Spine — your audiobook library, finally beautiful

Built around how you actually listen.

Every screen earns its place. No clutter, no ads, no algorithm guessing what you wanted to hear next.

Bring your own library

Connect Torbox, pick a folder on your iPhone, or add an Audiobookshelf, Grimmory, or BookOrbit server — and play everything from one shelf.

Chapters that just work

Even when your audiobook is one big file, Spine finds the chapters and lets you skip, scrub, and resume one chapter at a time. No fiddling.

Hardcover progress sync

Just listen — Spine quietly marks your books as in-progress or finished on Hardcover. Library details are enriched separately using metadata from various providers.

A Recap you'll want to share

Once a year, Spine stitches your hours, finished books, top author, and monthly listening rhythm into one bright share card worth posting.

Levels, streaks, and goals

Lifetime hours unlock six listener tiers, from Sapling to Oracle. Daily and yearly goals share one card with a streak chip and a year heatmap.

Playback that pays attention

Step away and Spine rewinds a few seconds when you press play. The sleep timer fades audio gently. Finish a book and the next in the series plays.

Playback beyond the app

Control the current book from Lock Screen Now Playing, the home-screen widget, Control Center, CarPlay, or the Apple Watch companion.

Bookmarks with context

Tap to mark any moment and jump straight back later. On supported devices, Spine can transcribe the preceding audio on-device and add a quote, summary, and topical tags.

Smart help, on your phone

"Previously on…" series catch-ups, distilled bookmarks with verbatim quotes, and tidied titles run with Apple Intelligence on-device, without sending prompts or results to an external AI service.

Corrections that follow you

Fix a title, author, narrator, or series once and the correction travels to your other iPhones through your own Torbox account. Only what you typed — never Spine's automatic guesses.

Nothing quietly disappears

Torbox purges downloads after 30 days of quiet. AirLock exempts them — one book, or your whole library on a single switch. Anything already purged restores itself in the background, progress and bookmarks intact.

Charts for the curious

Advanced Analytics splits into two tabs — how you listen, and what's on your shelf. Pace over time, hours by month, your genre and author spread, and a completeness card that taps straight through to fix thin metadata.

One page for the book.

No separate Now Playing screen. Cover, scrubber, transport, speed, sleep, chapters, bookmark, voice boost — the whole player lives inline on the book detail page, on top of an ambient backdrop that picks up the cover's dominant colors.

Tap a book to open it, tap the mini-player to come back to it. The detail page is the player. Sleep timers and variable speed are right where they belong; no carousel of "discover" suggestions over your audiobook.

Spine book detail page with inline player controls

Every library, one shelf.

Connect Torbox, pick a folder on your iPhone or iCloud Drive, or add self-hosted Audiobookshelf, Grimmory, and BookOrbit servers. They share one library, one listening log, and consistent playback controls.

An Available Offline section pulls downloaded books to the top when you're heading out. A Saved for Later shelf parks anything you've earmarked, and Sort → Group by re-cuts the whole shelf by source, by server library, or by what's protected from Torbox's purge. Progress and bookmarks sync back to the services that support it.

Spine Settings showing connected library sources

One screen of setup. Then it disappears.

Drop in your library credentials, link your Hardcover account, set any lookup preferences. Spine remembers; you don't have to come back.

No accounts to create with us, no sync conflicts, no settings tabs nested four deep. The whole control surface fits on one page — and stays out of your way for the rest of the year. Spine speaks English, German, Spanish, French, and Japanese throughout, down to the Apple Watch app.

Spine settings — library sources and Hardcover connections, preferences

Detail pages that respect the book.

Cover, summary, series order, bookmarks, and the live player itself — all in a single scrolling page enriched in the background with metadata from various providers. The colorScheme-aware ambient backdrop wraps everything from the title bar down through the transport controls.

Mark finished, edit metadata, download for offline, or remove from your cloud library — every action is one tap from the detail view.

Spine audiobook detail page with series info and chapters

Progress that earns its place.

Daily goal, lifetime tier, last-30-days bars, recently finished — and a "Now Serving" pill that drops you into the year's Recap.

Your detailed listening metrics stay on the device or in your private iCloud database. Spine never asks for an account, and the level you've earned is yours to keep.

Spine Activity tab — daily goal, listener level, last 30 days, recently finished, Recap entry

A Recap you'll want to share.

Bright, Resy-inspired screens — cover collage, time spent, time saved by faster playback, books finished, monthly rhythm, and the books you marked Read on Hardcover — stitched into one tall poster on tap.

The serif numerals and warm palette lift the whole thing out of "stat dump" territory. Copy to clipboard, share to anywhere.

Spine Recap finale — Hardcover-synced books read, by-the-numbers strip, share and copy buttons

Apple Intelligence, where it actually helps.

Tap the bookmark button anywhere and Spine grabs the last 45 seconds, transcribes it on-device, and pulls a verbatim quote, a one-sentence summary, and a few topical tags out of it. The bookmark saves instantly; the insights fill in a few seconds later. A Bookmarks Hub searches every quote, summary, note, and tag across every book.

