EPUB to audiobook for iPhone
An M4B that lands in Apple Books as a proper audiobook: chapter list, sleep timer, position kept across your devices, and CarPlay controls that skip by chapter.
Local narration unit
Idle
Drop an EPUB here
M4B
With chapters
0
Bytes uploaded
11
Voices
Read aloud in this tab. Never uploaded. Here's why that's true.
book.epub
- —
- Chapters
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- Audio
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- On this machine
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- Output
Reading the book…
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Close the tab if you want. We keep your place, and picking the same file again carries on from where it stopped.
Paused
Your place is kept.
Your audiobook is ready
Getting it onto a phone
- iPhone. AirDrop it, or copy it into the Books app. Chapters and your position work straight away.
- Android. Copy it across and open it in Smart AudioBook Player, Voice or Listen.
- Plex or Audiobookshelf. Drop it in the library folder.
That didn't work
- Apple Books
- Native audiobook player
- CarPlay
- Chapter skip on the wheel
- iCloud
- Position syncs across devices
Convert on a computer, listen on the phone
Do the conversion on a Mac or PC. The narration runs in a browser tab for a couple of hours and iOS is quick to suspend a background tab, so a phone is the wrong place to start a book-length job even though Safari will technically run it.
Moving it across
- AirDrop from a Mac, then pick Books when iOS asks what to open it with.
- Files: put the M4B in iCloud Drive, open it on the phone, share it to Books.
- A cable, if you still sync that way. Books picks it up like any other title.
Once it is in Books it syncs to your iPad and Mac through iCloud, and your position follows you between them.
What Books does with it
It arrives under Audiobooks rather than in your music library, because there is a flag inside the file that says so. You get the audiobook player: a chapter list, playback speed, a sleep timer, and skip buttons that move by chapter instead of by fifteen seconds.
In the car, CarPlay shows the same chapter list. Losing the thread and skipping back one chapter is the thing people do most while driving, and it needs chapter marks to work at all.
Other players on iOS
BookPlayer and Bound both read the same file if you would rather not use Books, and both handle chapters and position properly. Nothing about the file is specific to Apple.
Questions
Does it work on the iPhone itself?
Converting on the phone is possible but not sensible. Safari on iOS will run it, but a book-length job needs the tab in the foreground for hours and iOS is quick to suspend it. Convert on a Mac or PC, then move the finished file across.
How do I get the file onto the phone?
AirDrop is the easy one: send the M4B from a Mac and choose Books when it asks. Otherwise open the file on the phone and share it to Books, or drop it into iCloud Drive and open it from Files.
Will Apple Books treat it as an audiobook?
Yes. There is a flag inside the file that tells Books to file it under Audiobooks rather than Music, and we set it. That is what gives you the audiobook player, the sleep timer and position memory across devices.
Do chapters work?
They do. Books shows a chapter list and the skip buttons move a chapter at a time. The chapters come from the book's own table of contents, so they match the printed edition.
What about CarPlay?
It works, and this is where chapter marks earn their keep. CarPlay shows the chapter list and the steering wheel controls skip by chapter.