Bound - Audiobook Player

Description of App

Listen to your favorite DRM-free audiobooks with Bound.

Bound allows you to import audio files from various cloud services and play them back in a beautiful modern interface. Bound will automatically save your listening position so that you never lose your place.

Supported Audio File Types (DRM-free only): .mp3, .m4a, .m4b, .aac

Download

Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive.
Apple Files.
Web Uploader for importing from your computer via WiFi.

Manage

Move audio files between books.
Change cover art.
Sort based on author, title, recently added, and recently played.
Rename title and author.
Choose between a number of fun themes.
Dark mode support.

Play

Automatically saves playback location as you progress through the book.
Independently configure seek forward and seek backward times.
Chapter support for audio files with embedded chapters (.m4a / .m4b / OverDrive .mp3).
Change playback speed from 0.5X to 3.0X.
Smart Rewind when returning to your book after a while.
Sleep Timer with configurable time or at the end of a chapter.
Manually bookmark locations that you want to return to.
CarPlay support.

Version

2024.1

Free or Paid

Paid

Apple Watch Support

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

17.4.1

Accessibility Comments

Even though all buttons read, and there are VO router actions, there is one place where you will get stuck. If you start playing a book, and you go into the menu that holds the sleep timer and play speed, you will get stuck in this menu. The VO gesture to go back does not work, nor other gestures to close things. The menu does not have a close, or done, button. The menu will not close after you select a sleep timer activation or speed. Other than that, this app is my top audiobook app and will use it often.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads most page elements.

Button Labeling

All buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

There are some minor accessibility issues with this app, but they are easy to deal with.

Other Comments

At the time of this writing, the file upload from computer is broken, but this app is best showcased when listening to M4B files, not MP3 files. This is just a very powerful audiobook player with a lot of cloud import options.

App Store Link

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bound-audiobook-player/id1041727137

Developer's Website

https://deadpan.io/bound

Recommendations

1 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by Robert Kingett 6 months ago

Options

Comments

Comparison to BookPlayer, zip support

I currently use BookPlayer which is a very popular app for this use case. It seems the main difference is lack of cloud downloads. BookPlayer lets you import from the Files app or by entering a URL directly (this could technically be a Dropbox link if you know how to format it). Since Dropbox, OneDrive, and other such services show up as locations in the files app, this isn't too much of a big problem. The BookPlayer interface is fully accessible and very clean. One of the other nice things about BookPlayer is that it can take a zip folder (or even an ordinary directory) of audio files, and turn it into a book. I wonder whether this app can do any of that. I'd be especially interested to know how they respond to a request to fix the popup menu. As far as I am aware, with that kind of popup, you just need to expose the remainder of the screen as a VoiceOver element and enable the back gesture. Or, yaknow, just use the native iOS popup.

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