Thyle vs Tome

Thyle is an audiobook player built for people who care about how their library looks and feels — not just how it sounds. Most audiobook apps treat your collection like a utility. Thyle treats it like a library worth living in. Six artist-inspired themes — Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Matisse, Cézanne, and Degas — bring a gallery-quality aesthetic to every screen, with warm palettes, custom typography, and details that reward a closer look. Your Library, Your Way Import audiobooks directly from your files — MP3, M4A, FLAC, Opus, and more. Thyle reads embedded metadata, pulls chapter markers, and organizes everything into a clean, browsable collection. Filter by star rating or genre, sort by title or date added, and switch between grid and list views to find exactly what you're looking for. Listening Done Right Thyle hands control back to you. Pick your chapter, set a sleep timer, and let spatial audio fill the room. Your progress is saved automatically so you can pick up exactly where you left off — across chapters, across sessions. Rate, Tag, and Personalize Give books a star rating after you've listened. Add your own genre tags alongside whatever's embedded in the file. The more you add, the smarter your filters become. Ask the Book Have a question about something you heard? Ask the Book uses on-device transcription and AI to let you search your audiobooks by meaning, not just memory. Find that passage, revisit that idea, or settle that nagging half-remembered detail — without scrubbing through hours of audio. Crafted for Readers Thyle was designed by a reader, for readers. That means no subscription wall, no algorithm pushing titles you didn't ask for, and no clutter between you and the book. Just your library, exactly as you left it. – Import MP3, M4A, FLAC, OGG, Opus, and folder-based audiobooks – Six artist-inspired color themes with matching typography – Five display fonts, each hand-selected for readability – Star ratings and genre tags with smart filtering – Chapter-accurate progress tracking – Sleep timer and spatial audio support – Ask the Book: AI-powered search across your transcribed audiobooks – Swipe gestures for natural navigation – No subscription required

Tome turns the books you already own into a connected reading library you can share with friends and family. Run your own Tome server with one docker command — no cloud accounts, no setup, no service to sign up for. Mount your books, paste a 6-digit code, done. Tome streams your ebooks and audiobooks to every device — phone, tablet, web — with reading progress synced across all of them. Get started in three lines: • docker run -d -p 3000:3000 -v /your/books:/library ghcr.io/tome-project/tome:latest • In the app: Profile → Libraries → Host your own library → tap "My server is running" • Open your-server:3000/setup, paste the 6-digit code Read together, not alone: • Friends — invite people you know with a code, then choose what they see (your library, your activity, your highlights, your reviews, your notes). • Book clubs — pick a book, set a deadline, invite the club, and discuss chapter by chapter without spoiling anyone behind the pace. • Social reading — see what friends are reading right now and how your pace compares on the books you both picked up. Public-domain books, free forever: A built-in Project Gutenberg catalog gives you tens of thousands of public-domain titles to download into your library at no cost. You bring the books: Tome is a self-hosted reading platform — you supply the ebook (.epub) and audiobook (.m4b/.mp3) files you legally own, and Tome reads them. Tome does not host, sell, or distribute commercial books. Privacy you control: Five separate privacy switches — Library, Activity, Reviews, Highlights, Notes — let you decide who sees each kind of thing you share. Block users you don't want to interact with, report content that violates the Terms, and delete your account at any time from inside the app. Built for real reading: • Lock-screen and Control Center playback for audiobooks • Background playback that doesn't stop when the screen locks • Highlight passages and write notes on what you've read • Track reading streaks, set yearly reading goals, see your year in review Tome is open source under AGPL-3.0. Self-host on a Raspberry Pi, NAS, Mac mini, or any always-on machine.