Back in January, Google officially rolled out built-in audiobook support in Google Play Books, adding a bit more competition to the market against Apple’s iBooks and Amazon’s Audible.
Now the service is getting a bit better. Announced today, Google is adding new features like the ability to resume where you left off at the beginning of a sentence, speed up or slow down narration, and more. The new features are available now, so audiobook listeners should be able to take advantage of them immediately.
As far as the new features go, there is Smart Resume, which will allow you to quickly jump back into the book you are listening to by intelligently rewinding where you left off. So if you stop in the middle of a sentence or word, the software will backtrack to the beginning of the sentence or word, depending on the situation.
In addition, audiobooks now support Bookmarks, so you can go back to a certain point in the book that catches your attention. You will also be able to speed up narration to up to 3x or slow it down to 0.5x.
The last new feature is the ability to add an audiobook to a Google Assistant routine. That means you can quickly start listening to their audiobook as part of you morning routine or later in the day if you prefer.
The new audiobook features are available on Android, iOS, and with devices that use Google Assistant.
Google also confirmed that audiobook support is expanding to 13 additional countries: Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Chile, Mexico, Japan (audiobooks only), and South Africa.
Have you tried out Google Play’s audiobooks feature yet? If not, which service do you use instead?
Android Match
Post a Comment