Today, audiobook has taken a more important role in modern life, which changes the way of reading greatly. Instead of purchasing a physical book, many of you probably prefer to download an audiobook on laptops, tablets, or mobile devices to enjoy everywhere. Hence, the demands towards a reliable audiobooks player are also rising.
In this blog, we have collected the 11 best audiobook players available for all devices, including PC, Mac, and phones to play audiobooks at high quality and in a smooth way. Now, grasp them and select the best one for yourself to enjoy audiobook playback with great experience later on.
Part 1. Top 7 Audiobook Player for PC/Mac
Firstly, let’s see what are the recommended audiobook players that PC and Mac users can use for streaming audiobooks with a nice experience.
Audible Cloud Player (Windows/Mac)
Audible Cloud Player is a convenient online audiobook player developed by Amazon, which allows you to stream your books from a computer. It's no exaggeration to say that Audible is the largest producer and provider of audiobooks so you are able to enjoy a plethora of elaborate audiobooks in its library when you have signed in to the membership on it.
TWhat attracts most is that you don't need to download any extra software, and you can play audiobooks in all browsers. When you sign in to your Audible account and navigate to your library, you can see the "Listen Now" button beside the title. Just click on it and you will activate an Audio Cloud Player in a new window and enjoy your audiobooks. However, this online audiobook player window requires a relatively strict and stable network connection without offline playback supported now.
Verdict: Best for audiobook playback online; No need to download any app.
Note: To make all your purchased Audible books playable offline on any device or player software, TuneFab Audible Converter can be your right hand, as it supports to convert DRM protected Audible books to MP3, M4A, FLAC, and WAV audio formats.
Kobo Books (Windows/Mac)
Another convenient and easy-to-grasp audiobook player for PC and Mac is Kobo Books. Similarly to Audible Cloud Player, it is an online platform offering a web-based audiobook streaming experience, which will not ask you to install extra software to process the playback in extra. Even if you are using a mobile device, only with a web browser, you are able to access this audiobook player and enjoy your favorite audiobook streaming right away.
On Kobo Books, there are also various audiobook categories available for you to discover any trending popular audiobooks to enjoy online, giving you more options to spend your spare time with a smooth experience and your favorite audiobooks!
Verdict: Best for audiobook streaming across devices without software installation required; All-featured platform with various audiobook resources provided.
iTunes (Windows)
iTunes is not only a fantastic way to organize music and TV shows, but it is also integrated with the best audiobook player for PC. Thanks to its aesthetic interface and solid user base, listening to audiobooks on this app becomes logical as you don't need to download any extra programs. That's also a sore point that some users may complain about because this multi-functional iTunes consumes too much storage on their computer, especially for Windows. Anyway, if you don't mind, iTunes still does a great job of managing all the audiobooks by artists, genres, etc. since you may have hundreds of audiobooks in the library and it can help you better find your desired one.
To listen to audiobooks on iTunes, you can directly buy audiobooks in M4B formats on App Store, or add your own audiobooks from your PC. Now it supports playing audiobooks in formats of MP3, AIFF, WAV, MPEG-4, AAC, and Apple Lossless. However, there is one thing you should notice, that is, it will never remember where you stop when you open iTunes next time. You can only play by chapters and move to the location you want manually.
Verdict: Best for iTunes lovers; One-stop solution to getting millions of audiobooks, newly-released music, movies, and TV shows here.
Apple Books (Mac)
Since the macOS system was updated to 10.15 Catalina, Apple has transitioned from iTunes to Apple Books. Hence, instead of using iTunes, Apple Books becomes the best audiobook player for Mac, which offers quite similar functionality as iTunes but can also provide original quality for you to stream audiobooks on Mac. It enables you to download Audible content to the Apple Books library. After that, you can enjoy them offline in a smooth way.
Apple Books also performs to sync with your other iOS devices, allowing you to transfer audiobooks among them to access the playback. You are able to play as well as manage them across devices more flexibly and conveniently.
