akoue/what is inside

What is inside

The full list of what the app does today. Nothing from the growth queue and nothing aspirational: every line is in the code and can be checked in the app.

The Pro badge marks the paid features. Everything else is free, with no limit on the number of books.

Import

From anywhere, in any shape.

A whole folder, walked recursively; separate files gathered into one book or into several — it asks which
Files taken through Open in…, AirDrop, Mail, messengers and Share
The app’s own folder in Files: anything put there directly, Finder included, is picked up by itself
Import by reference, without copying: the book stays in iCloud Drive or another cloud
ZIP unpacked on the way in, Cyrillic names in CP866 and CP1251 included
Book boundaries: a folder is a book, “Disc 1” and “Disc 2” are joined, a folder of folders is a set of books
Natural order of segments: 2 before 10; it understands “Chapter 1”, “CD1-03”, “part_02”
Folder-name patterns: author, title, series, year, genre; junk cleaned out with a preview
An identity check before writing, an import report, cancel with a rollback, resume after a restart
No conversion: mp3 · m4a · m4b · aac · flac · wav · aiff · alac · caf · opus

A book and its editions

Two levels: the catalog record and the actual files.

Several narrations of one book by different narrators are normal, not duplicates
A text edition beside the audio: epub · fb2 · txt · md in the built-in reader, pdf · rtf · docx in the system viewer
Every edition keeps its own position, progress, cover and storage state
The choice of edition is remembered; it can be changed from the card
A book exists with no files at all: something read elsewhere still belongs in the catalog
Deleting an edition does not delete the book; files that turn up later join the record

The catalog

The library is built like a library.

Groupings: all, authors, narrators, series, genres. 12 sort orders and 16 filters with “none of” exclusions
Smart shelves: 17 condition types, groups joined by AND and OR, a period stored as an intent rather than a date
Editing the book’s fields and each edition’s; the original tags are kept apart, with “Restore original” next to every field
Bulk editing of selected books in one transaction: author, series with renumbering, genres, title clean-up rules
Encoding repair: readings ranked by plausibility, a live preview, manual entry
Authors, narrators and series are catalog records: cards, sorting names, fractional volume numbers, visible gaps
Merging an author’s duplicates, a photo and a note on their page
A hierarchical genre tree, a star rating, favourites, a trash that keeps things 30 days
Covers: from a tag, a file next door or the folder; your own from Photos, Files or the camera, with cropping
Editing the make-up and the chapters: a caption per file, order by dragging, a file excluded, a chapter split

The player

Built for a book, not for music.

A hundred files as one timeline: the position does not break at the seams and survives a call, a change of headphones and a reboot
Chapters from M4B, CHAP frames in ID3 and .cue; two scales — the book and the chapter
Skip back and skip forward set separately; the intervals are handed to the system
A smart rewind after a pause: further the longer you were away
Speed 0.5×–3× in steps of 0.05 without distorting the voice; a speed of its own per narrator
Sleep timer: presets and a custom length, “to the end of the chapter”, a fade, a position rollback, an evening auto timer, a shake to reset
Bookmarks in one tap, with notes and colours; one list across the library and export to Markdown
The next volume of a series starts by itself; a ring marks where the sound began and a button returns to that second
Silence skipping and volume leveling

Storage and the cloud

Memory stays free and the books stay yours.

The Storage screen: the size of the library, a breakdown by book, the largest ones on the device
An integrity check, clearing the cover cache and a “Recently deleted” trash — free
Offloading to your iCloud Drive; the local file is not deleted until the cloud confirms the copy
Playing an offloaded book on a tap: the first chapter downloads as it goes
Bulk operations with a “frees N GB” preview and auto cleanup by rules
An offload queue, “only over Wi-Fi”, “Keep on device”
Syncing the catalog, progress, bookmarks and edits across devices on one Apple Account
A disagreement of more than a minute is put to you as a question, not decided for you

Search and system entry points

Found in seconds, controlled without reaching for the phone.

Full-text search across books, authors, series, chapters and bookmark notes
Forgiving of the wrong keyboard layout (dtlmvfr) and of transliteration (vedmak); fuzzy search that fixes typos
Five search scopes, a local query history, books and authors in the system Spotlight
The Continue and Library widgets, with buttons that work without opening the app
Lock screen widgets: circular, rectangular, inline
The system Now Playing on the lock screen and in the Dynamic Island
Control Center, the Action button, Siri and Shortcuts, CarPlay

Appearance and statistics

A theme changes the form, not the set of capabilities.

Four themes: Terminal is free; Fluid, Tape and Aura come with Pro
The theme gallery with a live preview is open to everyone: you can look before you buy
An accent colour per theme, with presets and the system picker
Statistics: hours per week, month and year, a streak of days, a breakdown by genre, author and narrator
A year in review

Privacy, data and languages

Nothing about you is gathered and nothing leaves.

No accounts, no analytics, no ads, no third-party SDKs. The only network is your iCloud
Everything works offline
A catalog backup in one file, export to JSON and CSV, audio always sitting there as ordinary files
“Hide the title on the lock screen” and Spotlight indexing you can switch off
Diagnostics are gathered only on request and shown before they are sent; no book titles and no file paths in them
Five interface languages, full VoiceOver and Dynamic Type support

What Pro costs How it is done: the guides Akoue