You own the books. Now they are in order.
Akoue keeps the books you already own in one collection on iPhone and iPad: audiobooks and text together, in order. Folders of MP3s become books, EPUB and FB2 sit next to the narration, and the player is built for books.
akoue[aˈku.e]ah-KOO-ehGreek listen
Authors, series, narrators, genres. What you need in seconds
A library organized like a library: an author has a card and their books, a series shows its volumes with the gaps visible, a narrator has a glossary of their own. Twelve sort orders, nineteen filters, your own tags, a genre tree and smart shelves — and a search that forgives the wrong keyboard layout and transliteration.
- dtlmvfr and vedmak both find “Ведьмак”; with no exact match, it corrects the typo. Books show up in Spotlight too
- Several narrations and a text edition of one book live side by side, each with its own progress: listen to one, read the other
- Ïèêíèê íà îáî÷èíå → “Пикник на обочине”: Cyrillic is repaired from broken encodings in one tap, with a preview
- Edits never touch the files on disk; every field taken from the tags shows its original value and “Restore”. Selected books are edited at once: author, series, numbering
- The make-up of a book is yours: a file gets a caption of your own, the order is set by dragging, a studio jingle is dropped from the book while staying on disk
- A star rating, Favorites and tags of your own are your marks on top of the file’s metadata: the list sorts by rating and narrows to a tag or to favorites in one tap
- The cover comes from a tag, a file next door or the folder; your own from Photos or the camera. Deleted items wait 30 days in the trash
A hundred files play as one book
A music player loses its place in a book of a hundred files, knows nothing about chapters, rewinds to the wrong spot and distorts the voice when sped up. In Akoue a book has one continuous timeline, chapters from M4B, tags and cue files, and speed that leaves the voice intact.
- The position never breaks between files and survives a phone call, a change of headphones and a restart
- Skip back and skip forward are set separately; after a pause the book rewinds on its own, further the longer you were away
- Speed 0.5×–3× without distorting the voice; a separate speed for a particular narrator
- The sleep timer runs on listening time or the clock, your choice: “to the end of the chapter”, a fade-out, and the position rolls back when it fires
- Bookmarks in one tap, with a note and a colour; notes are searchable across the whole library
- Chapters are editable by hand: rename one, move its start, split the current one, drop a boundary you do not need
- Finished a volume? The next one in the series starts by itself
On the phone — what you are listening to. The rest waits in your iCloud
With Akoue Pro, finished books move to your own iCloud Drive, not someone else’s cloud — with one tap, or on their own if you set it so — and free up storage, while position, bookmarks and catalog edits travel between iPhone and iPad — pick up either and continue from the same second. Bringing a book back from the cloud is one tap, and free: the book plays while it downloads.
- A local file is never deleted until the cloud copy is confirmed. That is a rule, not a setting
- Bulk cleanup: everything finished, or books not played for a while, with a “frees up N GB” preview
- Finished a book? The app asks whether to offload it and remembers a no. No network — the book waits in the queue and leaves on its own
- What you want at hand stays there: “Keep on device”. Bringing a book back from the cloud and keeping it is free
- Sync runs in the background and offline with deferred sending; if a device has moved back by more than a minute, the app asks where to continue instead of deciding for you
- The next volume in a series is fetched from the cloud ahead of time
- The Storage screen: total size, the largest books, what is on the device and what is in the cloud. Backup, export to JSON and CSV, integrity check — free
- The files stay yours: “Take the files” hands over a book as a folder with its author and title, or a single file as a file, free
Everything you need to listen and catalog, with no book limit and no time limit. Pro is for good with one purchase, or yearly.
No analytics, no ads, no third-party SDKs. The app itself does not go online: Apple services handle the network.
The network is needed only for iCloud — move a book out, bring it back, hand the position to another device — and to buy Pro.
The catalog in JSON and CSV, a backup in one file, and “Take the files” hands over a book’s files.
Numbers that exist in the code
Nothing estimated: every line can be checked in the app.
