10 ms·

Cozy is a modern audiobook player for Linux

157 points by miles 6y ago

dmix 6y ago
Syncing times, and book downloads for that matter, across multiple platforms is a critical feature for me. Which is why I’m sadly stuck using Audible's flakey apps. Offtopic, but this reminds me of how Audible in general (website, purchasing UX, etc) always feels half broken. It mostly works but small bizarre things ruin it (most recently a purchased book disappearing while marked as purchased in the store requiring manual support intervention). I often wonder if it's half abandon ware since they now have a monopoly and it's using some ancient Java backend.
rvz 6y ago
While the app looks great on Linux which is at least native to that system, it just doesn't run on macOS Catalina at all. Which means I don't have any idea on how it works or looks like on my system. The size of the app is quite large for its functionality: 244.1 MB (Resources folder and MacOS folder take majority of application size.) which is puzzling. Given it uses GTK+, I don't think that it would look great on other systems if it is applying the GNOME theming / decorators to its windows. (Remember gedit on macOS / Windows?). Given its still in beta and primarily uses GTK, I'd rather use this on Linux than on macOS. From what I have seen from other GTK+ apps, they just standout like a sore thumb on any other platform other than Linux. For cross-platform, I would use Qt5 instead.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  Presumably the application bundle includes GTK, cairo, gstreamer, and Python. Dependencies add up, y'know? Comparing to an Electron app, the bundle is likely smaller and resource usage lower, with little difference in theming.
ponker 6y ago
Since audiobook enthusiasts might be in this thread ... does anyone know of a product (outside Kindle Whispersync) that can ingest an audiobook and the corresponding e-book and using speech-to-text keep them roughly in sync so you can quickly go between the two?
- gostsamo 6y ago
  I'm not using it, but isn't this something like the stuff you are looking for? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Accessible_Information_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Accessible_Information...
- yorwba 6y ago
  https://github.com/readbeyond/aeneas https://github.com/readbeyond/aeneas can output SMIL e-books where each line of text is associated with the corresponding segment from the audiobook. But I don't know which e-book readers support that format.
- captn3m0 6y ago
  I take my audible files, split them by chapter, and then manually jump to that chapter after checking in my audiobook player. Even syncing progress b/w ebook readers is a pain point for me right now[1], but I'd love to see solutions for this. [1]: https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/issues/584 https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/issues/584
- dmitriid 6y ago
  It's not a trivial task to implement. There are three stages: - Speech-to-text. It has to be good, or the text you get back is unusable. Google's and Amazon's services for that will quickly become expensive for large volumes. And you need to mark text with time/position if you want ebook-to-audiobok sync. - Diff algorithm between generated text and ebook text. Audiobooks are not produced from the same source material as ebooks, and they will have differences. On top of that you get errors and changes by narrators, and errors from speech-to-text. Not trivial if you want high fidelity. - Figuring out the position in ebook from the diff. Relatively simple. For ebook-to-audiobook you need to find the position in the speech-to-text conversion, and rewind to the time/position marking in that. Storytel (disclaimer: I work at Storytel) has quite a few ebooks and audiobooks connected, but doesn't allow you to ingest your own ebooks and audiobooks.
  - switch11 6y ago
    interesting - read a lot of good things about you at the New Publishing blog that guy thinks you are going to be very big all the best. We sure need more people doing ebooks and audiobooks. Amazon is @#$#$ authors with all their exclusivity requirements and insanely high cut that they take
growt 6y ago
Does anyone know a spotify-audiobook-client? What I'm thinking of is a website or app that lets you listen to audiobooks that are on spotify and saves your position per book, lets you browse and search only books without the music. I was thinking of writing something like that myself, but maybe someone already did?
- jompe 6y ago
  Do you know if there is any open API for that? Last time I checked the API for doing pretty much anything else than play a specific song/album/playlist wasn't there. Maybe the API for books are different?
  - growt 6y ago
    I didn't look much into the details so I might be wrong but it looked doable. Search is there, play and resume from some timepoint. So with some search "magic" to find and filter audiobooks it might be possible.
- kingosticks 6y ago
  How do you find them on Spotify at the moment? Is it just by searching "audiobook" and then shifting through all the random stuff that brings up, some of which are audiobooks? EDIT: I've just found https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/Audiobooks-on-Spotify-let-s-build-a-list-of-what-s-available/td-p/385182 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/Audiobook... which says > In Browse > GENRES& MOODS > WORD you can now find these options. Which should be available through their API using https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/browse/ https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/referenc... It's not immediately obvious how I get to the Browse section through the awful interface at https://play.spotify.com https://play.spotify.com but you can jump straight to https://open.spotify.com/genre/word-page https://open.spotify.com/genre/word-page
