A free, open-source desktop app
Turn any e-book into a natural-sounding audiobook on your own computer: and follow along on screen, with the line being read lit up as you listen.
You give it an EPUB e-book; it gives you back an audiobook. The app reads the book aloud in a natural-sounding voice, splits it neatly into chapters, and lets you read along. The sentence you're hearing is highlighted on screen, in time with the narration. Everything runs on your own machine, for free, with no account and no subscription.
Uses Microsoft's neural text-to-speech: lifelike narration with no API key, no cost, and a choice of voices.
The current sentence lights up exactly as it's spoken, so you can read and listen at the same time.
Handles Mandarin and Cantonese too: correct sentence splitting, Chinese fonts, and in-sync highlighting.
Detects real chapters and skips the cover, copyright, and index pages, naming each audio file sensibly.
If it's interrupted, just run it again. It picks up where it left off instead of starting over.
Light/dark themes, adjustable speed and text size, auto-advance, a sleep timer, and keyboard shortcuts.
Six versions of refinement, from the first working converter to a polished reader with Chinese support and one-click setup. Version 6 is the latest.
The app is open source. Grab the code, install a few free Python packages, and run version 6. Full step-by-step instructions are in the README.