloads
• Ebooks and comics
• Finding and organizing
• Account and troubleshooting

Getting started

The five tabs

• Store: every book from all your sources. Think of it as the catalog.
• Library: the books you've chosen to keep on your shelf, with In Progress at the top.
• Playlists: your own lists, plus Up Next.
• Now Playing: the player.
• Settings: your account, downloads, sources and playback options.

Tip: Tap + on a book in the Store to put it on your shelf. Your shelf, positions and playlists follow your account to your other devices.

Connect your books

Books come from sources. Add one in Settings, My Sources, Add a Source, then choose the kind. Several sources can be connected at once, and their books appear together in the Store.

Books are listed by their folder names, so a folder per author with a folder per book inside works best. OzzBooks finds audiobooks (.m4b, .m4a, or a folder of .mp3 files), ebooks (.epub) and comics (.cbz).

OzzBooks only reads from your sources. It never changes, moves or deletes your original files.

Sources

OneDrive

1. Settings, My Sources, Add a Source, choose OneDrive.
2. Tap sign in and use your Microsoft account. Allow OzzBooks to read your files.
3. Pick the folder that holds your books and tap Use “your folder”.
4. Give the source a name and save. The first listing of a big folder can take a minute.

Works with personal Microsoft accounts (outlook.com, hotmail.com, live.com). Work or school accounts aren't supported yet. Access is read-only.

Books start playing at once. While you listen, a copy is also kept on your device (on Wi-Fi), because OneDrive's links expire after about an hour and this keeps long listens from stopping.

Google Drive

1. Settings, My Sources, Add a Source, choose Google Drive.
2. Sign in with Google and allow read-only access.
3. Pick the folder that holds your books and save.

OzzBooks can only read the folder you choose, and never changes anything in your Drive.

WebDAV (a NAS or your own server)

Enter the address of the folder on your WebDAV server (a Synology's WebDAV Server package, for example), with your username and password. Use an https:// address. A plain http:// address works only on your home network.

Your password is kept in the Keychain on your device.

A folder in the Files app

Pick any folder the Files app can show: iCloud Drive, Dropbox, a network share, or this device. Books that are still in the cloud download when you open them.

Managing sources

• Tap a source in My Sources to change its name, address or sign-in, or to turn it off.
• Removing a source takes its books out of your Store. Anything on your shelf stays, dimmed, until you clear it. Nothing is ever deleted from the source itself.
• If a source is offline for a while, its books stay on your shelf, dimmed, so a short outage doesn't make them vanish.

Listening

Playing a book

Open a book and tap Play (or Keep Listening to carry on). OzzBooks remembers where you stopped, and on your other devices too. If a book is already playing on another device, you can pick it up here from the same spot.

In Now Playing, the buttons skip back 15 seconds and forward 30, and move between chapters. Tap Chapters to jump anywhere. If you jump by mistake, tap Undo.

Speed, silence and sleep

• Speed: change the playback speed in Now Playing.
• Skip silence: shortens long pauses in the narration. It's remembered for your account.
• Sleep timer: choose 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes, or the end of the chapter. The sound fades out over the last 20 seconds.
• Shake to add time: while a sleep timer runs, and for two minutes after it ends, shake the phone to add 15 minutes. Turn it on in Settings.
• Ask if I'm still listening: after a while without touching any control, playback pauses and chimes, then goes back a little. Set the time in Settings.

In the car and on headphones

OzzBooks works with the lock screen, Control Center, AirPods and your car. In Settings, Car and headphone buttons chooses whether Next and Previous change chapters or skip time.

Driving mode (from Now Playing) shows big buttons and keeps the screen on.

Up Next and playlists

• Touch and hold a book, or use its page, to Add to Up Next. The next book starts by itself when one finishes, even with the phone locked.
• In Playlists, create a list, add books, drag to reorder and swipe to remove.
• You can add a whole series or saga to a playlist in one go.

Downloads

Keeping books on your device

Books stream when you're online. Tap Download on a book's page to keep it for offline use. Downloads keep going in the background, and for multi-file books you can download single chapters.

While you listen, the next part of the book also downloads by itself (on Wi-Fi, unless you allow mobile data in Settings).

Settings, Downloads shows the space used, your limit, and every downloaded book with the source it came from. Swipe a book to remove it. When the space is full, the least recently played downloads are removed first, never the book that's playing.

Tip: The same title from two different sources is stored twice, once per source. The source name in Downloads tells them apart.

Finding the files

Downloaded books are kept in an OzzBooks folder in the Files app (under On My iPhone or On My iPad), in folders by author and title. You can see them there, but leave them where they are: the app manages them.

Ebooks and comics

Reading

Open an ebook or comic and tap Read (or Keep Reading). Your place is saved, as with audiobooks.

In an ebook you can change the theme and line spacing. In a comic, switch between left-to-right and right-to-left, and jump to any page.

When you have both the audiobook and the ebook of a title, each page has a button to open the other.

Finding and organizing

Browsing

• Switch between Books and Comics, tiles or rows, and sort by title, author, series or recently added.
• By Author and By Series group your books; series show in reading order.
• Use search and the filter button to narrow by status, format, source, genre or narrator.
• Sagas (Settings) put several series into one reading order. Add a saga to a playlist to listen in order.

Fixing details

If a title, author or series looks wrong on a book from one of your sources, open the book and tap Fix details to correct it. Your fixes are saved in your account and show on all your devices. They never touch your original files.

Account and troubleshooting

Your account

Settings, Account lets you change your password or email, sign out, or delete your account. Deleting removes your account and everything stored with it. Your own books are never affected.

Signing out keeps your library, positions, settings and downloads on the device for when you sign back in.

If something isn't working

• A book won't play, or says it couldn't be read: check you're online, then open it again. For OneDrive or Google Drive, edit the source and sign in again if asked.
• A source's books are dimmed: the source can't be reached. Check its sign-in or network, then try again.
• Sign-in asked again: Microsoft and Google ask you to sign in again now and then. Edit the source and sign in.
• Books are missing from a big folder: the first listing can take a minute. Give it a minute, then check again.

Still stuck? In Settings, Share Diagnostics sends a short log of problems on this device (no passwords or book contents). Send it with a screenshot to the address on the Support page.

Something missing or not working? See Support.