Open the next book in a tracked series and Spine writes a "previously on…" recap from what you've already finished. Long marketing descriptions get rewritten into a calm two-sentence summary; filename salad like The_Fellowship__Tolkien__Unabridged_2007 becomes a clean title and author. Every feature is toggleable, and AI prompts and results remain on-device.

Spine book detail page with Previously On series catch-up, About card with rewritten description

On every surface you don't have time to unlock.

Lock Screen Now Playing keeps the current cover, title, chapter, progress, and transport controls close at hand. The Apple Watch companion adds play/pause, skip, chapter navigation, bookmarks, and a Continue Listening list on your wrist.

The Continue Listening home-screen widget toggles playback from a cover-tinted backdrop, and a Control Center control resumes the most recent book with one tap. CarPlay provides a focused Home, New, and Library experience for the road.

Spine Continue Listening home-screen widget

Search that points somewhere.

Most people aren't searching their own shelf — they're looking for the next thing. So the search tab opens with a trending-genre card tuned to the genres you actually listen to, a Discover list of popular titles, and a few trending search shortcuts.

The placeholder rotates daily — "Search for your next journey", "Find a story to disappear into" — so it invites instead of describing. Type and your library matches surface first; an audiobook store (when connected in Settings) extends the same query out to the broader catalogue.

Spine search tab — trending genre card, Discover list, and trending searches

Every book is also a doorway.

The detail page picks up two recommendation rows under your bookmarks — "More by {author}" and "Top in {genre}", assembled from catalog and community data. Square covers with subtle shadows, single-line titles, ellipsis when names get long.

Tapping a recommendation already in your library hops the paged detail directly to that book — no fresh sheet, no search round-trip, just a clean swipe. New titles drop you into the audiobook store → cloud library flow. Edit Metadata moved above About so the override sits one scroll away.

Spine book detail page — More by author and Top in genre carousels under the bookmarks

Fix it once.

Correct a mangled title, add the narrator, set the series order, pin an ASIN — and that correction rides to your other iPhones through your own Torbox account. Only what you actually typed travels. Spine's automatic matches stay where they are, so one device's guess can never overwrite another's correction.

There's no Spine server in the middle: the corrections live as tags on your own Torbox downloads. Because "trust us" isn't much of an answer, you can paste any of those tags into Tag Extract and watch it decode in your own browser — no upload, no account, nothing to install.

Off by default. Settings → Torbox → Curation Sync.

Spine settings showing the Torbox section where Curation Sync lives

Common questions.

What library can I bring?

Use any combination of Torbox, folders from Files, and self-hosted Audiobookshelf, Grimmory, or BookOrbit servers. iCloud Drive and other document providers work when they expose folders through the system file picker. Sources share the same shelf and playback experience; progress and bookmark sync depend on what each connected service supports.

Does Spine download or stream?

Both. Remote libraries stream by default, while local folders play their existing files. You can download supported remote books for offline use; an Available Offline section pulls every downloaded title — plus everything from your "On This iPhone" source — to the top of the library.

Does Audiobookshelf progress sync both ways?

Yes. First time Spine sees an ABS book, it pulls the server's current position. After that, Spine pushes back every 15 seconds during playback, plus a flush on pause, chapter change, and app background — the same cadence the official ABS iOS app uses. Bookmarks mirror too: ABS-side bookmarks land on the next library refresh, and bookmarks you create in Spine push to ABS once the on-device summarizer finishes the label. Read-only on the server otherwise — Spine never modifies or deletes anything else.

Why Hardcover?

Hardcover provides a social reading layer. When connected, Spine writes listening progress and read/finished status so your Hardcover shelves stay in sync. Spine enriches library details using metadata from various providers.

Will it support Audible / Libby / Plex?

Not directly. Audible and Libby use DRM that third-party players cannot import. For self-hosted libraries, Spine supports Audiobookshelf, Grimmory, and BookOrbit; local folders handle compatible audio exposed through Files, and Torbox covers cloud streaming.

Where's Android / iPad / Mac?

Spine is iPhone-first, runs on iOS 26 and iOS 27, and includes an Apple Watch companion. iPad and Mac are not currently supported.

What does the AI actually do — and where does my data go?

Spine uses Apple's on-device foundation model for a handful of things: distilling a verbatim quote, a one-sentence summary, and topical tags from a bookmark transcript; writing a "previously on…" recap for a tracked series; rewriting long marketing-style descriptions; captioning Recap pages; writing a personalized listener-tier tagline; and cleaning up messy filename-derived titles. AI prompts, transcripts, generated text, library details, and listening stats stay on the device. Each feature is individually toggleable, and unsupported devices fall back to plain copy.

Is there analytics or telemetry?

Spine has no third-party advertising or analytics SDK. It does send a limited first-party feature-usage snapshot to Spine's CloudKit database so the developer can understand feature adoption; the details are disclosed in the privacy section below.

Where does Curation Sync keep my corrections?