Verdict: Default audiobook player for Mac with the best original quality; Sync with Audible to download purchased audiobooks offline; Transfer audiobooks among iOS devices conveniently.
Windows Media Player (Windows)
You can't be more familiar with Windows Media Player. As a totally free, powerful, and well-known Windows media player, it not only supports to play regular media files such as video, music, and images but also works as one of the best audiobook players for streaming long audiobooks with smooth experience. Besides, it also allows you to burn your favorite audiobooks to CDs as collections, or sync your media files to portable devices for streaming more conveniently.
To play audiobooks on Windows Media Player, you should download and activate "Audible Download Manager" first, which is the key step to play audiobooks on Windows Media Player. Click on "General Settings" on the main interface of Audible Download Manager, and then check off Windows Media Player to import files to after download audiobooks. Finally, click on "Save Settings". Next time you download audiobooks to your computer, Windows Media Player will import them automatically and you can play audiobooks successfully.
Verdict: Best for loyal users of Windows Media Player; To facilitate an all-around media player.
My Audiobook Reader (Windows)
My Audiobook Reader is another free audiobook player for PC. This lightweight application concentrates on playing audiobooks in MP3 format only. You are allowed to alter the volume, pitch, and voice speed of the playback. In the meanwhile, it shows the track progress and playlist progress of the audiobooks you are playing.
The coolest thing is this tiny audiobook player for Windows has combined all practical playback options for you such as play, stop, pause, move 10/60 seconds backward, move 10/60 seconds forward, and move to the start/end location. Furthermore, the playlist will display information of title, author, year, and album and you can also set necessary bookmarks on the tracks to avoid getting lost when you want to play audiobooks on this program next time.
Verdict: Best for audiobook enthusiasts who want to find a practical player, but won't let this player occupy too much CPU resources.
1by1 (Windows)
1by1 is also a totally free and light-weight audiobook player for Windows PC, which provides a versatile environment for you to play the tracks in your carefully arranged folders without the need to fuddle with a playlist or database. As one of the best audiobook players recommended, it offers one most compelling feature - when you launch this player, it will display your PC drives, and you just need to find the folder of your audiobook collection for it to play the whole content of the folder.
Apart from the feature above, it can remember the last track and position you play which will make playing audiobooks easier in no doubt. Moreover, you are allowed to copy, rename, and move audiobooks while playing them. This totally free desktop audiobook player now supports formats in OGG, WAV, FLAC, AAC, MP4, CD and you can have a try.
Verdict: Best for hassle-free audiobook playback as it will play all the audible books you collected in a folder one by one.
Part 2. Top 4 Audiobook Player for Phone
For mobile phone users, if you desire to save audiobooks to your devices for playing everywhere flexibly, these 4 best audiobook players for your phone should not be left behind. Grasp them to enjoy a flexible audiobook streaming whenever you want with your phones!
LibriVox (Android/iOS)
As a freeware, LibriVox offers a free audiobook streaming service for Android and iOS users to play audiobooks smoothly on mobile phones without hassle. With an embedded library provided, you are able to access some trending titles to spend your spare time enjoying their playback. LibriVox enables you to browse all resources by titles, authors, genres, etc. Also equipped with the searching function, you can put in keywords to search audiobooks you like directly.
LibriVox is also designed with an easy control on audiobook playback. Some helpful features like a sleep timer, variable playback speed, bookmarks adding, etc. can be found on the playback controlling bar. You can surely enjoy the audiobook playback in an convenient way with this great audiobook player for phone.
Verdict: Free to install and no account registration required; Convenient audiobook playback control; Free audiobook resources.
Downpour (Android/iOS)
Performing as an independent audiobook store, you are able to discover many DRM-free on-sale audiobooks on Downpour to purchase or rent for enjoyment within the mobile app directly. In addition, you can import your local audiobooks to Downpour to merge the library for better management and flexible streaming on your Android/iOS devices.
The audiobook resources provided in Downpour are available to be downloaded offline, making it more convenient for you to access the downloads and stream them whenever you need even without a network connection. All in all, it can be a reliable audiobook player for mobile users to enjoy a nice audiobook streaming experience.
