Organise your library

Keep audiobooks and podcasts organised

Audely organises audiobooks into books and parts, and podcasts into shows and episodes. Browsing, editing, favourites, notes, and played state belong to the Audely library and do not rewrite the audio files.

Browse audiobooks and podcasts

The Audiobooks group contains Books and audiobook Favourites. Open an audiobook to see every part in its fixed reading order. Audiobook pages have no podcast sort, filter, or hide-played controls.

The Podcasts group contains Shows, Episodes, and podcast Favourites. The Shows list can be sorted by title or date added. Episode lists can be sorted by date, title, show, or episode number where the context supports it.

Filter episodes by All, Unplayed, In progress, or Played. The current filter changes what is visible, not the saved played state. Use Default episode order and Default episode filter in General settings. A show can keep its own episode order and played-episode visibility.

Create collections

With Audely Pro, choose New collection from Books or Shows to group items in your library. Without Audely Pro, this opens the purchase page first. A successful purchase or restore continues to the collection editor, while closing the purchase page cancels the request.

Select members under Choose books or Choose shows, enter a name, then choose a colour. On the final step, use the trailing tick (Create collection) on iPhone or iPad, or choose Create on Mac. Use Save when editing an existing collection. Changes are saved only when you finish the final step. A collection contains books or shows, not individual parts or episodes.

Creating or editing collections requires Audely Pro, including adding or removing members and changing their order. Existing collections remain available to browse, play, and delete after your subscription ends. Collection membership does not move or change source audio.

Collections appear first in Books or Shows and in the matching Home shelf. Collected items appear inside their collections, with their individual tiles hidden from those parent views by default. Favourites, search, and listening shelves still include them. To show their individual tiles too, turn on General › Collections › Show items outside collections on the current device.

Search your library

Search matches book and show titles, descriptions, authors or creators, and audiobook narrator, series, Book #, publication details, and notes. Books and shows can appear as results in their own right, even when they have no parts or episodes.

Part and episode results match their own titles, descriptions, credits, notes, publication details, numbers, filenames, and folder-relative paths. Searching for a book or show title or a value inherited from it returns the book or show once. A value saved explicitly on a part or episode can also match that item, even when it equals its parent’s value.

With Audely Pro, search can include spoken words from saved podcast transcripts when Include transcripts in search is enabled in Transcripts settings. Audiobook parts are excluded from transcript-text search. Searching ordinary library details does not require Pro.

Search results use content-appropriate actions for playback, queueing, played state, and navigation. Book and show results offer the same menu as their Library tiles. Touch and hold one on iPhone or iPad. On Mac, use its play button to start listening, or open its menu from ⋯ or by Control-clicking. Audiobook favourites belong to the whole audiobook. Podcast episodes can be favourited individually.

Customise Home

Home has separate Audiobooks and Podcasts scopes. Each scope keeps its own section order and visibility on the current device. Collections share the Books or Shows shelf by default. Turn on General › Collections › Separate collections on Home to give them a separate section on that device. A section stays out of view automatically when that scope has nothing for it to show.

• Audiobook Home offers Books, Continue listening, Recently added, and Recently finished. The date-based shelves contain whole audiobooks, while Continue listening contains the part where listening should resume.
• Podcast Home offers Shows, Continue listening, Recently added, Recently finished, Catch up, and Rediscover.

Collections appears in Customise Home when Separate collections on Home is enabled. Switching between combined and separate shelves preserves its saved position and visibility. Hidden Home collections remain available in Library.

Hiding or reordering a Home section does not change any books, parts, shows, episodes, progress, or favourites.

Edit details

Open the item’s actions menu and choose Book settings, Part settings, Show settings, or Episode settings. The option matches the title of the editor it opens.

• Book settings: title, author, narrator, series, Book #, Date published, description, artwork, and playback speed.
• Part settings: title, the book it belongs to, author, narrator, series, Book #, Part #, Date published, description, and artwork.
• Show settings: title, creator, description, artwork, episode order, played-episode visibility, and playback speed.
• Episode settings: title, the show it belongs to, creator, Season #, Episode #, Date published, description, and artwork.

These changes affect Audely’s library, not the tags or contents of the source audio. With sync enabled and Audely Pro active, supported edits can follow you to your other devices.

