Libratory vs Athene Reader

Libratory plays an audiobook over the real pages of the book, lighting up the sentence and the word being spoken as it reads. Double-tap a sentence to hear it again. Books are made on your Mac with the free Libratory desktop tool, which pairs a book with its narration and saves both as one synced EPUB. Send that file to your iPhone or iPad with AirDrop or the Files app, tap + on the shelf, and press play. Nothing is streamed, no account is needed, and everything works offline. The app comes with a short three-chapter guide already on the shelf. It is itself a synced book, so reading it is the fastest way to see what the app does. READ AND LISTEN • The voice plays over the printed page, with the sentence and the word highlighted as they are spoken • Double-tap a sentence to hear it from there • Three views of a synced book: Page shows the whole sheet with its pictures and tables, Column crops to the printed words, Text reflows the words at a size you choose • Playback continues with the screen locked, with the chapter, cover and controls on the lock screen • Change the speed and the highlight keeps up READ IN TWO LANGUAGES • A book exported with a translation opens with the original and the translation together, each with its own voice • Tap a word to hear the book from there, or to see what it means in the other language • Sentence pairs reads each sentence and then its translation; each language keeps its own speed, plays each sentence up to five times, and can pause to let you say it back • The original can stay on its printed page beside the translation JUST READ, OR JUST LISTEN • Open an EPUB ebook you already own and read it in Text view • Open an M4B audiobook, pick a chapter, and listen with the screen off PICK UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF • The app remembers your place in every book and shows which parts you have heard • Hold a word to save it, put it in a group, and add a note; find it again in Marks • Search the book and your saved words, then jump back to read or listen KEEP YOUR LIBRARY IN ORDER • Folders and tags for your books, and a search across the whole library • Each book says which chapters light up word by word and which sentence by sentence SHELVES • Pair your phone with the desktop app by scanning the code on its Phone page, and every book it has made is a tap away over your own Wi‑Fi or Tailscale • A public shelf of free, narrated classics is built in, with a two-language Frankenstein among them • Each book says what it offers — read + listen, two languages, words or sentences lit — with its voice, length and a description PRIVATE BY DESIGN • No account, no sign-in, no tracking. The app talks only to the shelves you add and the public shelf, to list and download books; what you read stays on your device. Works on iPhone and iPad with iOS 15.6 or later. On iOS 15 and 16, a simpler reader includes Pages and Text, playback, highlighting, chapters, saved progress, and two-language books in two panes. Bookmarks, search, folders and tags require iOS 17 or later. Synced books are made with the Libratory desktop app for Mac, free at libratory.dev. Plain EPUB ebooks and M4B audiobooks open as they are.

Athene is a reader for the books you already own. Bring your books from Files, from Mail, from your computer over Wi‑Fi, from a link, or from anywhere that can share a file, and they go on a shelf that looks like one. EPUB and PDF open as they are; MOBI, AZW3, Word, FB2, TXT and HTML files become books as they arrive. Free classics from Project Gutenberg are a tap away. If you keep your library on a calibre server, Athene browses that shelf too, from + in your Library — on your home network, or from anywhere through your own VPN such as Tailscale. THE PAGE Open a book and the app steps back. Just the page, on white, sepia or night paper, or paper in any colour you like, in the typeface and size you read best, including any Google Font. Highlight a passage, add a note, drop a bookmark, and find them all again under Marks. Select a passage in another language to translate it. The shelf itself follows the time of day — Morning, Sunset, Night — or stays on the one you pick. NOTES YOU CAN DRAW Type a note in the margin, or sketch in it. On a PDF, mark up the page itself with Apple Pencil. THE NOTEBOOK Every highlight, note and drawing from every book you read, in one place, with filters and search. Write what stayed with you after a chapter, a reading session or a whole book, typed or drawn; your reflections stay even if the book leaves your shelf. LISTEN Any book, read aloud in a warm, natural voice that runs entirely on your device, and keeps reading with the screen locked. PDFs too: Listen skips the running heads, page numbers and footnotes, reads scanned pages, and describes the pictures and tables as it reaches them. The voice is a one-time download of about 242 MB. A DICTIONARY Select a word to see what it means and how to say it. It is built in, and it works offline. ASK THE PAGE Tap the owl while you read and ask about what is in front of you. Who is she again? What did that word mean? What just happened? The Owl answers from the pages around where you are — this chapter at most, never the whole book, never your other books — and if the pages do not say, it tells you that instead of guessing. YOUR MODEL, YOUR CHOICE On a device with Apple Intelligence, the Owl thinks on the device and nothing you ask is sent anywhere. Or point it at your own Ollama server on your own network. Or bring a key from Claude, OpenRouter or OpenAI. Athene asks before the first question leaves the device, names the address it would send to, and remembers your answer. ON EVERY DEVICE Turn on iCloud Sync and your place, highlights, notes, drawings, collections and reading settings follow you between your iPhone and iPad. It goes only to your own private iCloud, and what you wrote is encrypted on your device first. With a calibre server, highlights go both ways: yours to your calibre library, and the ones you make in calibre's own reader to Athene. With KOReader on an e-reader, your books, your place, and your highlights, notes and bookmarks stay in step through a sync server of your own. PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION Athene has no account, no analytics and no servers of its own. Your books, your notes and your questions stay on your device or go only where you have pointed them. The privacy policy says the same, in plain words. FREE Reading is free. No account, no subscription, no limit: the shelf, the reader, Listen, the dictionary, the Owl, the Notebook, iCloud Sync, calibre and KOReader, your highlights and notes. Nothing is locked. Athene requires iOS 26. The on-device Owl requires Apple Intelligence (iPhone 15 Pro and later, M-series iPad, iPad mini A17 Pro); on other devices the Owl works with your own Ollama server or an API key. Pictures in PDFs are described on iOS 27 with Apple Intelligence.