Verdict: Easy audiobook playback control with full chapters and flexible skips; DRM-free audiobook resources to purchase and rent; Offline streaming mode available.
Smart Audiobook Player (Android)
Specially designed for Android systems, Smart Audiobook Player is one of the best audiobook player Android apps providing good audiobook collections and convenient playback controls. Like Downpour, this Android app offers various DRM-free audiobook resources for you to browse and select to stream as you desire.
As for the audiobook playback, it offers standard controls like variable playback speed, bookmarking, and so on. Additionally, as Smart Audiobook Player is also equipped with an audio equalizer, it makes your audiobook streaming quality adjustable, using which you are able to adjust the streaming settings to enjoy audiobook playback in ways you like.
Verdict: Special audio equalizer to adjust audiobook streaming quality as you desire; Various DRM-free audiobook resources; Free trial available.
MP3 Audiobook Player (iOS)
For iOS devices, MP3 Audiobook Player is also the best audiobook player to help you manage and stream your collected audiobooks from all Apple devices, including Apple Watch. It is compatible with MP3 and M4B formats, so before importing audiobooks to this audiobook player, make sure the files are compatible with it and are encoded in these 2 formats.
Despite audiobooks, MP3 Audiobook Player is also compatible with the playback of regular media files, making it also an ideal media player for streaming music. The playback quality of MP3 Audiobook Player is also nice, making sure a decent experience for you to enjoy audiobooks and other music files streaming within the app.
Verdict: Intuitive interface and easy functions to use; Nice audiobook and media files management app; Fully compatible with all Apple devices.
Part 3. Recommended: Use an Audible MP3 Converter to Enjoy Better
Sometimes when you discover the installed audiobook players are not compatible with your Audible book downloads as they are encrypted by DRM in AA/AAX format, you can try converting Audible to MP3 first to make the audiobooks compatible with more audiobook players so you have have a more flexible streaming experience.
TuneFab Audible Converter can be effectively harnessed as a strong cross-platform tool that helps you unlock encryption from audible books, then helps you convert all these encrypted audiobooks into M4A, FLAC, WAV audio formats and the most compatible format-MP3. Once you get the DRM-free MP3 audiobooks, you are able to transfer them to any device. Like when you desire to download Audible books to MP3 players and stream them without any limitations, TuneFab Audible Converter is definitely the best option.
Outstanding features of TuneFab Audible Converter:
High-speed conversion: It supports analyzing and converting large audiobooks at up to 60X speed.
Batch conversion: It won't be time-consuming or tricky as this program supports batch conversion in one go.
Sound quality and format: It will preserve 100% original quality and support multiple output formats such as MP3, M4A, FLAC, and WAV to fit in different audiobook player software and devices.
Better audiobook management: It allows you to keep the chapter info and ID3 tags, which will help you better manage your audiobook collection and also support changing a new cover or new title.
Concise UI and easy-to-go: Every beginner can tell how to convert audiobooks after getting this program in seconds. It's super easy to convert and it supports the drag-and-drop feature. Besides, the technical support team always stands by to help you better manage it.
Conclusion
There are quite a number of audible book players in the market that you may be fretting about how to choose. The above 11 best audiobook players stand out as they offer great help to book enthusiasts to play audiobooks on PC/Mac and also mobile phones under different circumstances.
For online playback, Audible Cloud Player and Kobo Books are good options for you.
To find a lightweight audiobook player, you can try My Audiobook Reader and 1by1.
For loyal Windows users of iTunes and Windows Media Player, you may never mind the minor flaws they have for they are still strong enough in many aspects.
For Mac users, Apple Books now can replace iTunes to deliver you great audiobook streaming experience.
For mobile devices, the 4 apps all provide easy audiobook management and convenient playback control to ensure a smooth audiobook streaming experience on Android/iOS devices.
However, if you would like to unprotect all your encrypted audible books in AA/AAX formats into more compatible formats such as MP3, TuneFab Audible Converter is definitely worth a try!
