01 Your Three Options
The thing that separates them is whether your place in a book follows you between devices. If you only ever listen on your phone, that doesn't matter. If you switch between phone and car, it matters a lot.
🥇 Chronicle Epilogue
Free, purpose-built for Plex, syncs your place across devices. Catch: you have to join a free beta first, and it needs Android 13+.
🥈 Symfonium
On the Play Store right now, no signup, proper audiobook features, and well liked. Catch: a one-time fee, and it won't sync your position between devices.
🥉 The Plex app
Already on your phone, and it does remember where you were. Catch: no chapters, no sleep timer worth using — it's a video app playing an audio file.
My suggestion
Do the Chronicle beta signup. It's about a minute, it's free, and it's the only one that gets everything right.
02 Setting Up Chronicle Epilogue
- Go to chronicleapp.net and join the beta using the Google account on your phone.
- Install Chronicle Epilogue from the Play Store — it becomes available once you're enrolled.
- Open it and sign in with the same Plex account I invited.
- Pick my server, choose the Audiobooks library, and you're done.
03 What Chronicle Does Well
- Chapters — jump between them instead of scrubbing through a twelve-hour file.
- Speed from 0.5x to 3.0x — a wide range, so slow narrators and fast talkers are both fixable.
- Auto-rewind on resume — backs up a few seconds when you hit play, so you catch the end of the sentence you lost.
- Skip silence — trims long gaps, which adds up over a long book.
- Sleep timer — pair it with auto-rewind and you'll pick up near where you drifted off.
- Offline downloads — free here, unlike on the iPhone side.
- Android Auto — proper controls on the car screen.
- Progress syncs to Plex — your place follows you between devices, and stays in step with the regular Plex app.
It handles mp3, m4a and m4b, which covers everything in my library. It's free, ad-free and open source under the GPL, with no premium tier and nothing held back.
04 The Alternatives
If the beta signup is a dealbreaker, these are the ones other Plex users on Android actually report using. None is perfect, and the differences matter.
Symfonium — the strongest paid option
A well-regarded Android player that works with Plex and handles audiobooks properly: playback speed and pitch, skip silence, chapters, and a resume rollback that rewinds slightly when you come back to a book. It's on the Play Store normally, as a one-time purchase with a free trial — no subscription, no ads, no beta enrollment.
Setup tip: tap the small funnel icon in the top right to choose which libraries appear and to force a sync with my server. It isn't obvious, and people get stuck on it.
Bookcamp — good, but it's a subscription
Well liked by the people using it, and a clear step up from the old abandoned Chronicle. Worth knowing before you install it: Bookcamp charges a monthly subscription, not a one-time fee. That's a dealbreaker for some people, so I'd rather you hear it from me than from the paywall.
Plexamp — free, but not built for books
You may already have it for music, and it will play audiobooks. But it has no chapter support, and reports are mixed — some people use it happily, others say it loses their place constantly and it's a pain to find your way back. Reasonable for a short book, frustrating for a long one.
05 Watch the Names
Searching the Play Store here is a minefield. Two apps will look right and aren't:
⚠️ Chronicle Audiobook Player
The original Chronicle. Still listed, no longer maintained — Epilogue exists precisely because this one was abandoned.
⚠️ Prologue (on Android)
Shares a name with the iPhone app I recommend elsewhere, but it's a different developer's app and only talks to Audiobookshelf. It will not see my library.
The one you want is Chronicle Epilogue — and you'll only find it after joining the beta.