  - growt 6y ago
    That doesn't show a lot for me (maybe because of my country?), just some "popular" playlists. There are a lot more audiobooks on spotify. I haven't solved this when I thought about it a while back but my idea was to use some external source (like amazon) and then search for the book/author and see if I find an album with a total length that would match an audiobook.
xupybd 6y ago
Do people source audiobooks from somewhere that they can use clients like this? I use audible but don't know of a good alternative.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Library rips.
- mmrezaie 6y ago
  Local and regional shops. Audible doesn't have some of the voices where I live, because it is regionally locked (I live in Sweden).
- retor 6y ago
  I've been meaning to try https://libro.fm https://libro.fm. Maybe this is the nudge I need.
- bad_user 6y ago
  Downpour.com sell DRM-free audiobooks, but lately I noticed a couple of titles in their library that are DRM-protected, so I don’t know for how long that will last. In their library I did find most of the titles I was interested in, selection is good, content is high quality, so I've been enjoying it.
  - mxuribe 6y ago
    This is the second time in jus t a few days that i've heard reference to downpour. (The first time was from Cory Doctorow on a recent TWiT episode: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/786?autostart=false https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/786?autosta...) I guess I'll have to check it out!
- captn3m0 6y ago
  Stripping Audible DRM is surprisingly easy. Download via the desktop, and run a single docker command: docker run -v $(pwd):/data ryanfb/inaudible@sha256:b66738d235be1007797e3a0a0ead115fa227e81e2ab5b7befb97d43f7712fac5 The resulting m4b file has proper chapters, so works everywhere, but I tend to split it further[0],[1] [0]: https://github.com/captn3m0/Scripts/blob/master/split-by-audible https://github.com/captn3m0/Scripts/blob/master/split-by-aud... [1]: https://github.com/captn3m0/Scripts/blob/master/split-audio-by-chapters https://github.com/captn3m0/Scripts/blob/master/split-audio-...
Austin_Conlon 6y ago
On macOS, what distinctions does this have from playing audiobooks in the built-in Books app?
- monsieurbanana 6y ago
  The mac version is discontinued, per the README. Someone should edit the title.
GeneralDeepi 6y ago
Note: the readme was updated a few minutes ago stating that macOS support is discontinued.
- geigi 6y ago
  Hey, I'm the developer of Cozy and I just noticed that Cozy got posted here and people are trying it on macOS. The version linked in the README was a very old version of Cozy which I tested on macOS 10.14. It was quite a hassle to build and it was not stable. Sadly it's a lot of work to package a GTK app for macOS, therefore I discontinued building it but I didn't update the readme. Sorry for anyone who tried it and got disappointed!
  - CameronNemo 6y ago
    If you ever have a chance, someone might be interested in a quick writeup of the challenges you faced packaging a GTK3 app for macOS. Off the top of my head, Inkscape ships an app with GTK3 and Python for macOS.
    - geigi 6y ago
      I still have documentation of the progress. It probably needs some work before it's useful to others but maybe it helps someone :)
    - geigi 6y ago
      Here is a quick writeup of the steps I've done to build Cozy for macOS: https://gist.github.com/geigi/a3b6d661daeb7b181d3bdd3cab517092 https://gist.github.com/geigi/a3b6d661daeb7b181d3bdd3cab5170... Note: The last time I've done this is almost two years ago, some things might be different by now.
    - Shared404 6y ago
      I believe inkscape no longer supports macOS. I don't use mac though, so haven't confirmed what I've heard.
sbassi 6y ago
in the first line in the main.py there is this shebang: #!@PYTHON@ this is different of what I know about shebangs in Python
- CJefferson 6y ago
  That is because this file hasn't been "built" yet. When building, @PYTHON@ with the path to Python. This is because it's very hard/impossible to actually get something to put there that works on every OS
  - WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
    Isn’t that why we use #!/usr/bin/env python3 and let the virtual environment sort it out? (I know, gtk is a pain in virtualenvs)
    - CJefferson 6y ago
      I've seen machines where there is no python3, only python. But then on other machines there is a python3, and python is python2
MogwaiAllOnYou 6y ago
Anyone know of anything like this but for Windows?
- hu3 6y ago
  If you don't mind lack of fancy book covers I recommend VLC. Free, open source, cross platform including mobile and remembers where I stopped listening.
bronzecarnage 6y ago
Just a quick thank you to the author. I've been putting off looking for an audiobook reader for linux to improve my german. HN makes life easier ;)
andrewnicolalde 6y ago
I've been searching for something like this for a very long time! Nice to know it exists :)
possibleworlds 6y ago
I wish audiobook apps had bookmarking. I often fall asleep to audiobooks and have to scrub around trying to find my place next time I want to listen. A visual bookmark unrelated related to playback position would be so handy. Seems like obvious functionality to me, does anyone know of an iOS player that does this?
- Insanity 6y ago
