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What you need
Castaway Media is a client for servers you run yourself. It ships with no content and has no account system, so before it can show you anything you'll need at least one of the following.
Audiobookshelf supplies three of the four sections. Podcasts come from a podcast-type library; audiobooks and ebooks both come from a book-type library. That isn't a quirk of this app — it's how Audiobookshelf models them. A title with an audio file is an audiobook, a title with an EPUB or PDF is an ebook, and a title with both appears in both sections.
Plex supplies the fourth. Music reads your Plex music library directly and has nothing to do with Audiobookshelf.
You don't need both. Connect only Plex and you get Music; connect only Audiobookshelf and you get the other three. The sections you haven't set up simply prompt you to connect a server.
Connecting your servers
The first time you open the app it walks you through setup. You can skip it and do this later from the drawer.
Audiobookshelf
Enter your server address — for example https://books.example.com. If you leave off the scheme the app assumes https. Then either sign in with your username and password, or paste an API token.
Plex
Sign in with your Plex account and pick the server and music library you want. If you have more than one music library, the app uses the first it finds unless you choose otherwise.
Changing servers later
Open the drawer, then Settings. Audiobookshelf and Plex each have their own screen where you can sign in again, switch servers, or sign out.
API tokens and sessions
This is worth understanding, because it explains the one error you're most likely to see.
From version 2.26, Audiobookshelf issues short-lived sessions when you sign in with a username and password. The access token expires after about an hour. The app refreshes it in the background automatically, and most of the time you'll never notice. But if the refresh window lapses — the app hasn't been opened in a long while, or the server was unreachable — you'll be signed out and asked to sign in again.
For the smoothest experience, use an API token instead. Tokens don't expire, so background episode checks and notifications keep working indefinitely without you having to re-authenticate.
Creating an API token
In Audiobookshelf's web interface, go to Settings → Users → API Keys and create one. Copy it, then in Castaway Media open Settings → Audiobookshelf Server, choose Use an API token instead, and paste it in.
How you'll know a session expired
Three things happen at once: a notification appears, a warning dot shows on the Settings row in the drawer, and the Audiobookshelf settings screen explains what happened at the top. Signing in again clears all three.
Getting around
The drawer is the main navigation. Tap the menu button at the top left of any screen to open it. It lists the four content sections plus Downloads, Stats, Help and Settings.
Within a section, the tab bar at the bottom switches between that section's own screens — library, discover, playlists and so on. Each section keeps its own tabs, its own settings and its own player.
Switching sections is instant and nothing reloads. Whatever you were doing is still there when you come back.
Settings
All settings live in one place, from the drawer. Playback defaults for each of the four sections sit together under Podcasts, Audiobooks, Ebooks and Music, with app-wide things — appearance, downloads, notifications, server accounts — above them. Anything that can be overridden for a single podcast is marked, so you can tell at a glance which settings are defaults and which are absolute.
Search
The search button in the drawer searches all four sections at once and groups the results by where they came from. Tapping a result takes you to it in the right section.
Podcasts
Five tabs: Podcasts, Up Next, Playlists, Discover and More.
Your library
Sort by title, recently added, or most recently played, and switch between list and grid. The badge on each cover is the unplayed count; you can turn that off in settings.
Episodes
Swipe an episode row for quick actions — the left and right swipes are both configurable in Settings. Long-press to select several at once and mark them together.
Up Next
A queue that fills itself. Starting a new episode moves the current one into it, and finishing one advances automatically. Marking an episode played anywhere removes it from the queue.
Per-podcast settings
The "…" menu on a podcast's page overrides the global defaults for that show alone — playback speed, skip intro and outro lengths, auto-download, how many episodes to keep, trim silence and volume boost.
On the player
The Now Playing screen has tabs beneath the controls — show notes, chapters, bookmarks, details, and an Episodes tab listing the rest of that podcast. Tapping one shows it without interrupting what's playing; pressing play is what actually switches over.
Discover
Search the iTunes directory or browse the top charts by category. Previewing a show lets you see its episodes before you add it, and adding one offers to backfill and download recent episodes.
Audiobooks
An audiobook is usually many audio files that behave as one continuous work, and the player treats it that way — one timeline, one position, chapter marks in the right places regardless of which file they fall in.
Browsing
Books, Series and Authors each have their own tab. Series come from Audiobookshelf where they exist, and are derived from your library's metadata where they don't.
Position and bookmarks
Your position is written back to Audiobookshelf as you listen, so it follows you to other clients. Bookmarks are separate — set as many as you like at specific moments and jump back to them from the player.
Books you also own as ebooks
A title with both an audio file and an EPUB is one item on your server with two independent positions. Audiobookshelf stores listening progress and reading progress as separate fields, so being four hours into the audio and sixty percent through the text is normal and neither moves the other. Each detail screen offers a jump to the other format.
Ebooks
EPUB and PDF, read in the app, with the file downloaded once and kept locally.
The reader
Tap the edges or swipe to turn pages. The controls give you font, size, line spacing, margins and a choice of themes. The table of contents comes from the book's own structure, and you can bookmark any page.
Position syncing
Where you've read to is saved locally the moment you settle on a page, and written to the server a few seconds later. This is deliberate — writing on every page turn would mean hundreds of requests an hour, almost all immediately obsolete. Closing a book forces the write immediately, so nothing is lost.