Book defaults and part-specific details

Use Book settings for details shared by the whole audiobook. A part can keep its own author, narrator, series, book number, publication date, or description. When one of those part fields is blank, its page uses the book’s value. Global Search returns the book for that inherited value. A podcast episode similarly uses its show’s creator or description when its own field is blank.

Editors show the values saved on the item itself. A field can therefore be blank in Part settings while the part’s page shows the book’s value. Clear a part-specific value to use the book’s default again. Changing a part does not rewrite its book or the other parts. Existing part-specific values, including imported values, still take priority when you edit the book.

Later source scans preserve saved book metadata, including fields you deliberately cleared. A scan is not a way to reset your book edits to the original file tags.

Grouping and reading order

Change Book in Part settings or Show in Episode settings to move that item to another book or show of the same type. A matching existing title is reused, or a new book or show is created. To rename the whole book or show, change its title in Book settings or Show settings instead.

Part numbers can change an audiobook’s reading order. Audely uses part numbers when every part has a unique positive number. If numbers are missing, duplicated, or not positive, it uses filename and folder-path order for the whole book. Book # is the book’s position within a series, such as 1 or 1.5, and is separate from a part number. Series information does not create a separate library folder.

Publication dates

Date published accepts a four-digit year, a year and month, or a complete date. Leave unknown month or day fields blank rather than inventing them. A day requires a month, and the date must be valid. Clear all three fields to remove the item’s saved date. For a part, that makes the book’s date apply when one is available.

Artwork

Use Use for parts in Book settings or Use for episodes in Show settings to apply the book’s or show’s artwork to its parts or episodes when you save. A part or episode can also use its own image. Use book artwork or Use show artwork returns that item to its book’s or show’s image. Remove image removes its image rather than selecting inherited artwork.

Edit several items on Mac

Select parts or episodes and choose Edit metadata. Opening Edit metadata from a book or show loads its parts or episodes, rather than editing the book or show itself.

Edit individual table cells, or select rows in the editor and use the side panel to apply a value to those rows. Available fields include grouping, titles, author or creator, audiobook narrator and series, numbering, publication dates, descriptions, notes, artwork, and played state. Episode favourites are editable, while audiobook favourites remain attached to the whole book. Relative file path identifies the original audio and is read-only.

When values differ, < Keep existing > leaves them unchanged. For optional metadata, < Clear value > removes the selected field’s saved value. Book and show grouping cannot be cleared. Choose another title to move the selected items. Clearing a part’s descriptive override lets it inherit its book’s value again. Audiobook-only fields apply only to parts, and podcast-only fields apply only to episodes in a mixed selection.

Use Undo or Redo to review changes before choosing Save. Descriptive edits apply to the selected parts or episodes, not their book or show defaults or unselected siblings. Changing Book or Show moves the selected items to a matching book or show or creates a new one. Use Book settings or Show settings to change its defaults.

Add notes

Open an audiobook, part, or episode’s actions and choose Add notes or Edit notes. Choose Save to keep your changes. Notes are stored separately from the imported file information. An item’s page shows its notes, or No notes yet. when it has none. With Audely Pro, turn on Hide empty notes in Appearance to leave that section off until notes are added.

Favourites and progress

An audiobook favourite applies once to the whole audiobook. Individual parts cannot be favourited. Audiobook progress is derived from every part. Before listening, an audiobook card shows its author, or its duration if no author is available. While in progress its card and play button can show time remaining or a completion percentage, according to General › Audiobooks › Progress display. It becomes Finished only after every part is played.

Mark podcast episodes as favourites or played from their available actions. A podcast’s actions can mark every episode as played or unplayed together.

Remove items

Audely’s book, part, show, and episode delete actions remove library data and preserve source audio. If you use sync, the deletion also applies to your other devices. It never deletes the original file from Finder, Files, or iCloud Drive.

Deleting a collection keeps its books or shows in your library. If you use sync, the collection deletion also applies to your other devices.

A later source scan does not bring deleted library items back. To import that audio again, use Allow reimport in Folder information as described in Add audio and folders.

An unrestricted local library

The free tier has no book, part, show, or episode limit. Importing, browsing, playing, queueing, editing, and removing library items do not require Audely Pro.