Libation on a Seedbox: Your Audible Books, Downloaded and Playable Anywhere

Short answer

Libation downloads the audiobooks you've bought on Audible, takes the copy protection off, and saves them as normal audio files you can play in anything. On your appbox it runs on its own: it checks your Audible library every six hours and fetches whatever is new into ~/media/Audiobooks. Audiobookshelf already sees that folder, so a book you buy on your phone at lunch is in your own library by the evening.

There's one catch, and it's the reason this guide exists. Libation has no web page. You sign in to Audible once, over SSH, by pasting one command. After that you never have to open it again.

It's free and open source (GPL-3.0), and it's in our app library.

Why bother

Audible books only play in Audible's apps. If you've built up a few hundred of them over the years, they're a library you rent access to. Libation turns them into files you keep. On a laptop that means leaving the program open and remembering to run it. On an appbox it just happens, because the box is always on.

The other half is what you play them with. Audiobookshelf gives you proper iOS and Android apps with progress sync, a sleep timer and chapters, and it doesn't care where a book came from. Libation fills it, Audiobookshelf plays it.

One honest note: Libation is for books you've paid for. Whether removing DRM from your own purchases is allowed where you live is something to check yourself. We host the tool, we don't give legal advice.

Install it

Find Libation in the app library in the panel and click install. There's no address to open afterwards, and no password on the tile, because there's nothing to log in to. That's normal.

What it sets up:

Where books go	~/media/Audiobooks
Settings and your Audible sign-in	~/.config/libation
How often it checks Audible	Every six hours
Web page	None
Who owns the files	Your account, so you can move or delete them over SFTP

Sign in to Audible, once

Connect to your appbox over SSH (the panel shows the address and your login) and run this, with your own Audible email:

docker exec -it libation LibationCli login-external --libationFiles /config --locale us --account [email protected]

Change us to your Audible store. Use uk for audible.co.uk, de for audible.de, and so on; the Libation tile in the panel lists the codes we support: us, uk, de, fr, ca, au, in, it, es and jp.

It prints a long link. Open it in your browser and sign in to Audible as you normally would. When you're done, the browser lands on a blank page or an error page. That's expected. Copy the whole address from the address bar, paste it back into the SSH window and press enter.

Check that it worked:

docker exec libation LibationCli list-accounts --libationFiles /config

If your account is listed, you're done. Libation would normally wait for its next six-hour check, so restart the app from the panel to start the first download straight away.

We never see your Audible password. It goes from your browser to Audible, and what Libation keeps is the sign-in token in ~/.config/libation.

What lands on disk

Each book gets its own folder named after the title and Audible's ID for it (the ASIN), with the book inside as one file:

~/media/Audiobooks/
  Book Title [ASIN]/
    Book Title [ASIN].m4b

That's Libation's default, and it's a good one. The file is an .m4b, the usual audiobook format, with the chapters and tags inside it. Libation keeps Audible's own audio rather than converting it, so nothing is lost. If a book comes with a PDF companion, Libation downloads that too.

The first run fetches your whole library, not just new purchases. A big library is a lot of disk space, so watch it the first night:

du -sh ~/media/Audiobooks

Appbox Lite is EUR 5 a month for 500 GB. If your library won't fit next to everything else, Appbox +1 is EUR 11 for 1000 GB and Appbox +3 is EUR 14 for 3000 GB. The full list is on the plans page.

Play them in Audiobookshelf

Install Audiobookshelf from the app library if you haven't. It can see everything in your media folder, so in Audiobookshelf:

1. Go to Settings, then Libraries, and add a library of type Books.
2. Add the folder /media/Audiobooks. That's the same folder as ~/media/Audiobooks, seen from inside the app.
3. Save, and let it scan.

Audiobookshelf reads the title, author and narrator out of the tags Libation writes into each file, so you don't need an author-folder layout for it to make sense of things. If a cover or match looks wrong, use Match on that book.

New purchases show up after the next Libation run and the next Audiobookshelf scan. You don't have to do anything.

Settings worth changing

Libation reads ~/.config/libation/Settings.json at the start of every run, so you can change a setting over SFTP and it applies on the next pass without a reinstall. If the file isn't there, create it. Put each setting in once, as a plain JSON file, for example:

{
  "ImportPlusTitles": false
}

The ones people actually change:

Setting	Default	What it does
ImportPlusTitles	true	Audible Plus titles you've added to your library are borrowed, not bought. Set this to false if you only want what you own.
ImportEpisodes	true	Podcasts in your Audible library. Set to false to leave them out.
SplitFilesByChapter	false	One file per chapter instead of one file per book. Leave it off for Audiobookshelf.
DecryptToLossy	false	Convert to MP3 instead of keeping Audible's audio. Only worth it for an old player that can't do m4b.
CreateCueSheet	false	Writes a .cue file with the chapter marks next to each book.

Don't set the books folder in this file. We point Libation at ~/media/Audiobooks and that wins over anything in Settings.json.

When it doesn't download anything

Look at what it did on its last run:

docker logs --tail 50 libation

• "scan failed ... skipping liberate" before you've signed in. That's expected. It has no account yet, so every run stops at the scan. Sign in as above.
• "Failed to decrypt ExistingAccessToken". This happens when you've copied AccountsSettings.json over from Libation on a Windows PC, where the tokens are encrypted with a key that stayed on the PC. Easiest fix: delete that file from ~/.config/libation and sign in with the command above instead. If you'd rather keep the copied file, export libation-master.key from the desktop app and put it in the same folder.
• Signed in, still nothing. Restart the app from the panel to force a run now, then check the log again. A run on a big library takes a while before the first book appears.

Uninstalling and upgrading

Uninstalling Libation removes ~/.config/libation, which is your Audible sign-in and Libation's record of what it already fetched. The books in ~/media/Audiobooks stay. If you reinstall, you sign in again.

Upgrades from the panel keep both the sign-in and the record, so they're safe to click.

FAQ

Does Libation need a web page or a port? No. It runs in the background with nothing exposed. The only time you touch it is the SSH sign-in.

Can I sign in more than one Audible account? Yes. Run the sign-in command again with the other email. Libation scans every account it knows about.

Will it download books I've returned or that left Audible Plus? Libation works from what's in your Audible library when it scans. Anything it already downloaded stays on your disk, and it won't delete a file because a title left your library.

Can Plex play them too? They're ordinary m4b files in your media folder, so yes, if you point a Plex music library at them. Most people find Audiobookshelf a much better fit for audiobooks: it tracks progress per book and its apps are built for listening.

What if I want to request books I don't own yet? That's a different job. Libation only works with Audible purchases. For the rest of the reading shelf, see Calibre vs Calibre Web Automated for ebooks.