Audible Keeps Losing Your Place: 453 Reviews (2026)

An audiobook app has one job that nothing else can do for it: remember where you stopped.

Continues to lose my place. When I hit pause, the icon will not change from play to pause or vise versa, and the time does not advance. Every time I close the app I lose my place and it's very frustrating. Force stopping the app fixes the issue but I have to do that literally every time I close the app.

every time I pause and restart, it returns to the middle of chapter 16 (specifically time 16:02:56/25:34:50). it's very frustrating. I can shift the progress bar over, but it stays there for about one second then returns to that same point.

We read 453 recent 1-3 star reviews of Audible across nine store listings in eight languages. 63 of them, 13.9%, describe the app losing the listening position, and the reviewers who look closest describe the same two-part failure: the elapsed time on screen stops moving while the audio keeps playing, and the position the app saves is the stopped one.

How We Counted

We pulled the newest 1-3 star reviews from Google Play in eight store locales and from the App Store, deduplicated them by review ID, and kept the ones with enough text to categorize, roughly 100 characters or more. That left 453 reviews dated 1 April to 14 August 2026.

The star split is 246 one-star, 100 two-star, 107 three-star, so 54.3% one star. That is milder than most sets we read, and it fits what the text says: a lot of these reviewers still like the service and are describing a specific thing that broke.

Both scores are high, which is what a decade of goodwill looks like. Neither describes the last four months.

The Clock Stops And The App Saves The Stopped Clock

This is the finding. 12 reviews describe the elapsed-time display freezing while the audio continues, and they connect it to the position loss themselves.

Widgets don’t respond, & playback is stuck on a single timestamp. Pausing/unpausing snaps it back to the frozen time, making the audiobook unusable.

the story continues but the chapters dont advance visually, require finding the chapter your on every time. (example, showing chapter 85 but you've listened through chapter 87

A German reviewer describes the whole sequence, including what happens at the moment you press stop:

Das Hörspiel läuft weiter, alle Zeitanzeigen sind eingefroren und sobald man auf Stopp drück oder das Hörspiel beendet springt es immer wieder auf die Stelle zurück an der die Zeitanzeige eingefroren ist und startet wieder von da.

That reads: the audio keeps running, all the time displays are frozen, and as soon as you press stop or end the title it jumps back to the point where the time display froze and starts again from there. Closing the app and reloading the title does not help; the app has to be uninstalled and reinstalled and everything downloaded again.

Once you have read that, the rest of the cluster stops looking like a grab bag of glitches. If the player writes the last timestamp it knew about, a frozen clock produces exactly what these reviewers report: audio that plays fine, a progress bar that will not move, and a saved position an hour behind the truth.

Seit längerer Zeit hängt es sich aber immer wieder auf und ich beginne das Hörbuch wieder da wo ich beim letzten mal angefangen habe . sprich wenn ich eine Stunde gehört habe müsste ich wieder eine Stunde vorspulen und jetzt kommt das Schlimme es lässt sich aber nicht vorspulen ich lande immer wieder am selben Punkt oder noch schlimmer 10 Kapitel vorher oder obwohl mir immer noch mein aktuelles Kapitel angezeigt wird.

That one reads: for a while now it keeps hanging, and I start the audiobook again where I started last time, so if I listened for an hour I would have to fast forward an hour again, and here is the bad part, it will not fast forward, I land on the same point again or ten chapters earlier, even though my current chapter is still displayed.

Six Languages, Fifteen Versions, Both Platforms

The position cluster is not a device story and it is not a country story. It spans six languages, seven of the nine store listings and both platforms, and the reviews carry 15 distinct app version numbers.

French

l'application ne prend plus en compte mon avancement et reste bloquée au même chapitre. Je dois avancer manuellement à chaque écoute.

Portuguese

Quando vc interrompe , nunca marca o ponto onde parou. Retorna para um ponto anterior, fazendo vc perdermuito tempo procurando onde parou na última vez.

