Ebook & audiobook reader for Android
Lectern is a private, offline reader for Android that opens EPUB, PDF, comics and more, and reads the text ones aloud with on-device voices. No account, no ads, and no one keeping tabs on what you read.
One-time €2.49. No subscription, no ads. Price and VAT vary by country.
One reader for your whole shelf
Lectern is a private, offline ebook and audiobook reader for Android. It opens EPUB, PDF, MOBI, FB2 and comic files, reads the text ones aloud with on-device text-to-speech, and keeps your reading position in sync across devices through a cloud folder you own. There are no ads, no account and no tracking.
It's a paid app made by Hofstack, built for readers who want one calm app for their whole library (books, PDFs, comics and their own audiobooks) that works with no connection and keeps what they read to themselves.
A look inside
Real screens from the app, not mock-ups.
Everyday library care
Lectern keeps the maintenance work close at hand, but out of the way until you need it.
What it does
Six things Lectern is built around. Most of the depth stays out of sight until you go looking for it.
Pick a theme, a font (OpenDyslexic is in there) and the size, spacing and margins you like, or tap a reading profile and start. Page or scroll, full-screen or not. It keeps drop caps, verse and scene breaks the way the author set them.
Have a book read aloud with on-device voices, from your system's to higher-quality Piper and Kokoro packs. It highlights the sentence as it goes and plays narrated EPUB3 books too.
More on listening →Keep your reading in step across phones and tablets through a folder you control on Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or Nextcloud. Progress, bookmarks, highlights and ratings come along. No account, no server.
How sync works →Open files you already have, or pull public-domain titles from Standard Ebooks and Project Gutenberg over OPDS. Add your own catalog, or send a book straight from another app. Missing covers get found for you.
Highlight in colour, add notes, and browse them per book or share one as a quote card. Look up any word in the built-in dictionary, keep it in a vocabulary list with spaced repetition, and search the whole book.
Group by author, series, genre or language, make your own collections, and filter or sort however you read. A stats screen follows your time, streaks and goals, with a heatmap and a year-in-review to share.
Listening
Lectern can read any book to you with offline voices, follow narrated audio, or play an audiobook you already own. It all runs on the device, so it works on a plane or in the woods.
Your own sync
There's no Lectern account and no server in the middle. Sync runs through a folder you already own, so your reading travels between your phone and tablet and nobody else ever sees it.
In step across devices
Reads the way it was written
Most apps mash a poem into one justified blob and turn a scene break into a thin grey line. Lectern keeps what the author meant, and still reads the same from one book to the next.
Roses are red,violets are blue,sugar is sweet,and so are you.
…and the door fell shut behind her.
Morning found the camp already broken…
The long list
Dozens of touches across eight areas, none of them shouting for attention until you need them.
No account, no analytics, none of the usual tracking. Your books, highlights and progress sit on your phone, and sync only through a folder you own. The reader works completely offline; it goes online when you ask it to, to fetch a catalog or sync. What you read stays your business.
How it compares
An honest look at where Lectern differs from ReadEra, Moon+ Reader and Librera. They're all good apps. They just make different trade-offs.
| Feature | Lectern | ReadEra | Moon+ Reader | Librera |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Paid, no ads | Free, no ads | Free with ads · paid Pro | Free with ads · paid Pro |
| Ads & tracking | None at all | No ads | Ads in free tier | Ads in free tier |
| Neural on-device voices | Piper & Kokoro | System TTSdevice voices | System TTSTTS is Pro-only | System TTSdevice voices |
| Read-along highlighting | Sentence by sentence | Basic | YesPro | Yes |
| Link your own audiobooks | M4B / MP3 + Media Overlays | No | No | No |
| Account-less device sync | Your own cloud folder | Local only | Cloud syncvia app/service | Via your storage |
| Faithful typography | Verse, drop caps, ornaments | Standard | Standard | Standard |
| Office & DjVu files | No | DOC, DOCX, DjVu | No | DOC, DOCX, DjVu |
| Open source | No | No | No | Yes (F-Droid) |
Loved by readers
Fantastic service, with a built-in and external book search. Highly recommended. Oh, and I almost forgot, no trackers.
Recommended. The service is truly complete and it just works. Thank you.
Excellent and functional.
Absolutely worth the money, the TTS integration is great.
Wow, this app is great, I use it constantly for my ebooks.
It's worked well so far and met my expectations.
Good to know
No. Lectern is a one-time purchase of €2.49 (price varies by country), with no ads and no in-app purchases. You buy it once and it's yours.
Yes. Reading, the read-aloud voices, highlights, the dictionary and your library all work with no connection. The only time it goes online is for an optional catalog or sync that you set up yourself.
Yes, using on-device voices: your system's, plus higher-quality Piper and Kokoro neural packs. It highlights the sentence it's reading, plays narrated EPUB3 books, and can run ambient sound and a sleep timer.
Yes. Lectern reflows text-based PDFs into flowing text, then reads them aloud with the same on-device voices. Scanned, image-only PDFs have no text layer, so they can be viewed but not read aloud.
Yes. You can link your own M4B or MP3 audiobook to a book, and Lectern also follows EPUB3 Media Overlays for professionally narrated titles.
EPUB and EPUB3, PDF, MOBI and KF8, FB2, plain text, and CBZ, CBR and CB7 comics, including fixed-layout books.
Yes, through a folder you control on Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or Nextcloud. Your reading position, bookmarks, highlights and ratings stay in step across devices, with no Lectern account or server in between.
No. There are no ads, no analytics and no tracking of any kind. Your books, highlights and reading statistics stay on your device.
Android phones and tablets, and it behaves well on e-ink devices thanks to a reduce-motion option and calm defaults.
Yes. OpenDyslexic is built in, there's a one-tap Dyslexia preset, and a reduce-motion option keeps things calm on e-ink screens.
Yes. Lectern can import your Kindle highlights from a “My Clippings” file, and can export your highlights to Markdown or JSON.
No. Lectern is a paid, closed-source app made by Hofstack. It uses some open components (such as Piper / sherpa-onnx voices) but the app itself isn't open source.
Lectern focuses on high-quality on-device read-aloud (neural Piper and Kokoro voices), an ebook-and-audiobook combo, faithful typography and account-less sync, with no ads at any tier. See the full comparison.
The app is translated into English, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Hindi.
On the privacy page. In short: no servers, no accounts, no ads, no tracking. Your data stays on your device.
Say hello
Found a bug, want a feature, or just want to talk about books? Write to us. We read everything that comes in.
info@lecternreader.app