  This is one of the reasons why I dislike listening to audio books or podcasts at night. You drift off and have no idea at which point. :)
  - tlow 6y ago
    Yes. Presumably this is what the sleep timer is for, though of course you must remember to set it before you drift off. I imagine you could design a feature where every x_interval you check to see if the user is awake and require a user action to continue playing, but then how do you make it so this isn't annoying during normal use?
    - possibleworlds 6y ago
      Does the sleep timer leave a marker for where you set it? Need to double check this, I feel I’ve noticed it before but not consistently enough to know it’s a thing.
    - matsemann 6y ago
      Audible is really bad at this. If I set a timer for 15 minutes, and am still awake, I press play (since it pauses). But then it plays without having set a new timer. So to not have it play for hours while I sleep, I then have to take out my phone, look at the bright display, and set a new timer for 15 minutes. Why cannot pressing play in this instance be like a reverse snooze??
      - Schlaefer 6y ago
        Smart Audiobook Player (Android) has an automatic sleep mode. Also you don't have to press the play button, it indicates the end (fading audio, beep) and you just have to shake/move the device to keep it going, so you don't have to open your eyes at all. It's fantastic.
pjmlp 6y ago
Definitely, thanks for going with native toolkits.
Phelinofist 6y ago
Unrelated, but whats with these gstreamer dep names? gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly
- lucideer 6y ago
  EDIT: my first comment was from memory and I googled to double-check. Seems I was wrong and they're actually stability ratings. Ignore below --- the suffixes are related to codec licencing afaik For example, foss purists might like to install `-good` whereas those who prefer all video sources to "just work" will also want `-ugly`
- izacus 6y ago
  This mirrors some other Debian/Ubuntu package names where: - "Good" plugins/codecs are ones that are freely distributable, FOSS and well maintained. - "Bad" are ones that are not up to par quality wise (messy code, no code reviews, no documentation, ugly hacks, etc.) - "Ugly" are the ones that might not be legally distributable in some world countries due to patents or licenses.
gamesbrainiac 6y ago
Are there any audiobook players that can work across devices in sync? I've been trying to set this up with Kodi, but have had little success.
laingc 6y ago
This looks great, nice job! As an aside: does anyone know of an audiobook organiser? Essentially Calibra for audiobooks. Preferably with a web interface for running in my home server. I’ve tried booksonic, and found it very clunky and lacking proper organisational features.
- drudoo 6y ago
  I ended up using m4b-tools to organize and tags files in folders with Plex as front end and Prologue (iOS) as my preferred player.
- kristofferR 6y ago
  Plex works fine, and with clients like Prologue it's awesome: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/prologue/id1459223267 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/prologue/id1459223267 https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/06/plex-audiobooks/ https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/06/plex-audiobooks/
- geigi 6y ago
  Not an audiobook organizer, but I use EasyTAG to tag my audiobooks before importing them to Cozy: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/EasyTAG/ https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/EasyTAG/
- miccah 6y ago
  I use Jellyfin as an open source alternative to Plex. I personally don't have any audio books on my home server, but it has support for them.
  - laingc 6y ago
    Oh really? I use Jellyfin also, but I never knew it supported audiobooks!
kushalpandya 6y ago
Just want to thank you for not writing this app in Electron. We need more such examples of using proper desktop app frameworks for writing desktop apps.
- trevyn 6y ago
  Mhm. >Hey, I'm the developer of Cozy and I just noticed that Cozy got posted here and people are trying it on macOS. The version linked in the README was a very old version of Cozy which I tested on macOS 10.14. It was quite a hassle to build and it was not stable. Sadly it's a lot of work to package a GTK app for macOS, therefore I discontinued building it but I didn't update the readme. Sorry for anyone who tried it and got disappointed! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24397232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24397232
- dtech 6y ago
  A bit ironic that you made this comment, and then the author mentioned in this thread that Mac OS support is discontinued because it was too much work to maintain. Which probably wouldn't have been such an issue with electron.
  - quadrifoliate 6y ago
    It might be ironic, but overall I think it's fine that it wasn't written in Electron. For a user-specific application like a player, I would rather use a desktop app developed exclusively for a specific OS or set of OSes that works well with those. There are millions of Mac apps that have no equivalent on Linux, so I'm glad to see a developer focusing exclusively on Linux. Electron for cross-platform apps works well when you are going to be forced into using it as a web client anyway due to proprietary platform lock-in, e.g. Slack.
  - est31 6y ago
    Note that using electron is no guarantee that you'll be able to target apple devices, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21437255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21437255 Currently the best way to build something for Apple devices (outside of owning Apple hardware) seems to be usage of CI.

