Lectern: EPUB & PDF Reader

Listen while you read, in one ebook reader.

Offline AI voices read EPUB books and text PDFs aloud with text to speech, highlighting the spoken sentence.

Download a voice once, then listen offline. No Lectern account, and by default your books and notes stay on your device.

🎧 Listen while you read

Choose a natural voice, press play and follow the highlighted sentence. Offline TTS voices (Piper, Supertonic, Kokoro) run on your phone after a one-time download of about 27 to 350 MB, or use an Android system voice if your phone has one for the book's language.

• Sentence highlighting in EPUB, MOBI, AZW3, FB2, TXT and text PDFs

• Voices for 32 languages, picked per language or left to Auto, depending on your phone and on the book's language being known

• Speed up to 3x, sentence pauses, narration styles, pronunciation fixes

• Lock screen and Bluetooth controls, screen-off play, resume where you stopped

• Link an audio file to a book, with M4B chapters. Only EPUB3 read-along books follow their recording; not an audiobook app

📄 Read PDFs aloud on the original page

Hear a text PDF while the spoken sentence is marked on the printed page, or switch to reflowed text.

🌙 Made for evenings

• Sleep timer: stop now, after the sentence or the chapter, with a bookmark where you were last awake

• Bedtime profile: dark page, warm tint, dimmed light

• 8 built-in background sounds

📚 One app for your ebooks and comics

EPUB, EPUB3, KEPUB, PDF, MOBI, AZW, AZW3, PRC, FB2, FBZ and TXT. Comics and manga in CBZ, CBR, CB7 and CBT.

✍️ Comfortable reading

• One-tap profiles: Standard, Bedtime, Dyslexia and Focus

• OpenDyslexic dyslexia font, serif, sans and monospace; spacing, margins, hyphenation, drop caps

• 7 colour themes from Light to Black, or your own colours

• Focus tools: a line band while scrolling; pacer, sentence focus and RSVP speed reading (off with reduce motion or e-ink, paused during narration)

• E-ink mode, automatic on devices such as Boox and Meebook

• Right-to-left reading for Arabic

🔖 Highlights and notes

• 5 colours, across paragraphs and in tables, with notes; exact-page bookmarks; quote cards to share

• Export to Markdown or JSON. Import Kindle highlights (My Clippings.txt) for books in your library: in EPUB, MOBI and FB2, matched passages become highlights, the rest notes

🗂️ Your library, your storage

• Add folders without a storage permission; files stay put. Send books over Wi-Fi from your computer, or share a file

• Project Gutenberg built in, plus Calibre-Web, Storyteller or any OPDS catalogue (EPUB downloads)

• Collections, series, reading status, filters, cover search

☁️ Sync and backup, no Lectern server

Sync position, bookmarks, highlights and reading time through your own Google Drive folder. Devices need the same book file and your cloud app; sync runs while Lectern is open, not instantly. Or back up your reading data, not the book files, for your next phone.

📈 Stats, dictionary and vocabulary

• Streaks, daily goals, charts, a yearly heatmap, 3 widgets

• Offline English dictionary on long-press, also while listening; import your own per language (Lectern's format)

• Vocabulary trainer with spaced repetition and CSV export; saved words stay on one device

🌍 10 app languages

English, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi and Indonesian.

ℹ️ Good to know

• Books with DRM (most Kindle, Kobo and Google Play purchases) cannot be opened. Password-protected PDFs do not open

• Kokoro and Supertonic need a 64-bit phone, the largest packs a fast one. For Chinese, pick Kokoro yourself. Most Supertonic languages are not yet reviewed; the app marks them

• Reading aloud needs real text: scanned PDFs and comics are not read aloud (no OCR)

• Highlights and notes need reflowable text, so not on original PDF pages or in comics

• Online only for downloads, catalogues, cover and book info lookup, sync, your own servers and system voices marked cloud

Read. Listen. Follow along.