Bound - Audiobook Player
reviews and complaints

I purchased some mp3 audio files to help study for my medical boards. They would load into iTunes but only as music. This is not ideal - can’t skip forward/backward easily, also total mood-killer on music shuffle. Trying to use iBooks or podcast app was challenging- changing genre (to podcast or to audiobook) was time consuming and the files were not easy to work with. This app worked seamlessly! I imported files into iCloud Drive, separate from iTunes. Each folder there could be added to this app as a chapter. All of the files came over. Quick and painless. I am very grateful for this app.

I've been wanting to write an app that would store audiobooks locally on my phone, then keep track of where I am in each one of those books. This app has done that in the most elegant way. You can start an http server on your phone at a location where you're on the same network as a desktop machine and upload files from that machine to the phone. It's painless and wonderful. My only complaint would be the file editing features within the app. For instance, I have one book that has a random chapter that wasn't marked correctly, so it's floating out on its own. Otherwise a perfect app! Thank you!

Just downloaded the app because I really wanted cloud storage.

A couple of instant regrets:

1. I usually listen to business books at 2x or 2.5x speed. This helps me save time and I retain the knowledge just as well. Unfortunately, the audio conversion on this app sounds terrible compared to Audible and iBooks - completely unlistenable.

2. It seems there’s no convenient way to save a shortcut to the folder you keep you audiobooks in. So every time you want to download a new book, you have to navigate through the directory.

The #2 isn’t a dealbreaker, but #1 is unacceptable until it gets fixed.

I purchased Bound 2 years ago and I recall it working pretty well. I recently tried using it again and haven’t had a good experience.

I’m able to import audiobooks successfully via iCloud, local file import, and via the web uploader but each time I close and reopen the app, my books and location are lost and I have to reimport them. I emailed the developer 4 weeks ago about the issue and haven’t heard anything back.

It’s a shame. The UI and support for importing from a bunch of different sources are both great. But constantly losing track of my library and location makes the app pretty unusable.

1. No iPad app - I should have checked first.
2. I was under the impression this could steam from cloud storage, so I could update there and keep my library all in one place. The app can only download.
3. Because of 1 & 2 organizing a large library on my phone is a pain. The app UI is really not designed for organization.
4. The real feature I’ve been looking for is a way to listen to my files on multiple devices and sync the progress. This was a major bummer. I read online that Bound could do this, but I guess not :(

This app has real potential, but I don’t think it’s going to fit my needs right now.

Bound is undeniably the best audiobook app on any platform (and there’s really no viable competition) for listening to your personal audiobook collection. Sure, Audible is great but it’s strictly for paid audiobooks from Audible. Bound reads nearly every audio format in a full featured, beautifullly rendered app that accesses your unlimited personal collection of audiobooks from any of the major cloud storage providers: Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, etc. Book covers are included, adjust speeds, dark mode. The developers just keep making it better. Love you guys, love this app from its early days! Thanks.

When I was looking for an app to play mp3 audiobook files, the majority of the ones I found sounded awful when played at any speed other than 1x. Bound resolved that for me.

Perhaps some others have improved through the years, but Bound has been reliably consistent for me and my family for 3+ years. Totally worth the small fee for a great working app.

Note: I know some have complained that Bound doesn’t sound natural when played at higher speeds. Personally, I haven’t experienced this. I don’t ever go above 1.5x, but I haven’t had any issues. Most regularly I’m playing at 1.2-1.3x and Bound has been consistent for me.

I’ve been using this app for about three years now. Prior to this app I tried everything under the sun, from syncing books over via iTunes to a variety of other apps. This is the only app that lets me use the standard iOS document interface to load files, while offering a great audiobook listening experience. I also appreciate the tasteful design and nice features for managing things like cover images. If you have a reason to listen to any audio files in an audiobook style interface this is the app to use. (Don’t forget that your public library probably has tons of great audiobooks on CD! It’s easy to rip them and add them to this app!)

I’m a new user and I love the app! Works great for me and was exactly what I was looking for. All the playback features are perfect! The interface and file management are top-notch and flawless, but the real killer feature is the amazing cloud drive support! This is superb! Wonderful app that has replaced both the Audible app and the Apple Books app on my phone for listening to my audiobooks!

One thing I would really appreciate would be if there was support for a small Home Screen widget that would open the app and begin directly playing the current book/file.

This would be awesome and make Bound the best book player out there.

Thanks for considering!

I really appreciate the Bound app. I have lots of audiobooks and other audio files from various sources and this gives me an opportunity to listen without having to use my Audible app. I keep these books and audio files separate from Audible. Plus I can share certain audio files with family members (who don't have Audible) through my Dropbox and they can also listen on the Bound app. Several family members have also now downloaded the Bound app. NOTE: I did have a problem with one very long file that I had converted to an M4B format so I used it in MP3 format (even though it had a couple hundred small files) and it worked great. I just made sure all the files were in order before playing it.)

