Guides
How to get things done in Akoue: step by step, with screenshots. Buttons are called exactly what they are called in the app.
- 5 scenarios
The first five minutes
The app does not begin with an empty list but with three screens that explain what it does to your files. You can skip them, but they are short and answer the main questions at once.
- 8 scenarios
Import
Akoue does not download books: it puts in order the ones you already have. A folder of MP3s, an archive, files from a cloud or a messenger become a book with an author, chapters and a cover.
- 6 scenarios
Library
The library is the whole catalog on one screen: five views of one collection, twelve sort orders, nineteen filters, and actions on a book straight from the list.
- 9 scenarios
Shelves
A shelf is a saved question to your library: “what to listen to on the road”, “what I never get around to”. The answer is rebuilt every time you open it, instead of going stale like a hand-made list.
- 6 scenarios
Search
Search forgives what you would normally fix by hand: the wrong keyboard layout, Latin letters instead of Cyrillic, a typo, “ё” where “е” was meant. It looks through titles, authors with their aliases, narrators, series, genres, chapters and bookmark notes.
- 5 scenarios
Editing the catalog
Everything the app guessed during import can be corrected by hand — and no edit ever touches the files on disk. The original tags are kept separately, so you can always go back to what the file said.
- 4 scenarios
Covers
A cover comes from your files and only from them: a picture in the book’s folder, a file’s tag or the text itself. The app never goes online for one — the same promise as for the metadata.
- 7 scenarios
Authors, series and narrators
The library is built like a library rather than a folder of files: an author has a page with all their books, a series shows its volumes by number, a narrator has a glossary of their own.
- 11 scenarios
Universes
A universe brings together books set in one world by different authors: whole series, single books and the order of events.
- 3 scenarios
A book’s make-up and chapters
A book of a hundred files is one timeline, not a hundred tracks. How exactly it is put together shows on the “Structure and files” screen: what follows what, how long it runs and where it came from.
- 6 scenarios
Editions: narrations and text
A book in Akoue has two levels: the book itself — the catalog record — and its editions, the actual files. Two narrations, a translation and a text live in one card instead of scattering across the library as four duplicates.
- 7 scenarios
The reader
A book’s text lives in the same card as its narration. EPUB, FB2 and Markdown open in the built-in reader, PDF in a page reader of its own. Every edition keeps its own reading place, and it is not lost even when you change the font size.
- 7 scenarios
The player
The player is built for a book, not for music: a hundred files make one continuous timeline, the skips are set separately, and speed does not spoil the voice.
- 8 scenarios
Bookmarks
A bookmark is an exact spot in a book you want to come back to: a quote, the moment you got distracted, the start of a scene. One tap to set, and one tap from the list takes you back.
- 5 scenarios
Sleep timer
The sleep timer stops the book when you have fallen asleep: it fades the sound out, pauses and rewinds half a minute, so in the morning you find the place where you drifted off.
- 8 scenarios
On your watch
Put a book on your watch and listen without your phone: on a run, at the gym, on a walk. The book travels straight from your iPhone, and your position finds its way back to the phone on its own.
- 5 scenarios
Without opening the app
A book can be paused, skipped, resumed and put to sleep without opening Akoue: from the lock screen, headphones or a widget, by voice and in the car.
- 8 scenarios
Storage and space
Audiobooks eat memory faster than anything else. The Storage screen shows how much is taken and by what, and lets you clear the excess — but only after showing exactly what will go.
- 3 scenarios
Syncing devices
Start on the phone, carry on from the same second on the tablet. Position, bookmarks and card edits travel between your devices through your own iCloud, with no accounts and no one else’s servers.
- 4 scenarios
Your data
You can leave the app at any moment and lose nothing: the catalog exports into open formats, “Take the files” hands over a book’s files, and what you delete waits thirty days in the trash.
- 6 scenarios
Themes and accent colour
Five themes mean five different-looking apps and one and the same app underneath. A theme changes the shape of the list, the home screen and the density of the data; the set of capabilities is identical in all of them.
- 3 scenarios
Statistics and year in review
How many hours, which genres and narrators, how many days in a row — and the year in review. Figures and names, with no grades and no praise.
- 8 scenarios
Settings
Settings is the fifth tab. It holds only what changes how the app behaves: books are edited on their cards, and space is freed on the Storage tab. Under every section a caption says what it does and what it leaves alone.
- 9 scenarios
If something is wrong
Almost every problem in Akoue has a screen of its own: it names the cause and suggests the next step. Here is where to find them and what to tap before you write to the developer.