KO Reader vs Murmur

KO Reader turns web articles, ebooks, and PDFs into natural-sounding speech — entirely on your device. No cloud, no tracking, no subscriptions. Paste a URL or open an EPUB or PDF, and KO Reader reads it aloud with a neural AI voice. Everything runs locally, so your reading stays private and works anywhere — on the train, on a plane, or off-grid. Export your favorite articles or books to m4a or m4b files. WHAT YOU CAN READ • Web articles — Wikipedia, news sites, blogs, and Substack • Fanfiction — Archive of Our Own, Royal Road, and Wattpad, with chapter detection • EPUB ebooks with full chapter navigation • PDF documents • Plain text — paste or type any content • Safari Share Extension — send articles to KO Reader with one tap NATURAL AI VOICES • 53 neural voices across 9 languages: American and British English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Mandarin, and Hindi • Preview any voice before selecting it • Mark favorites for quick access • Playback speed from 0.5x to 2.0x • Smart heteronym resolution — the voice knows the difference between "lead" (the metal) and "lead" (to guide), "wound" (injury) and "wound" (past of wind) • Custom pronunciation dictionary — teach the reader how to say names, jargon, or anything you like READ YOUR WAY • Reading queue — line up multiple articles and auto-advance • Bookmarks — save passages to come back to • Reading history — pick up where you left off, across books and articles • Chapter pre-generation — book chapters start instantly, no waiting between them • Audio export — save generated audio for offline listening • Adjustable article font (system, serif, monospaced, rounded) and Dynamic Type support BUILT FOR ACCESSIBILITY • Full VoiceOver support with labeled controls throughout • Haptic feedback on transport controls and sleep timer • Background audio — listen while you use other apps or with the screen off • Sleep timer — stops playback when you drift off • Works with AirPods, Bluetooth speakers, and CarPlay RUNS EVERYWHERE • Universal app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac • macOS keyboard shortcuts (Space to play/pause, Cmd+← and Cmd+→ to skip) • Optimized for Apple Silicon with optional CoreML acceleration • Adjustable CPU thread count for performance tuning PRIVACY FIRST • 100% on-device TTS — your content never leaves your phone • No accounts, no analytics, no tracking, no ads • No internet required after the one-time model download • Reading progress stored locally only KO Reader downloads a ~350 MB neural voice model on first launch. After that, everything works fully offline. Powered by the open-source Kokoro TTS model (Apache 2.0).

Turn the books and documents you already own into audiobooks. Murmur reads EPUBs and PDFs aloud with natural neural voices that run entirely on your iPhone. Import a book, choose a narrator, press play, and keep listening while you commute, exercise, cook, clean, or simply give your eyes a break. NO AUDIOBOOK? NO PROBLEM. Most books will never receive a professionally produced audiobook. Your textbooks, PDFs, self-published books, research material, old EPUBs, and personal documents may never have one at all. Murmur lets you listen to the files you already have instead of buying another copy. READ EPUB & PDF ALOUD Import EPUB and PDF files directly into your library. Murmur organizes books into chapters and paragraphs and keeps your reading and listening position together. Follow the text while the narrator speaks, or put your phone away and keep listening in the background. 23 NEURAL VOICES Choose from 23 bundled narrators across 10 languages. Set a default narrator for each language or choose a different voice for an individual book. Adjust playback speed whenever you want. PRIVATE AND OFFLINE Your books stay on your iPhone. Speech is generated on-device, so Murmur doesn't need to upload your EPUBs, PDFs, textbooks, or personal documents to a text-to-speech server. • No account • No document uploads • No cloud processing • No internet connection required for narration • Background playback BUILT FOR BOOKS, NOT JUST TEXT Murmur combines an EPUB reader, PDF reader, text-to-speech engine, audiobook player, and follow-along reader in one library. Use it for: • EPUB books • PDF books and documents • Textbooks and course material • Research and professional reading • Independent and self-published books • Out-of-print titles • Long reading backlogs • Hands-free reading • Read-aloud and accessibility workflows LISTEN YOUR WAY Murmur remembers your position, playback speed, and narrator settings for every book. Switch between reading and listening without losing your place. FREE TO START Import as many books as you want. Free includes 60 minutes of listening every 30 days and access to one English and one Polish narrator. Murmur Premium unlocks unlimited listening and all 23 voices. Your books already contain the words. Murmur gives them a voice. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://readbuildship.com/apps/murmur/privacy