LIRA Reader vs Akoue

LIRA is a calm audiobook and ebook player for books you already own. Import MP3, M4A, M4B, AAC, and EPUB files from the Files app, then listen or read without a subscription storefront. Your library stays on your device. LISTEN • Resume exactly where you stopped • Playback speed up to 3× • Sleep timer with fade and chapter options • Bookmarks for favorite moments • Lock screen and Control Center controls • Chapters when your file includes them READ • Clean EPUB reader with themes and fonts • Bookmarks for paragraphs you want to revisit READ ALONG • Optional on-device transcription for audiobooks • Follow the text while you listen • Model download happens only when you start transcription Built for people who keep their own library—LibriVox downloads, purchased DRM-free files, and personal archives. No account required to start listening.

Akoue keeps the books you already own in one collection on iPhone and iPad: audiobooks and text together, in order. Folders of MP3s, M4B files and archives from your home server become a library with authors, series, narrators and chapters. With Pro, books move to your own iCloud, not someone else's cloud. Nothing to buy again. A FOLDER IS A BOOK • CD1/CD2 discs, numbered file names, tags: Akoue assembles them into one book with chapters in the right order. • Garbled titles from old encodings are repaired in one tap, with a preview and undo. • Chapters come from M4B, tags and cue files; the cover from a tag, a file next door or the folder. None at all? Akoue draws one. • ZIP archives unpack themselves, and non-Latin file names inside survive. • Importing again never creates duplicates; a compilation is split into separate books. • Audio plays without conversion: mp3, m4a, m4b, aac, flac, wav, aiff, alac, opus. The text edition of the same book sits next to it: epub, fb2, md and pdf in the built-in reader; txt, rtf, doc, docx in the system viewer. A PLAYER FOR BOOKS, NOT MUSIC • A hundred files play as one book; the position never gets lost between files. • Separate skip-back and skip-forward intervals; after a pause the book rewinds on its own, further the longer you were away. • Speed 0.5×–3× without distorting the voice. • Sleep timer: end of chapter, gentle fade-out, position rewind. Counts listening time or real minutes. Shake the phone and the countdown starts over, even with the screen off. • Bookmarks with notes you can search and jump to. • Finished a volume? The next one in the series starts by itself. A COLLECTION IN ORDER • Authors with pen names, narrators, nested series, a genre tree, tags and smart shelves. • Twelve sort orders and nineteen filters. Search forgives the wrong keyboard layout and transliteration. • Several narrations of one book are normal: your choice of narrator is remembered. • Every field is editable, the original file tags stay visible, and "Restore original" is always one tap away. • The make-up of a book is editable too: name a file, drag files into order, drop a stray one from the book, rename and move chapters. WHEREVER YOU LISTEN • Apple Watch: a book travels to your watch and plays without the iPhone — on headphones, and on models with a speaker through it too. • Lock Screen, Dynamic Island, widgets with buttons, Control Center, the Action button, Siri, Shortcuts and Spotlight. • CarPlay: your library and Now Playing without unlocking the phone. AKOUE PRO, FOR THE BIG COLLECTION Buy once for good, or yearly. Family Sharing either way. • Move to iCloud: keep only what you are listening to on the phone; the rest waits in your iCloud Drive and plays on tap, downloading chapter by chapter. A local file is never deleted until the cloud copy is confirmed. • Sync between iPhone and iPad: position, bookmarks, catalog edits, listening history. If a device moves back by more than a minute, the app asks instead of deciding for you. • Bulk cleanup: move everything you have finished in one action, with a preview of how many gigabytes you get back. • Silence skipping and volume leveling. • Author merge: "Tolkien, J. R. R." and "J.R.R. Tolkien" become one person. • Statistics and a year in review, author profiles, four extra themes and your own accent color for each. YOUR DATA STAYS YOURS • No accounts, no analytics, no ads, no third-party SDKs. The app itself does not go online: Apple services handle the network. • Everything on the device works offline. The catalog exports to JSON and CSV; a backup is a single file. • The free version is not a trial: no limit on books, no time limit. WHAT AKOUE DOES NOT DO It does not sell or download books, look them up online or open DRM-protected Audible files (AAX). Interface in English, Russian, German, Spanish and French. Full VoiceOver and Dynamic Type support. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/