How (best) to: Get audiobook MP3s into your iPhone

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This might just be me. Or it might be something you've been wondering about as well. Over the last 25 years or so, I've amassed a number of folders of audio book MP3s. Some bought by me, some grabbed during special offers, some acquired by - well, I'll don't always know(!) But I do know that they're on my laptop's (in this case a MacBook) internal disk and what I really want is them on my phone, to listen to on long journeys over Bluetooth headphones or car speakers.

The quick and dirty solution here does work - but it's not elegant or intuitive. What I'd done in the past was drag and drop all the MP3s into Music (née iTunes) and hey, presto, they're listed under the author's name in amongst all my music artists. Messy, but at least they get synced over to my iPhone and I'm done. 

Or am I? It's a real pain, not just to find these audio books (having to remember the author's name, for a start), but also because Music on the phone or laptop doesn't remember where I 'got to' in each title.

Determined to find a more elegant solution, I remembered Apple's Books app (née iBooks), designed mainly so that you can buy commercial audiobooks from Apple and thus make them even more money. It turns out that one can just drag and drop whole folders of audiobook MP3s into Books' Audiobooks pane and... they get imported just fine, chapters and artwork and all.


Which means that we're done. If, like me, you've already put some audiobooks into Music, then find their files/MP3s in Finder and drag into Books from there. And then just zap them from Music completely.

Of course, this is me just playing catch-up - perhaps all this is very common knowledge. But it only occurred to me today and I'm overjoyed by the epiphany! And now, when I want to resume an audiobook, I head for the Books app and the Library tab in particular - with sort priority set to 'Manual', by default all my local audiobooks appear right at the top of the list.

Comments welcome if this is new to you too!

PS. If you like my work then think about buying me a beer at paypal.me/stevelitchfield - thanks!

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