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[Android] Add "Open With" Intent for opening ebooks in other apps #842
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adam (Adam Melkus)
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Reference: starred/audiobookshelf-app#842
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Originally created by @theboo on GitHub (Jan 22, 2024).
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
ABS has a great UX for browsing books, but the reader itself is fairly lacking in comparison to some fully featured e-reading apps such as MoonReader Pro(understandably so, as the focus for ABS is, of course, audiobooks). Currently cannot send your eBooks to other apps for reading from within ABS. The only way currently is to download your books in to shared storage and point your reader of choice to that storage, but then you don't get to use the nice ABS gui to browse your books before reading.
Describe the solution you'd like
The addition of an "open with" intent that will bring up a list of apps able to open whatever file type your book is in. Ideally you would be able to set this app as the default to open the book in so you wouldn't have to hit the 3 dot and select open with every time you want to read a book. Would be nice to just be able to hit the blue "read" button and have it open the book in my app of choice. If memory serves, there may be a way to even track progress of books read in other apps through intents. I know it is possible with video files.
I believe this could be similarly added in iOS as well through URL schemes, but I'm not as familiar with that as I am with android intents, and I think through URL scheme support would have to be added on an app by app basis, which is not exactly ideal.
Describe alternatives you've considered
Have not considered alternatives
Additional context
This would be a much more simple solution vs making the built in reader more fully featured.
@b3nd1k commented on GitHub (Feb 7, 2024):
+1 for a similar option on iOS
@colvdv commented on GitHub (Mar 15, 2024):
Yes! This is a feature that I feel is greatly needed!
Please implement this ASAP!
The way it currently is dissuades me from doing anything but audio files in the app. This implementation would make all the difference.
@redlegend96 commented on GitHub (Nov 14, 2024):
+1 This would be really great!
A (more lengthy) workaround is to download a book from the web version of ABS, add it to Files and then "Open with" the desired reader app, but streamlining this and allowing people to "Open with" directly from the ABS app would be amazing.
@Oxika95 commented on GitHub (Sep 9, 2025):
No updates on this front yet. It would really do a lot to enhance app usability for ebooks. Current functionality I have to open the app download the book, make sure to select a non-internal download location, close the app, open the desired e-reader, navigate to download location, and then import. Its clunky. would love setting a default open with app setting.
@aura-farmer-dev commented on GitHub (Mar 8, 2026):
+1 This app is already very light weight, other alternatives I have researched have failed to install on TrueNAS, or require an additional container to run a database
The Reader functionality in the app is basic and not the best experience so being able to combo it for example to use our favorite PDF reader on a tablet would make this app more flexible