157 points by miles 6y ago

dmix 6y ago

Syncing times, and book downloads for that matter, across multiple platforms is a critical feature for me. Which is why I’m sadly stuck using Audible's flakey apps. Offtopic, but this reminds me of how Audible in general (website, purchasing UX, etc) always feels half broken. It mostly works but small bizarre things ruin it (most recently a purchased book disappearing while marked as purchased in the store requiring manual support intervention). I often wonder if it's half abandon ware since they now have a monopoly and it's using some ancient Java backend.

rvz 6y ago

While the app looks great on Linux which is at least native to that system, it just doesn't run on macOS Catalina at all. Which means I don't have any idea on how it works or looks like on my system. The size of the app is quite large for its functionality: 244.1 MB (Resources folder and MacOS folder take majority of application size.) which is puzzling. Given it uses GTK+, I don't think that it would look great on other systems if it is applying the GNOME theming / decorators to its windows. (Remember gedit on macOS / Windows?). Given its still in beta and primarily uses GTK, I'd rather use this on Linux than on macOS. From what I have seen from other GTK+ apps, they just standout like a sore thumb on any other platform other than Linux. For cross-platform, I would use Qt5 instead.

CameronNemo 6y ago
Presumably the application bundle includes GTK, cairo, gstreamer, and Python. Dependencies add up, y'know? Comparing to an Electron app, the bundle is likely smaller and resource usage lower, with little difference in theming.

ponker 6y ago

Since audiobook enthusiasts might be in this thread ... does anyone know of a product (outside Kindle Whispersync) that can ingest an audiobook and the corresponding e-book and using speech-to-text keep them roughly in sync so you can quickly go between the two?

