trail of the light
the truth is out there

A few days ago I’ve discovered AudioAnchor app and I’d like to share my positive impressions with You.

I use to listen to both audiobooks and podcasts and I definitely prefer to use a single app for both of them. Recently I’ve switched to AudioAnchor (from Smart AudioBook Player) and I am enchanted. Here are the reasons:

It remembers reading progress not only per each book, but also per each chapter.

I find this extremely crucial because I often jump between various episodes of the same podcast - wanting to keep individual progress position for each episode. I guess audiobook players rarely go that far in remembering listening progress - Smart Audiobook Player, for example, if I go back to the previous episode, it plays it from the beginning (even if earlier on I left the track already partially played). As a result I needed to create bookmarks each time I wanted to switch to the previous episode and have the position remembered :( .

This app is free from all that hassle. If I want to jump to the previous episode of the same podcast (which I was listening to earlier on) - it’s not a problem: the app remembers progress for each of them! Finally!

It allows to add multiple books/podcasts directories.

Thanks to this feature I can finally have books and podcasts both from internal and external memory gathered in one place (meaning: I don’t have to switch between the two if needed). Besides, it makes the album list much better organized - e.g., podcasts first, books second, lectures at the end. Wonderful!

It can store Your whole reading history (not only the books and podcasts which You have currently stored on Your device).

You know, long ago I had a special notebook for tracking all the books I’ve been reading. In fact I had more than one volume of that notebook :) . I was surprised once I’ve realized that with AudioAnchor I can have such a log again - which I find incredible, especially given that it’s not a problem that some files are no longer present in the device memory. As in case of my paper notebook so here as well I think it could be a nice thing to be able to come back some time in the future and dive into the past (there might be several more reasons to consider it a handy and useful feature). The only thing I don’t know yet is how I could be able to browse that SQL log on my Windows PC and in a non-technical-user-friendly way :) . But to be able to recover the database within the app itself is already great.

It is fast, free (GPL ethical license) and very convenient in use.

For example, whenever I wanted to refresh the list of podcasts and books, in Smart Audiobook Player I needed to do a few taps - which definitely hasn’t been pleasant experience. In this app I can just swipe down to refresh... what a difference.

Therefore, keeping all of that in mind, I find the app wonderful and surprisingly convenient in use. Finally listening to podcasts and books becomes much more pleasant - distraction-free experience for me.