audible chapter selection not working (again)

Question

There are similar threads from 2024 and 2025, but they are closed to comment. In my Sonos app on my iPhone, using the audible service, when I try to select a specific chapter in an audiobook it pauses, briefly shows whatever is in the Sonos queue (or nothing if that queue is blank) and then starts playing wherever the book left off (or chapter 1 if the book finished via the audible app directly) instead of the chosen chapter. I cannot find a way to get it to start at that chapter without advancing through the 80 (!) chapters one at a time.

I have powered the speaker off and on. I have removed and re authorized the audible service. I have cleared the Sonos queue. No avail. This used to work, then one day a week or two ago it simply stopped.

Given that it seems pegged to wherever the audible app thinks is the last played chapter that seems to suggest where the error lies, but that doesn’t help me getting it to work.

Thanks.

Rei_Kurosawa · Accepted Answer

Part of this is documented behavior, part is not.

Resume is the documented design: Sonos’ Audible service page describes the integration as letting you pick up right where you left off, and chapter selection is not listed as a feature there. So the Sonos app pegging playback to wherever Audible thinks you stopped matches what Sonos documents.

On iOS there is a supported alternative: Sonos’ support article on streaming audio to Sonos from another app notes that Audible’s direct control is not supported on iOS devices, and points iPhone users to AirPlay instead. Start playback in the Audible app and send it to the speaker via AirPlay - chapter selection then happens inside the Audible app, where jumping to a chapter works. The Sonos article on using AirPlay with Sonos lists which speakers support AirPlay.

What I cannot explain from documentation: you say chapter selection in the Sonos app used to work and stopped a week or two ago. Since you already re-authorized the service and cleared the queue, account state looks ruled out. Nothing Sonos publishes documents such a change, so this is a hypothesis, but an app-side regression around that timeframe would fit. If you want it on Sonos’ radar, a support ticket is the route - community threads alone rarely reach the app team.

I can’t believe this has been accepted as an answer. It’s simply not adequate and doesn’t come close to providing a solution. It just reads like AI slop frankly.

The chapter selection is still broken and is clearly intended to work, otherwise they wouldn’t add a play button to each chapter. I can’t understand why it’s so difficult to fix. It’s been an ongoing issue for years and the only way around it is to manually tap skip forward or back. Sometimes this can be an absolutely painful task if a book has many hundreds of chapters.

We use this functionality all the time because the kids like to listen to different stories on author collections. Please fix it.

Anonymous · Answer

Yep you are correct and this was introduced at the last release.

Furthermore if one wants to start from the start then any existing queue needs to be manually cleared, otherwise playback starts from last played. Clearing the queue allows playing from start but anything else produces either 'something went wrong':

or 'Couldn't play content...':

However < and > do work…

This was definitely regressed as a result of the last firm/software (27.1) release.

(Android)

Sign up

Login to the community