Readr vs Issa Reader

Read, listen, and ask questions as you go. Readr answers from what you've read so far and never spoils what's ahead — and clearly labels anything it adds from elsewhere. ASK THE BOOK Open an EPUB, PDF, plain-text or Markdown file you already own, select a sentence, and ask about it. Readr answers from the pages you've read, not the pages you haven't, so nothing ahead of your place can slip out. Choose "Whole book" to ask about all of it. And it isn't limited to the book: ask how the science has moved on, who directed the adaptation, or how an idea aged, and you get a useful answer that shows which part came from the book and which from outside it. Readr won't attribute an outside claim to the book you're reading. Back after a week away? Tap Recap on your Continue Reading card and Readr tells you the story so far, from only the pages you've read — it can't spoil what comes next. Ask needs an AI account of your own: connect an Anthropic, OpenAI or OpenRouter key, or sign in with OpenRouter. You pay that company directly for what you use, and you can change or disconnect at any time. On an Apple silicon Mac you can use a local Ollama model instead and stay offline. Without one, Readr is still a complete reader — Ask simply stays off. LISTEN Press Listen and Readr reads the book aloud, starting from the page you're on — not the top of the chapter. The page turns itself to follow the voice, and the place it saves is where the voice left off, so switching between reading and listening never costs you your spot. The narrator is Readr Voice, a neural voice that runs entirely on your device: no account, no subscription, and nothing about your book ever leaves the device to be read aloud. Its voice model downloads once, the first time you listen, and the Listen bar shows the wait. Readr Voice keeps reading with the screen locked: it reads ahead while the app is open and plays from that with the phone in your pocket. Prefer Apple's built-in voices? They're a tap away under "Other voices" in the voice menu, with nothing to download at all. Skip by sentence or by chapter, change the speed or the voice mid-sentence and it carries on from that word, and set a sleep timer that counts listening rather than clock time — pause for lunch and the countdown waits for you. It keeps playing with the screen locked, with lock-screen and headphone controls, and reads PDFs as well as EPUBs. HIGHLIGHTS BECOME A DRAFT Highlight as you read, then turn those highlights into a first draft. Readr orders them by reading position, keeps your quotes intact, and turns them into an editable draft you can export as Markdown. PRIVACY No usage tracking. No account. No subscription. Your books, highlights, notes and questions live on your device, and reading them aloud happens there too. When you use Ask, your question and the book text needed to answer it go straight to the company you connected — never through a Readr server, because there isn't one. Your keys are stored in the device Keychain. READING THAT FEELS LIKE READING • EPUB, PDF, plain-text and Markdown — DRM-free files you own • A book to start on: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is in your library on first launch, so you can try everything before importing your own • Three layouts: continuous scroll, single page, or two facing pages • Paper, Sepia and Dark themes, with your choice of typeface and spacing • Table of contents, bookmarks, in-book search, footnote popups • Five highlight colors, notes, and a Notes panel that exports to Markdown • Continue Reading picks up exactly where you left off, reading or listening • On iPad: sidebar and reader side by side, two-page spreads, and hardware keyboard page turns FREE AND OPEN SOURCE Readr is free and MIT-licensed, developed in the open. Read the code, file an issue, or send a bug report from inside the app — there's a Report a bug button in Settings that attaches your app version and recent errors, and nothing about what you've been reading.

Issa Reader is a native reader for Storyteller, the self-hosted server that lines an ebook up with its audiobook so you can move between reading and listening without losing your place. REQUIRES A STORYTELLER SERVER Issa Reader is a client, not a bookshop. It has no catalogue of its own and nothing to sell you. Point it at a Storyteller server you run, sign in, and read your own library. Without a server, there is nothing here to show you. READ A real typesetting engine, not a web view. Pages are laid out natively, so turning one is instant and the type is properly set. Six bundled reading faces, including Literata, Source Serif 4 and OpenDyslexic, or add a font of your own. Four page themes for daylight, lamplight and the middle of the night. Size, line spacing and justification are yours to set, per book or for everything. LISTEN Variable speed with pitch correction, chapter and sentence navigation, skip controls, a sleep timer, and full Now Playing support on the Lock Screen and in Control Centre. READ ALONG This is what Storyteller is for. Where a book has narration aligned to its text, the words light up as they are spoken, the page turns itself to follow, and tapping any line starts the narrator there. Stop reading, keep listening, and pick up on the same sentence — the two stay in step. IN THE CAR CarPlay gives you your shelves and chapters as proper lists, with Now Playing and a resume that lands on the sentence you left, not somewhere near it. Steering-wheel buttons, headphone controls and on-screen controls can each be remapped independently, so the same button can do different things in different places. YOUR WHOLE LIBRARY, ON DEVICE The catalogue is fetched once and kept locally, so searching by title, author, narrator, series or tag is instant and works with no signal at all. Shelves are built on your device from what you actually have. Download books to read and listen offline. ON EVERY SCREEN A Home Screen widget with your current book, chapter and progress. Native apps for Apple TV and the Mac are included with the same purchase, and Handoff carries your place between them. BUILT FOR THESE PLATFORMS Written in Swift for iPhone and iPad, using the system's own text engine, audio stack and accessibility support throughout. Dynamic Type, VoiceOver and reduced motion are respected, not retrofitted. Issa Reader is an independent client and is not affiliated with the Storyteller project.