Spanish

la aplicación es un desastre cuando está offline, se regresa al inicio haciendo que sea imposible seguir donde me quedé cuando estaba online

Japanese

シリーズ物をずっと聞いていますが、聞き終わりに自然と次の巻にうつるときもあれば、 なぜか数巻前に戻ることもあります。

The French review reads: the app no longer registers my progress and stays stuck on the same chapter, I have to advance manually every time I listen. The Portuguese one: when you stop, it never marks the point where you stopped, it returns to an earlier point, making you waste a lot of time looking for where you were last time. The Spanish one: the app is a disaster offline, it goes back to the beginning, making it impossible to continue where I left off when I was online. The Japanese one: I listen to series, and sometimes it moves to the next volume naturally, but sometimes it goes back several volumes for no clear reason.

Four reviewers who cannot have read each other, describing one defect.

One version does stand out. 21 of the 63 position reviews carry build 26.30.05, the single most common version in the whole set. But the cluster also contains builds from 26.12 through 26.32, which means this did not arrive with one release and it has not left with one either.

The trend is easier to read as a monthly share, because review volume itself is rising. Position complaints were 13.9% of May's reviews, 9.9% of June's, 9.6% of July's, and 21.7% of the reviews dated in the first two weeks of August. Whatever this is, it got worse in August.

It Is Not Your Phone

The two explanations reviewers get most often are that their device is the problem or that a reinstall will fix it. This set argues against both.

19 reviews inside the position cluster describe uninstalling and reinstalling. None of them report it holding.

Freeze my book at a certain spot and then I have to fast forward past it every time I open the app. Works fine for a day or two after I uninstall and reinstall.

German

Seit kurzem fängt das Hörbuch immer wieder an der gleichen Stelle an, nach Neuinstallation war es kurz weg, aber jetzt ist es wieder so, ich möchte aber auch nicht als Dauerlösung ständig neu installieren.

That reads: recently the audiobook keeps starting at the same place again, after a reinstall it was briefly gone, but now it is back, and I do not want reinstalling to be the permanent solution.

On hardware, reviewers rule it out themselves. One reports the problem following them across three different phones, another across a Galaxy S24 Plus after suspecting their old handset, a third across two Samsung devices. And one reviewer found the only workaround in the set that costs nothing:

Force stopping the app fixes the issue but I have to do that literally every time I close the app.

Force-stopping works because it kills the process holding the frozen state. That is a diagnosis dressed as an annoyance.

The Same Failure, In The Car

15 reviews involve Android Auto, CarPlay or a Bluetooth connection, and they split into two shapes.

The first is the position bug wearing a different hat:

The audio still plays but the time does not move forward/chpts don't change on the display. And when I get back in the car, it just replays from the original starting point instead of picking up where it left off

German

Seit dem letzten Update wird in Verbindung mit Android Auto die Zeitleiste nicht mehr aktualisiert.

The second shape is the opposite problem, and 8 reviews describe it: the app starting on its own, whenever a car or a headset connects, sometimes with a setting explicitly turned off.

Portuguese

O aplicativo sempre retoma a reprodução de um livro quando conectado ao carro, mesmo que a configuração de "retomar a reprodução" esteja desligada

That reads: the app always resumes playing a book when connected to the car, even when the resume playback setting is switched off.

every time I start my car, it resumes at the same place. I've heard the same 10 second clip every time I've started my car for the past few months.

Read together with the position cluster, that reviewer is not describing two problems. They are describing the frozen position being replayed on every ignition.

The Sleep Timer

15 reviews are about the sleep timer, and they arrive in two waves: the ones where it stopped stopping, and the ones about its redesign.

German

Die Timerfunktion funktioniert nicht mehr! Ich stelle wie gewohnt 30 min zum Einschlafen ein, aber nach 2 Stunden wird immer noch vorgelesen.

That reads: the timer function no longer works, I set 30 minutes to fall asleep as usual, and after two hours it is still reading aloud.

Please revert to the previous sleep timer UI. The new UI requires 2 taps instead of just 1 in the previous UI.

A sleep timer that does not stop is not a cosmetic bug for the people in this cluster. Several describe waking up in the night to a book that has run on for hours, and one describes losing their place as a consequence, which is where the two biggest clusters in this set meet.

What You Paid For Can Disappear

The money complaints in this set are not about the price. They are about things bought and then not there.

