Lectern: Read Books/PDFs Aloud

Lectern is an offline text to speech reader for your documents. Import a PDF, EPUB, DOCX, Markdown or plain text file — or paste a link to an article — and Lectern reads it aloud in a natural voice. Everything happens on your phone. No account, no sign-up, no Lectern server.

READ ANY DOCUMENT ALOUD

• PDF, EPUB, DOCX, TXT and Markdown files from your device

• Web articles — paste a URL and Lectern pulls out the text, leaving the menus and ads behind

• Your library remembers where you stopped in every document, and shows how far through you are and how long is left

OFFLINE TEXT TO SPEECH (TTS)

Narration runs on a TTS model stored on your phone, so this document reader keeps working in aeroplane mode, underground, on a flight, or anywhere with no signal. Nothing is streamed, and nothing is queued to upload later. It turns a PDF to audio without that PDF ever being uploaded.

• Voices in English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish

• Change voice or speed while it is reading

• Sleep timer for listening in bed

• Background playback with lock screen controls, so the narrator keeps reading with the screen off

ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE READING

A small language model runs on your device, so you can:

• Chat — ask what a document says and get answers drawn from it

• Summary — condense a long report down to its main points

• Quiz — generate questions to test what you remember

• Podcast — hear two hosts talk through the document

• Debate — pick a side and have the model argue the other one

This is a small on-device model. It uses only what the document actually says, and it will sometimes get things wrong. Treat it as a study partner, not an authority.

YOUR DOCUMENTS NEVER LEAVE YOUR DEVICE

Text extraction, narration, search and every AI feature run locally on your phone. There is no Lectern account and no Lectern server, so there is nothing on our side to read. No analytics, no tracking, no crash reporting.

The only network requests Lectern makes are:

• Downloading a voice or model, when you choose one

• Fetching a web page, when you paste its URL

• The optional Google Drive backup below

Google Play processes purchases, so Google knows about the transaction. We claim only what is true.

BACKUP YOU CONTROL

Back up your library to your own Google Drive, if you want to. Everything is encrypted on your phone before it is uploaded, using a key derived from a password you choose. A 12 word recovery phrase restores everything on a new device. Google stores ciphertext and nothing else. If you lose both the password and the phrase, nobody can recover that backup — including us.

FREE AND PREMIUM

Free includes:

• Up to 10 documents

• Full offline narration, every voice

• 5 minutes of background listening per session

Premium unlocks:

• Unlimited documents

• The Balanced and Best answer models

• Chat, summaries, quizzes, podcast and debate

• Biometric app lock

• Encrypted Google Drive backup

• Background listening with no time limit

WHAT LECTERN DOES NOT DO

There is no OCR, so scanned or image-only PDFs will not read, and there is no cross-device sync. The voices read text; they do not act or follow style instructions. The on-device AI is small and offline, so it is not as capable as a cloud chatbot.

SUBSCRIPTION

Premium is available monthly or yearly, or as a single lifetime purchase. Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled, and you can cancel any time in the Google Play app. Payment is charged to your Google Play account.

Lectern is a document reader, narrator and text to speech app for anyone who reads more than they have time to read — students working through papers, professionals with reports to get through, and readers who would rather listen on a commute. Import a file, press play, and turn your own PDFs, ebooks and articles into audiobook-style listening anywhere, with or without a connection.