gostsamo 6y ago
I'm not using it, but isn't this something like the stuff you are looking for? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Accessible_Information_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Accessible_Information...
yorwba 6y ago
https://github.com/readbeyond/aeneas https://github.com/readbeyond/aeneas can output SMIL e-books where each line of text is associated with the corresponding segment from the audiobook. But I don't know which e-book readers support that format.
captn3m0 6y ago
I take my audible files, split them by chapter, and then manually jump to that chapter after checking in my audiobook player. Even syncing progress b/w ebook readers is a pain point for me right now[1], but I'd love to see solutions for this. [1]: https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/issues/584 https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/issues/584
dmitriid 6y ago
It's not a trivial task to implement. There are three stages: - Speech-to-text. It has to be good, or the text you get back is unusable. Google's and Amazon's services for that will quickly become expensive for large volumes. And you need to mark text with time/position if you want ebook-to-audiobok sync. - Diff algorithm between generated text and ebook text. Audiobooks are not produced from the same source material as ebooks, and they will have differences. On top of that you get errors and changes by narrators, and errors from speech-to-text. Not trivial if you want high fidelity. - Figuring out the position in ebook from the diff. Relatively simple. For ebook-to-audiobook you need to find the position in the speech-to-text conversion, and rewind to the time/position marking in that. Storytel (disclaimer: I work at Storytel) has quite a few ebooks and audiobooks connected, but doesn't allow you to ingest your own ebooks and audiobooks.
- switch11 6y ago
  interesting - read a lot of good things about you at the New Publishing blog that guy thinks you are going to be very big all the best. We sure need more people doing ebooks and audiobooks. Amazon is @#$#$ authors with all their exclusivity requirements and insanely high cut that they take

growt 6y ago

Does anyone know a spotify-audiobook-client? What I'm thinking of is a website or app that lets you listen to audiobooks that are on spotify and saves your position per book, lets you browse and search only books without the music. I was thinking of writing something like that myself, but maybe someone already did?

jompe 6y ago
Do you know if there is any open API for that? Last time I checked the API for doing pretty much anything else than play a specific song/album/playlist wasn't there. Maybe the API for books are different?
- growt 6y ago
  I didn't look much into the details so I might be wrong but it looked doable. Search is there, play and resume from some timepoint. So with some search "magic" to find and filter audiobooks it might be possible.
kingosticks 6y ago
How do you find them on Spotify at the moment? Is it just by searching "audiobook" and then shifting through all the random stuff that brings up, some of which are audiobooks? EDIT: I've just found https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/Audiobooks-on-Spotify-let-s-build-a-list-of-what-s-available/td-p/385182 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/Audiobook... which says > In Browse > GENRES& MOODS > WORD you can now find these options. Which should be available through their API using https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/browse/ https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/referenc... It's not immediately obvious how I get to the Browse section through the awful interface at https://play.spotify.com https://play.spotify.com but you can jump straight to https://open.spotify.com/genre/word-page https://open.spotify.com/genre/word-page
- growt 6y ago
  That doesn't show a lot for me (maybe because of my country?), just some "popular" playlists. There are a lot more audiobooks on spotify. I haven't solved this when I thought about it a while back but my idea was to use some external source (like amazon) and then search for the book/author and see if I find an album with a total length that would match an audiobook.

xupybd 6y ago

Do people source audiobooks from somewhere that they can use clients like this? I use audible but don't know of a good alternative.

dredmorbius 6y ago
Library rips.
mmrezaie 6y ago
Local and regional shops. Audible doesn't have some of the voices where I live, because it is regionally locked (I live in Sweden).
retor 6y ago
I've been meaning to try https://libro.fm https://libro.fm. Maybe this is the nudge I need.
bad_user 6y ago
Downpour.com sell DRM-free audiobooks, but lately I noticed a couple of titles in their library that are DRM-protected, so I don’t know for how long that will last. In their library I did find most of the titles I was interested in, selection is good, content is high quality, so I've been enjoying it.
- mxuribe 6y ago
  This is the second time in jus t a few days that i've heard reference to downpour. (The first time was from Cory Doctorow on a recent TWiT episode: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/786?autostart=false https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/786?autosta...) I guess I'll have to check it out!
captn3m0 6y ago
Stripping Audible DRM is surprisingly easy. Download via the desktop, and run a single docker command: docker run -v $(pwd):/data ryanfb/inaudible@sha256:b66738d235be1007797e3a0a0ead115fa227e81e2ab5b7befb97d43f7712fac5 The resulting m4b file has proper chapters, so works everywhere, but I tend to split it further[0],[1] [0]: https://github.com/captn3m0/Scripts/blob/master/split-by-audible https://github.com/captn3m0/Scripts/blob/master/split-by-aud... [1]: https://github.com/captn3m0/Scripts/blob/master/split-audio-by-chapters https://github.com/captn3m0/Scripts/blob/master/split-audio-...