Love the app! I don't have a phone with loads of storage, so keeping my books on Dropbox is excellent!
Only one thing. Accessibility for visually impaired users, like myself, needs a little work. I notice that the buttons are not labled. Maybe the developer used images, I don't know, but they do not speak. With some experimentation, I figured it out, but I wish it were fixed. I checked out the developer's site, but there was no contact info. If an update is releaced that fixes the problem, I would appreciate it.

Also, the position bar doesn't work when flicking, but does work with double-tap-and-drag gesture in Voiceover.

To the developer, thank you for your hard work, will you please put the finnishing touches on for your visually impaired users?

The download feature is a great idea, but the current implementation lacks polish. Queued and background downloads will ALWAYS fail (with no retry option except a forced app restart), and in progress downloads need to be babysat and in the foreground or they too will fail.

The playback features are pretty basic. With speed and sleep controls. However I've noticed that even with the Smart Rewind feature disabled, the app will often return you to a few minutes before you last paused it.

I'd like to request a really cool feature from another app I used on Android called Listen. The app would softly chime when the sleep timer was about to expire and would let you physically nudge the phone to add more time. This was a brilliant feature and removed the anxiety of wondering when the sleep timer was gonna end if you haven't fallen asleep yet.

I was excited when I found this app. I used it for quite a while before I ultimately decided to abandon it and stick with the stock iBooks app. It has a great design, and its super simple to import audio from a number of cloud storage providers. I had to give up on it because of one glaring flaw.

I would be listening to an audiobook on my morning commute. When I arrive I would pause the track, then bookmark where I was. When I left work 8 hours and went to resume the audiobook from my bookmark, it wouldn't be anywhere near where I had left off. It would be as much as 10 minutes ahead or behind where I had bookmarked. This is less of a problem in a book with shorter tracks, but a lot of mine have 10-20 minute tracks

Until this is fixed, I would recommend against using it.

Pros:
-Easy to import audio
-Easy to edit media
-Simple, clean design

Cons:
-Audio drift

iBooks has become a disaster, and I got this since it supports CarPlay. It works, but some notes:
Cover Art appears in the app but not on the car’s CarPlay screen, instead it shows a default icon for the “currently playing” book. It seems much MUCH more stable than iBooks, but why use CarPlay if you’re not going to use the screen and show the cover art?
Downloading from a network drive is wonderful, but after I download a book it drops me back out to the main directory listing, at the top. This makes me have to scroll all the way down to find where I was at again.
When downloading from a network drive I wish I didn’t have to select all the files and could just select a directory. Whether it’s “yes, download Prisoner of Azkahban” or it’s “yes, download the entire “Harry Potter series, even if that means multiple subdirectories below this one”, being able to choose a directory instead of a file (or set of files) would make life much much easier

I will start by saying in the entire time I’ve owned apple products (more than 10 years) I have actually paid for less than 5 apps and have reviewed about the same amount. So safe to say I only download free apps, and I don’t leave reviews. I had been using the book player free app for a couple years to play my downloaded audiobooks but that app is beyond frustrating. Books would never load into the app after restarting, reinstalling etc. my daughter was having the same issues with it. So I gave in and started looking around for other options. There were no free ones that seemed good at all so I FINALLY (after literally days of considering) decided to buy the Bound app. I’m as stingy with money as can be (yep, I’m poor ‍♀️) but I am so glad I got this app. It works flawlessly and is so crazy easy to use. My daughter now uses it as well and neither of us has had any issues (knock on wood ). I love that I can speed up the audiobooks and it always keeps my place when I close it. Books download into the app quickly as well. I prefer to either download my files from google drive or do the web upload where I upload my files to a specific address and it automatically downloads them to my phone. I literally have no complaints about this app. This is my favorite app of at least 100 I have on my phone. Listen to it probably 5+ hours every day. I hope this app always works as well as it has for the past 6 months because of it breaks, I will riot

I’m on 13.1.3 and it keeps force closing randomly. Every time I’ve noticed it is when I go to work in the morning. I always listen to audiobooks since I drive for work and I haven’t even been able to that. I have to uninstall the app then reinstall it. Then it just will stop working randomly after books are downloaded.

I am sorry to give this a 1-star review. But, this paid app doesn’t work with OneDrive, as promised. The developer is completely nonresponsive. Upon looking at other reviews this seems to have been a bug for a while. I have switched to the free BookPlayer & highly recommend it. BookPlayer is seamless & does everything I need.