In your own Torbox account, written as tags on the downloads your books came from. There's no Spine server involved, and it's off unless you switch it on in Settings → Torbox → Curation Sync. Two things are worth knowing before you do: it follows your Torbox API key rather than your iCloud account, so any device signed in with that key takes part even on a different Apple ID — and anyone holding that key can read and change what's stored. Only corrections you typed are shared, never Spine's automatic matches. If you'd like to see exactly what one of those tags holds, paste it into Tag Extract; it decodes entirely in your browser.

What languages does Spine speak?

English, German, Spanish, French, and Japanese, across the whole app including the Apple Watch companion. The on-device AI features answer in your language too, rather than serving English text inside a translated interface.

Privacy, by design.

Spine does not require a Spine account, sell your data, or use third-party advertising or analytics SDKs. Most listening data stays on your device or in your private iCloud database. A limited first-party feature-usage snapshot is sent to Spine's CloudKit database, and — only if you switch Curation Sync on — your own metadata corrections are stored in your own Torbox account. Both are described below.

No Spine account

There is no Spine login. Connected library and reading-service accounts remain accounts with those providers.

Limited first-party analytics

Spine records a feature-usage snapshot in CloudKit. There are no third-party analytics SDKs, advertising identifiers, or cross-app tracking.

On-device intelligence only

Bookmark distillation, "previously on…" recaps, listener taglines, description rewrites, Recap captions, and title cleanup run on Apple's on-device foundation model. AI prompts, transcripts, generated text, and listening stats are not sent to an external AI service.

Your credentials, your services

Service credentials are stored in the system Keychain or in device-local storage, depending on the provider. Requests go directly from the app to the service needed to fulfill the feature you use.

Curation Sync stays in your account

Off by default. When enabled, your metadata corrections are stored as tags on your own Torbox downloads — never on a Spine server. Anyone holding that Torbox API key can read them. See exactly what a tag contains with Tag Extract.

What data Spine handles

Spine processes a small amount of data on your device, through iCloud or CloudKit, or directly between your device and a service used by a feature you choose:

Library data — titles, authors, covers, listening progress, bookmarks, and listening history are stored locally. Progress, bookmarks, preferences, and listening data may sync through the app's private iCloud database when iCloud is enabled.
Connected-service data — library contents, progress, bookmarks, search queries, and finished status are exchanged with library, catalog, metadata, or reading services when needed for a feature you use. Those requests are subject to the connected service's privacy policy.
Curation Sync data — when you turn Curation Sync on, the metadata corrections you authored (title, author, narrator, series name and number, ASIN, Hardcover book id, your split choice, and a marker recording a correction you withdrew) are written as tags on your own Torbox downloads, alongside a short hash derived from the book's path inside that download. File paths themselves, cover images, listening progress, bookmarks, transcripts, and any device or account identifier are not included. The data lives in your Torbox account, is readable and writable by anyone holding that API key, and is governed by Torbox's privacy policy. The feature is off by default, and you can decode any tag yourself with Tag Extract.
Feature-usage analytics — one record keyed to an app-scoped CloudKit user identifier may contain app and OS version, connected-source flags and book counts, selected settings, and lifetime counters for actions such as downloads, metadata edits, bookmarks, speed changes, sleep timers, saved-for-later changes, and AI cleanup. It does not contain book titles, authors, listening history, bookmark text, transcripts, contact information, or an advertising identifier.
Service credentials — stored in the system Keychain or device-local storage and sent only when authenticating to the corresponding service.

What Spine does not collect

No name, email, phone number, or contact information.
No precise or coarse location.
No advertising identifiers, IDFA, cross-app identifiers, or device fingerprints.
No crash logs or diagnostic data sent to us. Apple may collect aggregate, anonymized crash reports per your iOS settings; we do not have a separate analytics pipeline.
No purchase history, contacts, photos, calendar, or health data.

Services Spine connects to

Spine connects directly to the library, self-hosted server, reading, search, catalog, metadata, or download services needed for features you choose to use. Data sent in those requests is governed by the receiving service's privacy policy. Spine does not proxy those requests through a Spine-operated API.

Permissions Spine requests

Files and folders — only when you choose a local audiobook folder through the system file picker. Spine retains access to the selected folder so it can rescan your library.
Siri & Shortcuts — to expose supported playback and bookmark actions as system intents.
Spotlight indexing — your library is indexed locally so iOS Search can surface your books. Indexes never leave the device.

Children's privacy

Spine is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect data from them.

Your rights and choices

There is no Spine account to delete. You can disconnect services in Settings and clear downloads or caches in Storage. Deleting the app removes its local app container, but Keychain items and iCloud or CloudKit records may persist according to your Apple account and iOS settings. Disconnect services or revoke their credentials first, and manage Spine's iCloud data through Apple account settings if you want cloud-synced data removed. Contact us for questions about the first-party feature-usage record.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted on this page and the "Last updated" date below will change. Material changes that affect what data Spine handles will also be called out in the app's release notes.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Email spine@merifiles.com.

Last updated: August 10, 2026

Your audiobook library,finally beautiful.