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 iPhone. No account, no sign-up, no Lectern server. READ ANY DOCUMENT ALOUD • PDF, EPUB, DOCX, TXT and Markdown files from Files or any app that shares them • 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 speech model stored on your iPhone, so this document reader keeps working in airplane mode, underground, on a flight, or anywhere with no signal. Nothing is streamed, and nothing is queued to upload later. It turns a PDF into 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 • Keeps reading with the screen locked (Premium) 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 iPhone. 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 Apple processes purchases, so Apple 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 iPhone 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 with every voice, as long as Lectern is open Premium unlocks: • Unlimited documents • Listening with Lectern in the background or the screen locked • Chat, summaries, quizzes, podcast and debate • The Balanced and Best answer models • Face ID app lock • Encrypted Google Drive backup 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. 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 or a walk. SUBSCRIPTION Lectern Premium is available monthly or yearly, or as a one-time lifetime purchase. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period, and your account is charged for renewal within 24 hours before the period ends. Manage or cancel any time in your App Store account settings. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/