Deploying audiobookshelf in Docker

Listening to audio books

Usually when I listen to an audiobook, I listen through the Audible mobile app if the books is something I've purchased through Audbile.

I have a decent size collection of DRM-free audiobooks, and for those I use the Smart AudioBook Player Android app.

However, allowing my family to access my DRM-free audiobook collection isn't that easy, without needing to constantly load audio books onto someone's phone, which becomes a pain pretty quickly.

Enter audiobookshelf

Thankfully, there is a free app called audiobookshelf that acts as a library and player for my family, and has mobile apps for both Android and Apple phones.

Setting audiobookshelf up and getting it running was simple to do, and the mobile app, at least on Android, works very well.

Configuration

My audiobook collection is stored on my NAS under /mnt/audiobooks/, so that location is referenced in the audiobookshelf yaml file.

I also want it to run as my user:group (1000:1000), and use my timezone (Denver) for any log messages.

Making those minor changes results in this yaml file:

version: "3.7"
services:
  audiobookshelf:
    image: ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf:latest
    container_name: audiobookshelf
    ports:
      - 13378:80
    volumes:
      - /mnt/audiobooks/:/audiobooks
      - ./metadata:/metadata
      - ./config:/config
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - user=1000:1000
      - TZ=America/Denver
networks: {}

Screenshots

Caveats

• I don't expose the port 13378 to the outside world, so family members have to be connected to the local network in order to connect to the server.

• As they may not always been connected to the local server, I advise them to download the audiobook, then use the app to listen to it.

• If a book is local to my mobile phone (downloaded), I prefer the Smart AudioBook Player app vs the audiobookshelf app.

References

Audiobookshelf.org - Self-hosted audiobook and podcast server https://www.audiobookshelf.org/

Smart Audiobook Player https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ak.alizandro.smartaudiobookplayer