Manuscript Studio

Listening

The audiobook player that follows you around the app — where it lives, how position is remembered, and why only the ✕ dismisses it.

Once a book has narrated, Listen on its bookshelf card starts playback.

The dock

Playback moves into a dock at the bottom of the app and stays there.

You can open a book, design a cover, write a chapter and move between studios without the audio stopping. Every full-height screen shrinks to make room for it rather than sliding underneath.

Only the ✕ dismisses it. Not navigating, not opening another book, not closing a modal. When you stop it, the dock disappears entirely rather than sitting there empty.

The dock shows the book's real cover — the same three-dimensional volume as the shelf — the chapter title, transport controls, a ±10-second skip, and a speed control.

On a phone it lays out over two rows, because one row left the title as a single ellipsised letter.

Your position is remembered

Per book, across sessions. Close the tab, come back tomorrow, and Resume ch. 7 picks up where you stopped.

The saved position is validated when it is restored — against the chapters that actually exist and the length of the file it refers to — so a position saved before you re-narrated a book cannot drop you somewhere that no longer exists.

Job state on the shelf

The audio cell on each book reports the whole picture, not just success:

State What you see
Never narrated Narrate this book · from 15 cr
Queued or running A progress bar
Failed ↻ Retry narration, with the error beneath
Done, no files ↻ Re-narrate
Done Listen / Resume ch. N / Pause

A failed or queued job must never read as "never narrated" — that is the state that would invite you to pay for it a second time.

Listening is never gated

There is no plan check on playback.

If your subscription lapses you can still play, and still download, audio you have already generated. What you paid to create stays reachable.

What to watch for

  • Download links can expire. They are signed for a limited window; reopen the book or the export wizard to get fresh ones.
  • The dock is the only player. There is no separate audiobook screen — that was removed, because a modal lost the queue the moment you closed it.