LibriVox Audio Books

I've been listening to Librivox since the 00's, love it. The app is ok. The search is not the best. I find that trying a lot of keywords is the best. So, instead of searching for history, using a country name like Poland or Serbia yields better results than Eastern European history. But it's a free collaborative effort, and there's a lot of material most people would never encounter exceptin this format. I would suggest buying the app if you use it. The ads are invasive.

Chapters freezing, and won't play. The timeline says 1 hour and 24 minutes for an 11-minute chapter. Hahaha. You keep trying to use different advertising schemes in your app, and now you've gone and done it. You broke your own app. Just to be greedy. This app is not the librivox organization. it is an app developer, desperately trying to make money from advertising off of the service volunteers who read for free and then never pay anyone for their work. It's really getting obvious and shameful.

Excellent source of audio books in the public domain and free ones from upstart authors. I've used LibriVox for many years on PC. This interface is much easier to use. The books are read by volunteers, human ones. Beautiful project for accessibility. Edit: I dropped the rating for the app for Android after finding it running in the background when it shouldn't be multiple times and intrusive ads. I'm specifically only reviewing the application here, not the project itself. Response yes

While the app works well enough, I'm thoroughly fed up with apps that keep data about the user. There is absolutely no reason to do this so we can access public domain books. Also note that th is app is not a product of Librivox. None of the money or add revenue go to Librivox as far as I can tell. All the wonderful readings are done by volunteers, not by the app developers

edit: I'm very disappointed in how the audio ads have changed. they have increased in frequency and they are SO loud compared to the book audio. I had an ad between each chapter. it really affects immersion, and is uncomfortably loud. I have to change my rating because it that. Lots of old classics! I may have to narrate a book or two myself to help expand their library. I've had many hours of books listened to with librivox!

Terrible. 1st book: unlistenable. 2nd book: At the end of the introduction, I was interrupted by a really loud commercial (in Thai for some reason!) so much louder, (or "brighter") that I uninstalled. Bad design & organization. Takes a while to find "search" - for some reason it's not "just there". WHY? Like a young programmer's first try making freeware. ..which we pay for with ads between chapters, unlistenable ads in other languages. NO PLANNING - fly by night. Love Librovox - Hate this App

There are so many books to choose from and after several years. I still have plenty I haven't listened to. Most readers are good, but every once in a while, they can be pretty bad. In that case, I pick a different book. It's great for road trips and when eyes are too tired to read 2025, The app has become annoying because I only get to hear a small section and then it stops At that point it wont even show the same spot where it gave up. I Uninstaller

This is a nice interface in some ways, and the adverts are not intrusive. However, the ability to navigate forward or backward within any text is severely limited and sometimes maddening. The time elapsedb on the time bar is often wildly out of sinc with the actual recording. The app sometimes jumps chapters for reasons I still haven't figured out. After a few weeks, I'm looking for a better alternative.

I love this app when it works. Unfortunately, I continue to experience glitches over and over again. For awhile it was working perfectly. Now it's back to having issues with the player - certain chapters are supposed to be 20 minutes long, but are then suddenly 56 minutes long. At other times, I suddenly can't skip forward or backward. It often tries to reset to a specific chapter/time stamp when I'm attempting to navigate. I see others have similar issues and am hoping we get an update soon!

Very nice audio-only book reader. Ads are a little annoying, but the $2.99 price for the no-ads version is a great value. Only offers books already in the public domain, and the reader and recording quality varies between books (and sometimes between sections of a book). Librivox has a decent selection of non-English-language book readings, and I find hearing a variety of voices, accents, and reading styles and speed helps with my language learning efforts. Recommended!

It's probably one of the best free audiobook readers if you don't have a library card. It has a large selection of books with a bunch of different readers. There's only banner ads or the occasional 1 ad between chapters; but, it never gives more than the 1 ad between chapters. All the books are in the public domain, so the selection is technically limited. But there are thousands of stories to enjoy. I recommend this app to everyone who is looking for audiobooks, because this app is amazing.

Although the books are old, there's a very large selection and several categories. I like sci fi and ghost/horror stories. I listen to it every night to help me sleep, and while driving. May be worth downloading your favorite books. I listened to books on s long distance trip and was surprised by how much data I used. So if you have limited data, I'd download books on your wifi. I just use the free version. But you can get a paid plan or buy newer books. You'd enjoy this app.

Great app. I've found some fun books over the past few years I otherwise wouldn't have read. I've had success getting a good reader by reading book reviews and searching for alternate versions of the same book. I didn't mind the ads much, but I recently paid $3 for the ad-free version of the app because I like to support work in the public domain (and having no ads has been kind of nice, too).

I used to love this app until it stopped supporting the dozen or more audio books I purchased through the app. I downloaded the audio books like the app instructed me to & I can't find the books anywhere. That's probably $100 or more in audio books I've lost & apparently LibriVox doesn't answer emails anymore so I guess I'm out of luck. I almost never use the app anymore. Between losing my purchased books & other changes that have been made it's not worth it anymore.

I love this app. keep in mind you're getting older books, but the selection is amazing! Remember all those classics you said you were going to read someday? the hardest part is picking only one. The search options work pretty well, -- by author, genre, subject, title, etc. I am frequently without wifi, so having the option to download is something I really enjoy

This app provides access to thousands of public domain books read by volunteers. I greatly appreciate all the time and effort invested by the staff and volunteers. Quality varies, but I have enjoyed what I listened to just as much as more professional recordings. And in one title actually found the chirping birds in the background to add to the experience. It was a book of children's poetry and at first I thought it a sound effect, lol. I have read several rave reviews about different narrators while browsing for books, which seems to indicate others are finding many enjoyable listens as well. Unfortunately, I have had no luck browsing titles past that first day. I get no images or slivers of an image, and many times links won't work. I will type something in the search box, but it doesn't register that I have clicked the "search" button. I suspect my device isn't compatible? It is a Nook HD. It is getting to be too old for many things it seems, but I can't afford a new device. So, will just have to give up what apps don't work well and hope to find ones I can still use that fill the void somewhat.

An update. better over time. I do really appreciate this app. go to sleep listening to. ll the Scribl titles have long dead spots and the time stamps are wrong. I can fast forward, and end up hearing parts from earlier. Also, some weird things like starting at the same spot when it should have advanced, or shutting off when I lock the phone screen. At least it is cheap, but it is also frustrating. At the end of each chapter is 40 minutes of "dead space" unless I manually advance the chapter.

While I appreciate all the content, I do wish the "sorting and showing" algorithm could be tweaked so that I could exclude or better sort all the "radio drama" episodes and/or poetry anthologies when I'm searching for a book to listen too. Also, I don't really care for the advertisers you've allowed to purchase ads on your platform. Their commercials are pretty sleazy.

I've used librivox for years and enjoyed it and would have given it a 4.5 rating. Lately several of the functions have quit working. Additionally, and most importantly, there are now adds that are absolutely NOT family friendly. 5/6/25 This is an updated rating. Almost all of the family unfriendly adds are gone so I added 2 stars. I appreciate all the work that is done in the app and, of course, all the work the readers put into the recordings for us.

I had this before but it quit working so I had to reinstall and I did lose my purchased books. But I'd had them awhile and had listened several times so I count it as though I'd passed them on. I still rate this 5 stars. It's free, there's a good selection, and even the ads are far from intrusive. Some times the narrator's aren't the greatest but at least they did their readings so how can I complain?