This app fakes chapter support. It shows an entire audiobook as a single “chapter”. Disingenuous advertising and a fake developer who does not respond to any request whatsoever. If you don’t care about chapter support, get the free app BookPlayer. It has much more modern UI, and has every feature this app offers but at no cost.

The Bound App does not work with OneDrive for Business. I recommend Cloudbeats—it has a wider selection of cloud drives you can access. It may work with regular OneDrive accounts. I emailed the developer several times but he did not respond. I will update this if the developer adds OneDrive for Business support or if I am refunded for the purchase.

I linked my Dropbox, downloaded my m4b audiobook file, watched the app load its cover artwork, name, and track details. But the app’s unresponsive when I tap to play, staying at 0:00, and showing 99:99:99 on the right (but the correct “8 hours 38 minutes left” in the center).

I’ve tried several audiobooks, and none play. I’d love to understand the issue.

Today marks the second time this app randomly deletes my entire library and forcing me to import/download it all again.

It seems to have to do with when I turn my phone off while the Bound app is active. When I turn back in everything is gone.

Otherwise this is a great app but it’s a very concerning and frustrating bug. 5 star if it didn’t delete my library!

Where to start? Wifi web downloader doesn't work. DrobBox downloader doesn't work on single files (app crashes, leaving no download). DropBox downloader doesn't work with multiple files (book is incorrectly assembled, creating multiple books with non-sequential chapters, totally useless). Three attempts to contact the developer have gone unanswered. Stay away.

The app has a problem where it won’t open. It shows a blank library page for a little bit, then closes.
The only way I can get it to work is by restarting my phone. Since I do most of my audiobook listening while I’m driving, this is a major issue for me.
I’ve contacted the developer several times and no response or updates on the App Store. Save your money for now.

Dropbox connectivity is great and all, but I ran into a couple glaring issues with this app:
First, when I tried grabbing a 30 hour long audiobook, Bound only grabbed the first 9 hours of audio.
Second, it doesn't pause properly! When you pause a book for a few minutes and then try to resume, the app skips at least 10 minutes, every time! Unacceptable for a paid app.

It got good reviews so I tried it. Doesn’t have enough functions and the ones it has don’t have much of an ability to be adjusted.

I keep trying to like it because I spent money on it.

I have loaded several books with no problem with web browser. The last book would only download parts 1-13 and then gave me errors with 14-20. With good is a book without the last third past.

It worked great until about six weeks ago then suddenly will only show only a single random folder from my Dropbox account. When I tried a workaround by moving an mp3 into that (again, utterly random) folder, it doesn’t show up. No contacted them for help but so far radio silence. Same problem on multiple devices, deleted and reinstalled - nothing. I just want it to work again!

Overall a decent app, but it has a serious bug: the play / pause state gets out of sync from the lock screen vs the app's state. This makes taking an AirPod out of your ear sometimes not pause the app. It requires a second pause.

This becomes supremely annoying and happens most days I use the app. I reported this bug in the last version but the latest update did not address it.

I like the idea of being able to leverage an application specific to Audiobooks. Based on the reviews it looked like a great fit for my needs.

I have tried multiple times along with a reboot of the device and it crashes seconds after the download finishes. After restarting the application the file needs to be downloaded again, crash, repeat. The file is 413meg or 11hrs in M4A format. Not big compared to other books.

Saw a lot of positive comments so thought this app is the one. But after using it for a day, it managed to break down in all sorts of way.

I could not skip forward and backward, clicking on the seeking bar would send me straight to the end of the book. Same thing would happen if I tap the fast forward or backward.

App did not remember my progress in the book, always just started me at the beginning of the next chapter.

Truly disappointing

Doesn’t do what it’s designed for and customer service doesn’t exist.

In order to play your files without them stopping at the end of the chapter, you have to leave your phone unlocked and open. I brought this up to customer service over a year ago and the problem persists.

When sending files to Bound via AirDrop, I’ve had to do it at least twice for the file to show up. Now it doesn’t even appear.

I’ll be deleting this app asap. Completely awful.

This but used to be rare but it’s happening a lot more frequently now. When I remove my Airpods, the iPhone automatically pauses what you’re listening to. Cool feature. Most apps just pick up where it paused when you put them back in. Not Bound, not reliably at least. Most of the time, I jumped back to where you originally started in that listening session. For me, that can be HOURS. Very frustrating and time-wasting having to scrub through and find my location.

This was my go to app for audiobooks but after the last update it’s unusable. The app crashes when I try and listen to old audiobooks that I had imported into the Bound app. So for example, I import an audiobook to my Bound library, I click that audiobook and it plays like normal; however, if I want to listen to any other audiobooks in my Bound library, I click the audiobook cover and the app crashes.

So the app only plays audiobooks that have been newly imported into Bound.