Austin_Conlon 6y ago

On macOS, what distinctions does this have from playing audiobooks in the built-in Books app?

monsieurbanana 6y ago
The mac version is discontinued, per the README. Someone should edit the title.

GeneralDeepi 6y ago

Note: the readme was updated a few minutes ago stating that macOS support is discontinued.

geigi 6y ago
Hey, I'm the developer of Cozy and I just noticed that Cozy got posted here and people are trying it on macOS. The version linked in the README was a very old version of Cozy which I tested on macOS 10.14. It was quite a hassle to build and it was not stable. Sadly it's a lot of work to package a GTK app for macOS, therefore I discontinued building it but I didn't update the readme. Sorry for anyone who tried it and got disappointed!
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  If you ever have a chance, someone might be interested in a quick writeup of the challenges you faced packaging a GTK3 app for macOS. Off the top of my head, Inkscape ships an app with GTK3 and Python for macOS.
  - geigi 6y ago
    I still have documentation of the progress. It probably needs some work before it's useful to others but maybe it helps someone :)
  - geigi 6y ago
    Here is a quick writeup of the steps I've done to build Cozy for macOS: https://gist.github.com/geigi/a3b6d661daeb7b181d3bdd3cab517092 https://gist.github.com/geigi/a3b6d661daeb7b181d3bdd3cab5170... Note: The last time I've done this is almost two years ago, some things might be different by now.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    I believe inkscape no longer supports macOS. I don't use mac though, so haven't confirmed what I've heard.

sbassi 6y ago

in the first line in the main.py there is this shebang: #!@PYTHON@ this is different of what I know about shebangs in Python

CJefferson 6y ago
That is because this file hasn't been "built" yet. When building, @PYTHON@ with the path to Python. This is because it's very hard/impossible to actually get something to put there that works on every OS
- WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
  Isn’t that why we use #!/usr/bin/env python3 and let the virtual environment sort it out? (I know, gtk is a pain in virtualenvs)
  - CJefferson 6y ago
    I've seen machines where there is no python3, only python. But then on other machines there is a python3, and python is python2

MogwaiAllOnYou 6y ago

Anyone know of anything like this but for Windows?

hu3 6y ago
If you don't mind lack of fancy book covers I recommend VLC. Free, open source, cross platform including mobile and remembers where I stopped listening.

bronzecarnage 6y ago

Just a quick thank you to the author. I've been putting off looking for an audiobook reader for linux to improve my german. HN makes life easier ;)

andrewnicolalde 6y ago

I've been searching for something like this for a very long time! Nice to know it exists :)

possibleworlds 6y ago

I wish audiobook apps had bookmarking. I often fall asleep to audiobooks and have to scrub around trying to find my place next time I want to listen. A visual bookmark unrelated related to playback position would be so handy. Seems like obvious functionality to me, does anyone know of an iOS player that does this?