- audio
- No conversion: mp3 · m4a · m4b · aac · flac · wav · aiff · alac · caf · opus
- text edition
- Built-in reader for epub · fb2 · md and pdf, system viewer for txt · rtf · doc · docx
- chapters
- From M4B, ID3 tags and .cue; editable by hand
- cover
- From a tag, a file next door or the folder. None at all — Akoue draws one
- archives
- ZIP unpacks itself; Cyrillic names in CP866 and CP1251 inside survive
- speed
- 0.5×–3× in steps of 0.05, without distorting the voice
- catalog
- 12 sort orders · 19 filters · tags · smart shelves
- shelves
- 23 condition types, groups joined by AND and OR; a period is stored as an intent, not a date
- search
- Survives the wrong keyboard layout and transliteration: dtlmvfr and vedmak both find “Ведьмак”
- languages
- 5 — English, Russian, German, Spanish, French
- network
- The app itself does not go online: Apple services handle the network. Accounts 0, analytics 0, ads 0
Three steps from a folder to a book
Bring it in
A folder from Files, an archive, a link to the cloud, Share from any app, AirDrop. Or drop it into the Akoue folder in Files — it is picked up by itself.
Check
The import report: what came together by itself, what is worth confirming. A doubt about the author or the title is one screen, pre-filled. Everything can be undone.
Listen
From where you stopped. With Pro — on any device, and finished books move to your iCloud with one tap.
The book on your watch, the phone at home
Put a book on Apple Watch and listen on a run or at the gym without iPhone: through headphones or, on newer watches, the speaker. The place where you stopped finds its way back to the phone by itself.
- The player on the watch is free: no subscription, no separate purchase
- Chapters, speed, the sleep timer and skips with the same intervals as on iPhone
- The book travels directly from iPhone and stays only on your devices
- Your place syncs by itself, and in a doubtful case Akoue asks where to continue
The book at hand without taking the phone out
Behind the wheel, in the kitchen, out on a run: pause, skip and the sleep timer without unlocking the device. All of it free: what you reach for at an awkward moment is not something to lock behind a price.
- Lock Screen
- Dynamic Island
- Widgets with buttons
- Control Center
- Action button
- Siri and Shortcuts
- Spotlight
- Headphones and AirPlay
- Apple Watch
- CarPlay
Five themes, one book
A theme changes the form, never the capabilities. Terminal is free, the other four come with Pro. The gallery with its live preview is open to everyone — you can look before you buy — and every theme keeps an accent colour of its own.
Free to listen. Pro to run a large collection
Nothing about data safety, accessibility or security ever moves into Pro. If you would rather not rent your own books, Pro for good comes first.
- Import folders, archives, loose files and cloud links: Files, iCloud Drive, AirDrop, Share
- Catalog: authors, series, narrators, a genre tree, tags, smart shelves, book fields editable, with a way back to the original
- Encoding repair, several narrations and a text edition of one book
- Apple Watch player
- The player: chapters, skips, speed, sleep timer, bookmarks, smart rewind, the next volume by itself
- Books from iCloud play on the first tap, chapters downloading as you go; bringing them back and keeping them on the phone is free too
- Reader, search that forgives the layout and transliteration, Spotlight
- Lock Screen, widgets, Dynamic Island, Control Center, Siri, CarPlay
- Backup, export to JSON and CSV, integrity check
- Five languages, VoiceOver and Dynamic Type
- Books live in your iCloud, not in your phone’s storage: the device keeps only what you are listening to now
- Finished books move to the cloud with one “yes” — or on their own if you set it so; with no network, a book waits in the queue and leaves on its own
- Sync between iPhone and iPad: position, bookmarks, catalog edits, history
- Bulk cleanup with a “frees up N GB” preview
- Silence skipping and volume leveling
- Scrubber protection: a stray touch won’t move you, and a big jump can be undone with one tap
- 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 — Fluid, Tape, Aura, Night Light — with an accent colour and a title font for each
Pro for good with one purchase, or yearly for as long as you need it. Both work on all your devices, family included. The lifetime option is never going away. There is no book limit and there never will be. Your local price is shown in the App Store.
