Sync across devices

What travels

• Your place in the book and the “finished” mark, bookmarks, listening history.
• Book cards with edits and covers, authors, series, narrators, tags, universes, smart shelves and deletions.
• Shared settings: the theme, accent colour and title font; “Playback”, except the “Preload Next Book” and “Scrubber on the lock screen” rows; “Audio processing”; “Sleep timer” in full, with the auto timer; “Privacy”. A Pro theme applies where there is Pro.
• Shared settings are the same on all your devices. The device where you turn sync on takes them from iCloud if they are already there — even if something was changed on it before you turned sync on. If they are not there yet, this device’s settings go there — the ones that were changed on it. After that, the latest change stays, whichever device it was made on.
• Turned sync off and on again — the shared settings are taken from iCloud again: what was changed on this device while sync was off will not travel to the others.

What stays put

• Audio files. On another device the book appears with a “No files on this device” banner: bring the files there, or offload the book to iCloud on the device where it is — then it can be downloaded.
• Device settings: the app icon, the interface language, “Preload Next Book”, “Scrubber on the lock screen” and the whole “Data” section — offloading, auto cleanup, the catalog backup.
• Edits to chapters and to a book’s make-up.

If the places differ

• A difference of up to a minute — the later place stays, silently. Went further on one device — the furthest place arrives on the other by itself.
• If the later place turns out more than a minute closer to the start of the book, and the furthest one was recorded less than a day ago, the app does not decide for you: when you open the book’s card, it asks “This book is open on another device” and offers both places.
• It also asks if the book is finished on one device and was started over on the other.
• A book’s speed is settled separately from its place: the one you chose later stays — with the speed button or by answering the question, whichever device it was on; the speed a book simply started playing at does not cancel that choice. The place you pick when answering the question arrives with its own speed. With a device where Akoue has not been updated yet, the speed may differ until it is updated.

How and when

• The exchange runs by itself: when you return to the app, when your place in a book changes — with the screen off too — and when iCloud reports changes.
• “Sync now” starts an exchange at once; the line under the button says how it ended and when.
• Without a network, changes pile up — their number is in “Waiting to send” — and go out at the next exchange: when you return to the app, when a book saves its place, or with “Sync now”.
• Turn sync on on each device under the same Apple Account. The app itself does not go online: Apple services handle the network.

Not to be confused

Sync is not a backup and not offloading: it keeps devices the same, so what is deleted on one disappears on the others too, and it frees no space on the device.

Pro

Sync is part of Akoue Pro: without it there is no switch, and the row is locked. If the subscription ends while the exchange is on, changes are recorded and will travel after a purchase or a renewal.

Tip

Turning it on starts the first exchange by itself. When both devices have sync on, tap “Sync now” on the one where you turned it on first: what the second one sent arrives right away, not some time later in the background. Set up the shared settings on the device where you turn sync on first: the other devices take them when sync is turned on.

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