Insanity 6y ago
This is one of the reasons why I dislike listening to audio books or podcasts at night. You drift off and have no idea at which point. :)
- tlow 6y ago
  Yes. Presumably this is what the sleep timer is for, though of course you must remember to set it before you drift off. I imagine you could design a feature where every x_interval you check to see if the user is awake and require a user action to continue playing, but then how do you make it so this isn't annoying during normal use?
  - possibleworlds 6y ago
    Does the sleep timer leave a marker for where you set it? Need to double check this, I feel I’ve noticed it before but not consistently enough to know it’s a thing.
  - matsemann 6y ago
    Audible is really bad at this. If I set a timer for 15 minutes, and am still awake, I press play (since it pauses). But then it plays without having set a new timer. So to not have it play for hours while I sleep, I then have to take out my phone, look at the bright display, and set a new timer for 15 minutes. Why cannot pressing play in this instance be like a reverse snooze??
    - Schlaefer 6y ago
      Smart Audiobook Player (Android) has an automatic sleep mode. Also you don't have to press the play button, it indicates the end (fading audio, beep) and you just have to shake/move the device to keep it going, so you don't have to open your eyes at all. It's fantastic.

pjmlp 6y ago

Definitely, thanks for going with native toolkits.

Phelinofist 6y ago

Unrelated, but whats with these gstreamer dep names? gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly

lucideer 6y ago
EDIT: my first comment was from memory and I googled to double-check. Seems I was wrong and they're actually stability ratings. Ignore below --- the suffixes are related to codec licencing afaik For example, foss purists might like to install `-good` whereas those who prefer all video sources to "just work" will also want `-ugly`
izacus 6y ago
This mirrors some other Debian/Ubuntu package names where: - "Good" plugins/codecs are ones that are freely distributable, FOSS and well maintained. - "Bad" are ones that are not up to par quality wise (messy code, no code reviews, no documentation, ugly hacks, etc.) - "Ugly" are the ones that might not be legally distributable in some world countries due to patents or licenses.

gamesbrainiac 6y ago

Are there any audiobook players that can work across devices in sync? I've been trying to set this up with Kodi, but have had little success.

laingc 6y ago

This looks great, nice job! As an aside: does anyone know of an audiobook organiser? Essentially Calibra for audiobooks. Preferably with a web interface for running in my home server. I’ve tried booksonic, and found it very clunky and lacking proper organisational features.

drudoo 6y ago
I ended up using m4b-tools to organize and tags files in folders with Plex as front end and Prologue (iOS) as my preferred player.
kristofferR 6y ago
Plex works fine, and with clients like Prologue it's awesome: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/prologue/id1459223267 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/prologue/id1459223267 https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/06/plex-audiobooks/ https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/06/plex-audiobooks/
geigi 6y ago
Not an audiobook organizer, but I use EasyTAG to tag my audiobooks before importing them to Cozy: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/EasyTAG/ https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/EasyTAG/
miccah 6y ago
I use Jellyfin as an open source alternative to Plex. I personally don't have any audio books on my home server, but it has support for them.
- laingc 6y ago
  Oh really? I use Jellyfin also, but I never knew it supported audiobooks!

kushalpandya 6y ago

Just want to thank you for not writing this app in Electron. We need more such examples of using proper desktop app frameworks for writing desktop apps.

trevyn 6y ago
Mhm. >Hey, I'm the developer of Cozy and I just noticed that Cozy got posted here and people are trying it on macOS. The version linked in the README was a very old version of Cozy which I tested on macOS 10.14. It was quite a hassle to build and it was not stable. Sadly it's a lot of work to package a GTK app for macOS, therefore I discontinued building it but I didn't update the readme. Sorry for anyone who tried it and got disappointed! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24397232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24397232
dtech 6y ago
A bit ironic that you made this comment, and then the author mentioned in this thread that Mac OS support is discontinued because it was too much work to maintain. Which probably wouldn't have been such an issue with electron.
- quadrifoliate 6y ago
  It might be ironic, but overall I think it's fine that it wasn't written in Electron. For a user-specific application like a player, I would rather use a desktop app developed exclusively for a specific OS or set of OSes that works well with those. There are millions of Mac apps that have no equivalent on Linux, so I'm glad to see a developer focusing exclusively on Linux. Electron for cross-platform apps works well when you are going to be forced into using it as a web client anyway due to proprietary platform lock-in, e.g. Slack.
- est31 6y ago
  Note that using electron is no guarantee that you'll be able to target apple devices, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21437255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21437255 Currently the best way to build something for Apple devices (outside of owning Apple hardware) seems to be usage of CI.