What people ask before installing
Where do the books come from?
From your files: folders, archives, iCloud Drive, any Files provider, AirDrop, Share. Akoue does not sell or download books.
Is this like Audible?
No. Audible sells you books and lets you listen to them; Akoue puts the ones you already own in order. Audible files (AAX) are protected, and Akoue does not open them.
One book has two narrations and a text edition. Are those duplicates?
No, they are editions of one book. They live in one card, each with its own progress and its own storage state: you can listen to one narration and read the text of the same book. Deleting an edition does not delete the book.
Titles from the internet are all garbled. Can you help?
Yes. Akoue guesses the broken encoding and shows the possible readings with a preview before anything changes. Apply it to one field or to the whole book; the original can always be restored.
Why is there a subscription if you have no servers?
The yearly plan does not pay for servers — there are none. It pays for development: the updates it is renewed for. If you do not want a subscription, buy Pro for good — that option comes first and is not going away.
What happens when the subscription ends?
Pro features close, your data does not: books moved to iCloud come back to the device for free and play; the catalog, bookmarks, statistics and edits stay. Renew or buy for good and everything opens up where you left it.
All questions
Is there an Apple Watch app?
Yes, and it’s free. A book travels from iPhone to the watch directly and plays without the phone; your position finds its way back to iPhone by itself. Details are in the “On your watch” guide.
What if I never buy Pro?
Everything you need to listen to books and keep them in order stays: unlimited import, catalog, player, reader, search, widgets. Pro is for when the collection no longer fits on the phone, or you have more than one device.
Which is better value: for good, or yearly?
Buying for good costs a little over three years of the yearly plan. If you listen constantly and the collection is large, for good is cheaper; if you want to try a year, take the year — you can still buy for good later, and the year was not wasted: Pro worked the whole time.
How many books can I add?
As many as you like. There is no limit in the free version or in Pro, and there will not be one.
Do catalog edits change my files?
No. The original tags are kept separately from your edits, the files on disk are left alone, and every field taken from the tags shows its original value and a “Restore” button. Tags are never written back into the files.
Does it work without the internet?
Yes: everything on the device works with no network. It is only needed for iCloud — to move a book out, bring it back or hand the position to another device — and to buy Pro.
Where do my files go when they are moved out?
Into the Akoue folder in your own iCloud Drive; you can see it in Files. The local file is deleted only after the cloud has confirmed the copy. Bringing a book back is one tap — it plays right away, downloading chapter by chapter.
Will my iCloud be big enough?
The free 5 GB will not hold a collection; moving books out is a deliberate choice and is off by default. The app shows the size before it starts and tells you if iCloud ran out of room — the files stay on the device in that case.
What do you know about me?
Nothing. No accounts, no analytics, no advertising or third-party SDKs. A diagnostic report is sent only at your request, and you see it before it goes.
The title shows on the lock screen. Can I hide it?
Yes. Settings → “Privacy” → “Hide the title on the lock screen”: the system player shows “Audiobook” instead of the title, and a placeholder with the same word instead of the cover. Widgets on the Lock Screen and in StandBy show “Akoue” instead of the title, with no cover. “Index in system search” is switched off in the same place, if your books should not turn up in Spotlight.
How do I take my data with me?
The catalog exports to JSON and CSV, a backup is a single file, and “Take the files” in a book’s menu hands over its files.
Is there Family Sharing?
Yes, on both purchases: one for the family group.
I am in Russia. How do I buy Pro?
The app is available in the Russian App Store, and everything you need to listen to books works free and without a time limit. But from 1 April 2026 Apple no longer accepts payment there: Pro for good and yearly renewals can only be paid from an Apple Account balance or with a code bought earlier. We have no other way to take payment and will not have one — those are the App Store rules.
Is there an Android or Mac version?
No. iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch; Mac is in the queue, with no promises about dates.
Why not look covers up on the internet?
Because that would mean going online, and we promised not to. The cover comes from the file, the folder, or Akoue draws one; you can set your own from Photos or the camera.