Photo: autoevolution
Audiobook apps have been around for a while, especially on smartphones, but the last weekend, the CarPlay app ecosystem has received another important addition.
It’s AudiobooksNow, an audiobook download and stream service that promises to provide access to over 150,000 tiles right in the car.
AudiobooksNow already had an iPhone application, so this latest version only introduces compatibility for CarPlay, which means that users can listen to their audiobooks when driving and the smartphone is connected to the head unit inside their vehicles.
Needless to say, you can just interact with the app from the CarPlay screen just like you do with the rest of the apps available in the car, but worth knowing is that the free version only comes with basic capabilities.
For example, you can access and navigate your entire library if you already have one, play and pause an audiobook, and use the on-screen or steering wheel controls to jump 30 seconds forward or backward. But on the other hand, if you want anything like a sleep timer or a playback speed controller, you just need to turn to your iPhone for the whole thing, and of course, you shouldn’t do this while the car is in motion.
According to statistics provided by the developing company, nearly half of the AudiobooksNow users are listening to content available in the app from an Apple device. This shows that the addition of CarPlay support is a smart choice, despite the fact that the current health crisis forces us to spend more time at home.
On the iPhone, AudiobooksNow comes with support for downloading audiobooks for offline listening, but also with streaming features should you want to use your data connection for the whole thing and thus save space on the iPhone. You can also bookmark content and then sync it across multiple devices and change the playback speed, all from a very clean and straightforward UI.
Of course, if you want access to the full content available in the app, you need to become a paying customer.
AudiobooksNow already had an iPhone application, so this latest version only introduces compatibility for CarPlay, which means that users can listen to their audiobooks when driving and the smartphone is connected to the head unit inside their vehicles.
Needless to say, you can just interact with the app from the CarPlay screen just like you do with the rest of the apps available in the car, but worth knowing is that the free version only comes with basic capabilities.
For example, you can access and navigate your entire library if you already have one, play and pause an audiobook, and use the on-screen or steering wheel controls to jump 30 seconds forward or backward. But on the other hand, if you want anything like a sleep timer or a playback speed controller, you just need to turn to your iPhone for the whole thing, and of course, you shouldn’t do this while the car is in motion.
According to statistics provided by the developing company, nearly half of the AudiobooksNow users are listening to content available in the app from an Apple device. This shows that the addition of CarPlay support is a smart choice, despite the fact that the current health crisis forces us to spend more time at home.
On the iPhone, AudiobooksNow comes with support for downloading audiobooks for offline listening, but also with streaming features should you want to use your data connection for the whole thing and thus save space on the iPhone. You can also bookmark content and then sync it across multiple devices and change the playback speed, all from a very clean and straightforward UI.
Of course, if you want access to the full content available in the app, you need to become a paying customer.
Google News