No way to exclude books?

[CcMarc]

There should be a feature that allows for excluding certain books from being extracted from a library. Specifically, I want to exclude the romance books from my Audible account, which my wife uses, to avoid listing over 20+ books that aren't relevant to my personal collection. I've already grouped these books into a collection on Audible, so a useful solution could be a feature that allows for the exclusion of an entire collection during the extraction process.

[joonaspaakko]

I have to think about it. There is a filter in the gallery for excluding collections, would that suffice?

None of the filters and sorters are global in the sense that if you navigate to another page, none of them stick... Partially because not all pages have the same filters and stuff. Although if you exclude a collection and set that as the default page, it'll always open with that filter on.

[CcMarc]

I tried that and it does exclude them but they are still there if a user removes the filter. Would prefer the option to exclude them from the audible extraction all together if possible.

[joonaspaakko]

Alright. I didn't want to give a definitive answer off the bat, because I've thought about this before and I haven't come to a conclusion on it. You can't really pick what to exclude before extracting any data, because the extension doesn't know what could be excluded. You know what collections you have, the extension doesn't... Not before extracting the data. There are ways around it, but that's kind of the first hurdle.

I presume that when you say users can still disable the filter, you aren't talking about yourself or anybody else who might hop on your computer and view the extension gallery locally, but rather the standalone gallery you've uploaded online... So I'd like your opinion on this next thing.

The standalone gallery website has its own options when you're saving it, one of which is to exclude the archive, which is a collection too. A really simple thing would be to just add the same exclude collections filter to the standalone gallery options... The only thing is that it obviously doesn't affect what you see locally in the extension gallery.

So my first proposition would be to perhaps replace the exclude archive with a multi-select dropdown where you could pick as many collections as you want to exclude. What do you think about that?

[CcMarc]

I'm referring to the website version if there is an exclude option that would work, is that available now as a feature or something you have to add?

[joonaspaakko]

Only available now if you don't mind archiving those books. It's one of the many check boxes when you open the modal window for saving the gallery website.

I will have to change some things in order to exclude more than just the archive collection.

[CcMarc]

My understanding archiving would remove the books from my library. I don't want to do that because she has ones not read yet and wants to read some again. Unless archiving before extracting, then reacting back to the library.

[joonaspaakko]

Not exactly. The Archive collection's description says: "Titles in this collection will not be visible in the library.". The reason why even Audible says "You can remove books by archiving them" is because it's closest to actually being able to remove books. You can always go to collections > archive to view, remove from the archive, download, play them.

So if you put your wife's books in the archive, that would be the only place to view them in the mobile app. Of course it would make it harder to view them, because there is no finished and unfinished filters in the archive just like there aren't in any collection in the mobile app, which wouldn't change much if she already used that other collection exclusively.

And don't worry, I'll bump up the multiselect collection exclusion (from the standalone gallery website).

[CcMarc]

Ok using the archive method worked, would prefer a solid option just because for whatever reason the phone apps do not auto synced the archived books, had to do it twice on my phone and my wife's phone, but it works. Thank you for the assistance.

[joonaspaakko]

Archive syncs just like any other collection would. I'm almost certain the issue was that you archived on one phone and then immediately checked it on the other phone (which I'm guessing isn't something you usually do), so basically the data didn't have time to refresh, which you could force by restarting the app.

There's also the Settings > Library > Refresh library, which I think is closer to to logging out and back in. You can try that if restarting the app doesn't refresh your library data well enough.

As a someone who doesn't really need the archive, I wanted to make sure I'm not lying, so I tested it. If I set a book to be in the archive and my other device also has the app open, it doesn't immediately show up in the archive there, but it does as soon as I restart the app on that device. After all, the archive and all the other collections live in your account data online, not just on the device.