On August 16th, Bookcamp celebrated its first anniversary 🎂. On this occasion, I’ve taken the time to reflect on the current state of the project, and where it should be heading. What follows is a glimpse into the future.
Let’s meet Bookcamp 2.0.
When this project started, I was frustrated with the state of audiobook apps. Sure, there was already one app on iOS which got the job done, but I thought I could do better. On Android, the situation was much worse. Not a single audiobook app was worth downloading.
At first, I wasn’t sure Bookcamp would be available on both iOS and Android. Crossplatform solutions were already out of the picture because there would be no way to create a delightful experience. My career was mainly centered around creating native iOS apps. Would it be a good idea to get into Android apps as well?
After the Bookcamp announcement got some attention, I soon realized the Android community was the most involved in the project. If I wanted the project to succeed, there was no doubt I would have to create the app for both platforms. As a matter of fact, Android users account for 75% of all the users of Bookcamp today.
As expected, learning Android when you’re an iOS developer is challenging. While most skills transfer well, Android is a much more chaotic platform. Apple usually makes sure everything stays coherent over the years. Google is much more inclined to move on to the latest trend, leaving you to wonder why there are five different ways of accomplishing the same thing.
What came out of this is a state of the art iOS app, and an ok-ish Android app.
Today, I want to make things right.
With enough time to learn the quirks of Android, I believe I can now rebuild the Android app to reach the same level of expectation as on iOS. While the next version will add a lot of features on both platforms, Android users will be happy to hear that every piece of the app will go through careful examination to make sure it feels like a great native experience.
Let’s now dive into all the changes to come.
It’s no secret that the long term ambition of Bookcamp has always been to have its own media server carefully crafted around audiobooks. When I started to meet people interested in Bookcamp, it became obvious that what most of them wanted now was a Plex-compatible audiobook app.
Audiobooks in Plex have always been an afterthought. Is it actually good enough for large libraries? If you’re not too demanding, sure. But if you’re more serious about audiobooks, there are a lot of missing features.
Originally, I had this idea of creating a bridge between Bookcamp and your Plex server, responsible of doing all the hard work Plex was not capable of (adding useful metadata, synchronizing your progress properly, etc.) as well as having a single interface capable of connecting different media servers. While this approach works, there is a major issue: your server needs to be publicly reachable on the Internet. Not only this is sometimes not possible, but not a single existing Plex-based audiobook app works this way. This created a lot of confusion around why other apps were working and not Bookcamp.
Starting with Bookcamp 2.0, this bridge will stop existing. Bookcamp will allow you to use remote or local servers, and will also add support for home users. However, rest assured that the custom crossplatform progress sync, one of the most beloved feature of Bookcamp, will remain available.
Improved Plex integration