Absorb - for Audiobookshelf

First off, the app feels sleek and modern, with a responsive UI and well designed layout. It has fun statistics and tons of customization to tweak it to your preferences. It really hits every checkbox for what features I want to see in a player, including playback rate, chapter selector, library browser and filter, metadata view, and an epub reader. The now playing screen is very useful, which of course is also adjustable however you want it. Coming from other ABS iOS apps I also want to say that I have a much easier time downloading my books through absorb, with background downloads actually working if my screen darkens a moment. That was a real issue with my last player. Edit: disregard below statements, there was a mangled entry in the db for ABS causing client crashing, as promised it’s a 5/5 for me. Though I’m still unsure why other apps could handle the corrupted entries and absorb couldn’t. I will say it still has a suite of its own issues though. The app drops connection to the server frequently, even though the domain is reachable through other apps on the same phone or by browser. I believe it’s an issue when flooding requests, happens a lot when I scroll through my library too quickly. It will also crash infrequently when utilizing the mini-player, I have better luck keeping the app focused most of the time. If it weren’t for the connection issues I’d say it’s 5/5.

As a long-time developer, I have to give credit where it’s due. Absorb is one of those apps that reminds me what great software feels like. It does exactly what it’s supposed to do, but it does it with style, polish, and grace. To me, it’s the little things that separate a good application from an excellent one. The thoughtful design, attention to detail, and smooth user experience show that the developer truly cares about the craft. Well done, and thank you for creating such a high-quality application.

I've been running audiobookshelf for years, and I've run the official app through TestFlight and side loading, and I've tried every app in the App Store. There are some good ones, and some not so good. Absorb, however, is it. This is hands down the best ABS app I've used. Huge thanks to the dev for making this, and even more so for making this free. Absolutely fantastic app.