free talking books for iphone without the overdrive app

Posted by on October 10th, 2021  •  0 Comments

Bypassing Overdrive and Audible

Getting free audiobooks has always been a brain squeezer. Back in the day I used to listen to library books on cassette tapes, which evolved into CD’s and finally the Overdrive system…which now tries to only work via an app with 3 week expiration dates.

Audible is expensive, and the library Overdrive app is annoying. Depending on how many trips I take I might not read the books for a year or two.

Now, I have no desire to rip off authors. This technique is basically bypassing the DRM system. Artists and authors deserve protection and respect. I would never post or share these books online. I’m an author myself.

But, that being said, road trips are boring, and it’s great to have a longer lasting  selection of books on the phone to keep me awake. Only one in 10 books is worth reading…so I need a lot to pick from.

If you are on a 2015 macbook running Big Sur, like me, with an Iphone XS, this still works as of October 10, 2021.

 

A. If iPhone is full, remove books via settings > general > storage > books app > audio book
B. Watch video above and install his thingy (from github?).
C. Log into your library Overdrive account  (with safari presenting as chrome windows) and download mp3 books. This actually only gets you *.odm files, which are little 6k files containing your ‘key’ to trigger the download of the actual mp3 audio files. On a computer, you used to be able to import these *.odm files into the desktop Overdrive app…which no longer exists for newer Macbooks.
D. Use terminal to download from library  by dragging odm file from ‘Macbook > downloads’ into terminal (see video above)
E. open “books app > Audiobooks” on MacBook and add (audio) books to collection by selecting multiple folders from where terminal downloaded them to.
F. connect iPhone, may have wait for it to stop blinking weirdly in finder
G. Marks iPhone > Audiobooks > sync audio books > selected audiobooks
H. select books (which should be in list of audiobooks imported to Books app on MacBook)
I. click apply.

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