11 reviews across four languages describe credits they had already paid for vanishing when a membership ended, lapsed or was cancelled.

the way their policy works is they keep your credits that you purchased when you cancel. That's like you buying 5 books and if you don't read them fast enough the bookstore gets them back.

German

wie kann es sein dass wenn das Abo endet die Guthaben einfach verfallen. das gelde wurde trotzdem bezahlt.

French

j'ai payé pour avoir des crédits et juste parce j'arrête l'abonnement on me les enlève

The German reads: how can it be that when the subscription ends the credits simply expire, the money was paid all the same. The French: I paid to have credits and just because I stop the subscription they take them away from me.

8 more reviews go further and describe titles becoming unavailable once the membership stopped. Several state that this is a change.

German

Leider sind Titel, obwohl man sie gekauft hat, nach Ablauf des Abbos nicht mehr verfügbar. Das war früher anders.

That reads: unfortunately titles are no longer available after the subscription expires, even though you bought them. That used to be different.

Such a horrible business mode for titles to not be accessible when your account membership is cancelled, and to lose your credits if you don’t select a title each month.

We cannot verify from reviews what any account's entitlements actually are, and terms differ by country, plan and how a title was acquired. The narrower claim the set supports: eight reviewers in four store listings believe they lost access to titles they paid for, and several of them believe the rule changed under them.

Brazil Is Complaining About Something Else Entirely

This is the one finding an English-only read would have missed completely. Seven Portuguese-language reviewers describe upgrading their plan and losing catalogue access, which is the opposite of what an upgrade is supposed to do.

Portuguese

Paguei mais caro e perdi acesso ao catálogo inteiro. "Upgrade" que reduz benefícios. Fui informado da possibilidade de migrar para o plano Audible Standard, com valor superior ao que eu pagava anteriormente. Como qualquer consumidor razoável, entendi que se tratava de um upgrade, ou seja, uma ampliação dos benefícios já existentes. Para minha surpresa, após a mudança, perdi acesso ao catálogo de audiolivros que utilizava regularmente. Não deixa migrar para o plano anterior.

Portuguese

Eu tinha a assinatura comum e fiz upgrade para o plano Standard acreditando que teria acesso ao catálogo adicional. Para minha surpresa, após usar o crédito mensal, os demais títulos ficaram indisponíveis.

The first reads: I paid more and lost access to the entire catalogue, an upgrade that reduces benefits, and after the change I lost access to the audiobook catalogue I used regularly, and it will not let me migrate back to the previous plan. The second: I had the ordinary subscription and upgraded to the Standard plan believing I would get the additional catalogue, and to my surprise, after using the monthly credit, the other titles became unavailable.

Both name the same two plans and the same direction of travel. Whether that is a plan design that is easy to misread or a defect, we cannot tell from reviews. What is clear is that it is specific to one market's plan lineup, and it is invisible unless you read the market's own language.

Cancelled And Still Charged

35 reviews, 7.7% of the set, are about cancelling: either how hard it is, or a charge that arrived after it.

The distribution is the interesting part. This cluster is 15 of the 56 Spanish-language reviews, 26.8% of them, against 3 of 105 in US English.

Italian

facile da sottosctivere, impossibile da disdire. disdetto 2 mesi fa, ancora mi arriva il pagamento.

Spanish

Cancelé la suscripción y siguen realizando el cobro a mi tarjeta. Ya se realizaron las gestiones indicadas en PlayStore, en la App de Audible y en la página de Audible, incluso en la Web

The Italian reads: easy to subscribe, impossible to cancel; cancelled two months ago and the payment still arrives. The Spanish: I cancelled the subscription and they keep charging my card, and the steps indicated in the Play Store, in the Audible app, on the Audible website and even on the web were all carried out.

We are not treating a difficult cancellation as proof of intent, and a subscription bought through a store has its own cancellation path that many people never find. That last point is actually the practical one, and it is the reason for step 5 below.

Step 1: Confirm Whether The Clock Is Moving

Before anything else, open the player and watch the elapsed time for ten seconds while audio plays. If the audio advances and the number does not, you have the defect in this article and not a sync problem. Everything else you do follows from that answer, and it takes ten seconds to get.