Finished books
Audiobookshelf has no explicit finished flag for reading, so the app treats 99% as done. Back matter — acknowledgements, about the author, advertisements — means a book you've genuinely finished rarely reaches the very last page.
Music
Reads your Plex music library directly. Five tabs: Library, Discover, Playlists, Up Next and More.
Three ways to browse
The overflow menu on the Library tab switches between Artists, Albums and Folders. Artists and Albums both offer grid or list layouts, sorting by name or date added, and an A–Z rail down the edge when sorted alphabetically.
Albums matters most for compilations. A Various Artists record is filed under "V" in an artist list, which is nowhere near where you'd look for it — browsing by album puts it under its own title instead. Filters there let you narrow by genre, show only compilations, or reveal the singles and untagged files Plex files under a placeholder album.
Folders walks your library exactly as it sits on disk. If you organise music into folders that mean something — compilations, soundtracks, seasonal, or subscription services that release monthly — this is the only view that reflects that, because those groupings aren't genres and Plex has no other way to express them.
Compilations
On a Various Artists album, every track names its own performer rather than repeating the album artist, and the "…" menu on any track offers a jump to that artist. Plex stores the individual performer separately from the album artist, which is why other clients often show fourteen identical rows here.
Crossfade
Off, or two to twelve seconds, in Settings → Music. It applies when a track ends on its own — tapping Next always cuts straight over — and never between two tracks of the same album, so live records, DJ mixes and anything else mastered to run continuously stay that way.
Playlists and favourites
Playlists are real Plex playlists — create, rename, reorder by dragging, and add tracks or whole albums. Favourites is itself a playlist on your server, so hearts you set here show up in other Plex clients too.
Lyrics
Synced lyrics are fetched from LRCLIB and scroll with the track. Where only unsynced lyrics exist you get the plain text instead, and where neither exists the tab doesn't appear.
Popular tracks
A small dot beside a track on an album marks it as one of the better-known songs on that record, judged relative to the album rather than against absolute play counts. It needs a free Last.fm API key, entered in Settings → Music; without one, no dots appear.
Volume normalisation
Optional, off by default. Evens out loudness differences between tracks from different sources and eras. It costs a little battery, which is why it isn't on to begin with.
Discover
Shelves for recently added, most played and recently played, drawn from your own library, plus the current Apple Music charts as plain text for reference.
Downloads and offline
Anything downloaded plays from the local file, so a lost connection mid-episode doesn't interrupt anything.
Automatic downloads
Turn on auto-download globally or per podcast, cap how many episodes to keep, and choose whether downloads wait for Wi-Fi. Finished episodes can delete themselves.
Managing what's stored
The Downloads section in the drawer lists everything on the device grouped by podcast, with sizes, and lets you delete individually or in bulk.
Offline changes
Progress and played marks made while offline are queued and sent when you reconnect. You don't need to do anything.
CarPlay
Connect your phone and Castaway Media appears on the dashboard with tabs for podcasts and audiobooks, your cover art, and your Up Next queue. Downloaded items play without a connection, which matters in a car park or a tunnel.
Steering wheel and stalk controls map to play, pause and skip, and the skip amounts are the ones you set in the app.
Widgets, Siri and Handoff
Widgets
Add from the home screen in the usual way. Small shows what's playing; medium adds transport controls; large adds the current chapter, elapsed and remaining time, playback speed and what's up next. Tapping opens straight to that item.
Siri
Resume, play, pause, skip forward, skip back and mark played are all available as shortcuts, by voice or inside an automation.
Handoff
Start something on one device and it appears on another signed into the same Apple Account. Continuing on the second device pauses the first, so you don't end up with the same audio twice.
Troubleshooting
"Your Audiobookshelf session has expired"
Your sign-in has lapsed. Open Settings → Audiobookshelf Server and sign in again. If this keeps happening, switch to an API token — see API tokens and sessions.
"No valid server address is set"
The server address is missing or malformed. Check it in Settings, including the scheme, and make sure there's no trailing slash or stray space.
The library is empty
Pull down to refresh. If it stays empty, confirm in Audiobookshelf's web interface that the account you signed in as can actually see that library — permissions are per user.
No new episode notifications
Check notifications are allowed for the app in iOS Settings, and that Background App Refresh is on. Note that iOS decides when background checks actually run, so they aren't on a fixed schedule. An expired session also stops them — another reason to prefer an API token.
Music won't connect
Plex sign-ins can expire independently of Audiobookshelf. Open Settings → Plex and sign in again. If the server appears but no library does, confirm you have a music-type library on it.
Covers aren't loading
Covers are cached on device and fetched from your server. If they're missing everywhere, it's usually the connection to the server rather than the images themselves — check the library loads at all first.
Privacy and data
Castaway Media collects nothing. There are no analytics, no tracking, no advertising identifiers and no accounts, because there is no Castaway Media server for anything to be sent to.
Your server addresses and credentials are stored in the iOS Keychain and sent only to the servers you entered them for. Downloaded media, covers and reading positions are stored on the device.
The two exceptions both go to third parties and neither carries anything about you: podcast discovery searches Apple's public iTunes directory, and lyrics are looked up on LRCLIB by track and artist name.
The full privacy policy has the detail.