The server · v2.2.0

Your audiobooks, served from home.

One Docker container or a single binary. Point it at your books folder and it indexes, streams and keeps everyone's place, and it never writes to your files. Open source under AGPLv3.

Install it

Install

One command, or one file.

The Docker image bundles the server, the web player and ffmpeg, for amd64 and arm64. Mount your books read-only: the server never needs to write to them.

Prefer no Docker? Native builds for Linux, macOS and Windows embed the web player and fetch ffmpeg on first use. Linux also gets .deb and .rpm packages with a systemd unit.

docker-compose.yml

services:
  audiosilo:
    image: ghcr.io/kodestar/audiosilo-server:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data                  # database, config, certificates
      - /srv/audiobooks:/library:ro   # your books, mounted read-only
    environment:
      PUID: "1000"                    # owner of /data (Unraid: 99)
      PGID: "1000"                    # group of /data (Unraid: 100)
      # AUDIOSILO_PUBLIC_URL: "https://books.example.com"  # used in QR/invite links
      # AUDIOSILO_TLS_MODE: "off"     # only behind a TLS-terminating reverse proxy
      AUDIOSILO_WEB_DIR: /app/web

Terminal

docker compose up -d
docker compose logs     # the admin password and auth code, shown once

All downloads GitHub Releases

docker compose logs

========================================================
 AudioSilo first-run setup - store these now, shown once
========================================================
  Admin username : admin
  Admin password : <generated password>
  Auth code      : <generated code>
  Config file    : /data/config.yaml

First run

No default password. Ever.

On its very first start the server makes an admin account and prints a random password and an auth code, once. Only their hashes are kept, so they can't be shown again.

Or start it with --setup for a browser wizard; its one-time link switches off the moment an admin exists. Then add your books folder in the console and the scanner indexes it: details, covers and lengths.

/srv/audiobooks read-only

James S. A. Corey/

The Expanse/

01 - Leviathan Wakes/

02 - Caliban's War/

03 - Abaddon's Gate/

CD1/ CD2/ → one book

In the server's database

Your edits, custom covers, matches, ignore rules, everyone's progress and bookmarks.

Filesystem first

Your files are the truth.

The database is an index you could rebuild. Progress, bookmarks and shares follow the path, and a fingerprint follows a book when you rename or move it, so listening history goes with it.

Edits are overrides kept by the server; a rescan keeps them and Revert brings back what the scan found
Folder shapes detected for you, disc folders joined into one book, ignore rules per library
Book details from tags first, or from folder names first, per library
Indexes .m4b .m4a .mp4 .mp3 .flac .ogg .opus; the web player gets an MP3 version of anything a browser can't play
Scheduled scans, and a scan never empties your library if a network share drops

An invite ready for Grandad: a QR code to scan with a phone camera, the invite link and a one-time code

People

Invite the house with a QR code.

One dialog makes the account, grants what they can open and shows an invite link and QR code. Scan it and the app or the web player opens, signed in. No email, no password needed.

Shares are named sets of folders: the whole library, an author, a series or one book
Someone new sees nothing until you share it; search and playback follow the same rules
Everyone keeps their own progress, bookmarks and notes
See every device and sign out the one that went missing
Personal API keys for dashboards and home automation tiles

Security defaults

Built to be left on the internet.

That's the design goal, not an audit. Here is what it means in practice.

Passwords: Hashed with argon2id. There is never a default password.
Tokens: Random 256-bit, stored only as SHA-256 hashes, revocable per device.
Lockout: 10 failed sign-ins in 15 minutes locks out that address. Requests are rate limited too.
TLS: Self-signed out of the box, automatic Let's Encrypt, or off behind your own proxy.
Secrets: Pairing codes ride in the URL fragment, so they never reach a server log.
Outbound: An update check once a day and community metadata lookups. Each has one switch.

The admin console

Everything about your library, in one place.

At /admin on your server, in light or dark and six languages. It isn't in the public demo, so the tour is the way to see it move.

The admin console overview in the light theme — The overview: who is listening now, totals, recent listening and what needs attention. Light, dark or your system's.

The same overview in the dark theme — The overview: who is listening now, totals, recent listening and what needs attention. Light, dark or your system's.

Compare with community metadata, field by field: what is on your server, marked File tag or Path, next to the community value, with the fields to take ticked — Compare, field by field. Each value on your server is marked File tag or Path, next to the community one. Take only the fields you tick: here a book tagged with its title and author swapped gets its real title, author, narrator, series and cover. Your own edits are never overwritten unless you tick them.

Match with community metadata for a book whose tags have title and author swapped: the right book, Sharpe's Eagle, comes first with a 100% match and its cover — Match. Match reads the folder names as well as the tags, so the right book comes first, with its cover, and each edition's length is checked against your files.

Health, Not matched: the Match automatically card with 4 confident and 33 to review, above the books still to match — Health. Missing covers, unmatched books, unreadable files, duplicates and offline libraries, each with a fix. Match automatically sorts the confident matches from the ones to review.

Series in the admin console: a complete shelf of seven spines, and A Boy Called Christmas with books 2 to 4 missing — Series. Each series in order on a shelf. With community metadata on, the books you don't have show up as gaps.

Activity over 90 days: listening hours per day by person, the year day by day, and when the household listens by hour and weekday — Activity. Hours per day by person, the year day by day, and when the household listens, plus who is listening right now.

The server's Year in listening: 10 people listened for 4,810 hours, the book of the year, and a day-by-day calendar — Year in listening. The whole household's year, on its own page.

People: every household account with what they are listening to and how many devices they use — People. Everyone in the house, what they are listening to and their devices, one page each.

Backups and updates

A snapshot every night at 03:00, seven kept, on by default. Download or restore from the console.

Notifications, logs, audit

Webhook, ntfy or Discord for new books, failed scans and more. A live log with secrets redacted, and an audit log.

Coming from Audiobookshelf?

Import listening history per person, review it, apply it, undo it. Audiobookshelf is only read.

AudioSilo is free; sponsors keep it going. After a month or so, the admin console shows its admins one small card about sponsoring on the Overview: I've donated hides it for good on that server, Not now for six months. It's never in the player, and giving unlocks nothing. How AudioSilo is paid for. Full reference in the documentation.

Try the player your server ships.

The demo is a real AudioSilo server running the same web player, with a throwaway account made for you and 29 public-domain classics matched to community metadata.

No sign-up, nothing to install. It opens the real web player in a new tab.

Demo visitors don't get the admin console; the tour above shows it.