Step 2: Force Stop Instead Of Reinstalling

Reinstalling is the advice most of these reviewers were given, and 19 of them report doing it without the problem staying away. Force stopping the app from your phone's app settings clears the stuck player process, which is what one reviewer in this set found and what the frozen-clock reading predicts. It is not a fix. It costs you seconds instead of a full re-download of your library.

Step 3: Write Down Your Position Before You Close The App

While this is happening, treat the app as unable to save your place. Note the chapter and the time, or drop a bookmark, before you pause for the day. Reviewers in this cluster describe losing an hour of listening and then being unable to fast forward back to it, which is a much worse problem than writing down four digits.

Step 4: Turn Off Automatic Playback For Car And Headset Connections

If the app starts on its own when your car or headphones connect, disable resume-on-connect in the app's playback settings. One reviewer reports the setting being ignored, so if it still happens, the reliable workaround is to force stop the app before you drive. That also prevents a frozen position from being overwritten by an accidental replay.

Step 5: Cancel Where You Actually Subscribed

If you want out and the charges keep coming, the reason is usually that the subscription was bought through Google Play or Apple rather than from Audible, so cancelling inside the app does nothing. Cancel it from the store account that is billing you. Our cancellation guide for Audible walks both routes, and it is worth checking your bank statement one cycle later, since 35 reviewers in this set describe a payment arriving after they believed they had stopped it.

What This Set Is Not About

We separate complaints about the software from complaints about the catalogue and the content, because in a library app those get tangled fast.

9 reviews are about AI or virtual-voice narration, which is a content decision rather than a defect, and we have not counted it as one. A significant additional share of the German, French and Spanish sets is about catalogue depth in their language, which is a licensing question that no app update fixes.

We also want to be clear about the limits of the main finding. We did not verify the frozen-clock mechanism ourselves; we counted 12 reviewers describing it and observed that it explains what 63 reviewers report. We did not establish that build 26.30.05 introduced anything, only that it is the most common build in both the set and the cluster, and that the cluster spans 15 builds. And where reviewers describe entitlements they believe they lost, we counted the belief and the number of people holding it, not the entitlement.

The Short Version

Audible rates 4.58 on Google Play and 4.85 on the App Store, on more than seven million ratings between them.

Of 453 recent negative reviews, 13.9% describe the app losing the listening position, in six languages, on both platforms, across 15 app versions, and the share of reviews making that complaint doubled in the first two weeks of August. Twelve reviewers describe the mechanism the same way: the on-screen time freezes while audio keeps playing, and the app saves the frozen time. Nineteen reviewers in that cluster reinstalled, and none report it holding.

Around that sit a sleep timer that stops stopping, playback that starts itself whenever a car connects, credits that expire when a membership does, and a cancellation cluster nearly ten times denser in Spanish than in English.

You can read the full negative review breakdown for Audible on Android and Audible on iOS, the trust check for Audible, or the Audible cancellation guide. For how it compares with the rest of the category, see our audiobook app comparison. For other apps where an update broke the one thing the app is for, see our reads of Fidelity, Disney Plus and Domino's.

Methodology

We collected the newest 1-3 star reviews for Audible from Google Play across eight store locales and from the App Store, deduplicated by review ID, and kept those with at least 100 characters of text. Reviews dated before 1 April 2026 were excluded. The resulting set is 453 reviews dated 1 April to 14 August 2026 across nine store listings. Apple's public review feed returned records for the Canadian storefront only during collection, an outage we have documented before, so the App Store contribution is 15 reviews. Clusters were assigned by reading the complaint language rather than by keyword matching, and a review naming more than one problem is counted in each cluster, so the percentages do not sum to 100. Monthly figures are given as a share of that month's reviews, not as raw counts, because both stores return newest first and the raw monthly totals are not comparable. Language labels on quotes were assigned by reading the text rather than by trusting the store locale, because store locales return mixed-language results. Translations of non-English quotes are ours and are given as plain readings, not as replacements for the original text. Quotes are reproduced exactly as written, including spelling and punctuation, and each was cut programmatically from the stored review text and verified character by character before publication. Ratings, install counts and version numbers were read from both stores on 15 August 2026.