Ebook & audiobook reader for Android
Lectern opens EPUB, PDF, comics and more, reads them aloud when you want, and keeps your place in sync across devices. Everything stays on your phone. No account, no ads, and no one keeping tabs on what you read.
One reader for your whole shelf
A look inside
Real screens from the app, not mock-ups.
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.
Now reading aloud
The maester stood on the windswept balcony. Here the ravens came, after long flight.
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
There's a lot here. None of it shouts for attention until you need it.
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.
Good to know
Lectern is a paid app, with no ads. You'll find the current price on its Google Play page.
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, 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.
EPUB and EPUB3, PDF, MOBI and KF8, FB2, plain text, and CBZ, CBR and CB7 comics, including fixed-layout books.
Yes, using on-device voices: your system's, plus higher-quality Piper and Kokoro packs. It highlights the sentence it's reading, plays narrated EPUB3 books, and can run ambient sound and a sleep timer.
OpenDyslexic is built in, there's a one-tap Dyslexia preset, and a reduce-motion option keeps things calm on e-ink screens.
The app is translated into English, Dutch, German and French.
Say hello
Found a bug, want a feature, or just want to say hi? Write to us. We read everything that comes in.
info@lectern-ereader.app