akoue/guides/settings

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.

The sections go in this order: “Akoue Pro”, “Appearance”, “Playback”, “Audio processing”, “Sleep timer”, “Data”, “Sync”, “Privacy”, “Statistics”, “Maintenance”, “About”. In the Terminal theme the screen title is replaced by the line akoue/conf.

Almost everything here is free. Paid rows are not hidden: they carry a “Pro” lock, and a tap opens the Akoue Pro screen with an explanation. Skips, speed, the timer fade and hiding the title travel to your other devices with sync; the theme, colour, language and auto timer are kept per device.

01/08

Akoue Pro, and what is where

The first row tells you where things stand with the purchase: there is none, it is for good, or it is a subscription until a certain date.

“Akoue Pro”, captioned “Forever or yearly”, opens the Akoue Pro screen: what is included and what it costs.
Bought for good — “Pro forever”. A subscription — “until <date>, renews automatically” and a “Manage Subscription” button.
If the subscription has ended, a banner in the same place says “Your Akoue Pro subscription has ended”: Pro features are closed, books and data are in place. Next to it: “Renew” and “Buy forever”.
At the very bottom, under “About”: “What’s new”, “Write to the developer”, “Restore Purchases”, “Diagnostics” and the version.

If a subscription payment failed, the row shows the grace period — the date until which Pro keeps working.

02/08

Theme, colour and language

The “Appearance” section changes how the app looks, not what it can do.

“Theme” opens the gallery: “Terminal”, “Fluid”, “Tape”, “Aura” as live pieces of the app, each with a “Choose” button. Terminal is free and the other three are Pro, but you can look at all of them.
“Accent colour” is the colour of buttons, marks and progress, separate for each theme: “As designed”, seven presets or “Other colour…”. This belongs to Pro.
“Interface language”: “Same as system”, “Русский”, “English”, “Deutsch”, “Español”, “Français”.
A new language takes effect the next time the app starts — a line under the list reminds you of that.

The light or dark scheme comes from the theme: Terminal and Aura are dark, Fluid is light, Tape follows the system.

03/08

Playback

Everything that changes how the player behaves sits in one section. Changes reach the player and the lock screen at once, even while a book is playing.

“Back” and “Forward” are skips from 5 to 120 seconds; 15 and 60 by default.
“Rewind after pause” — “Adaptive” by default, a fixed one from 2 to 30 seconds, or “Off”.
“Count as finished from” — 90, 95, 98 or 99 %; the last 30 seconds of a book count as finished at any threshold. “Default speed” — from 0.5× to 3×.
Switches: “Resume after a call”, “Pause when headphones come off”, “Headphone double-press — chapter”, “Next Book Automatically”, “Preload Next Book”, “Skip by double-tapping the cover”.

“Headphone double-press — chapter” is off by default: once on, it replaces the skip buttons on the lock screen with chapter buttons.

04/08

Sleep timer

The timer itself is set in the player; here you choose how it puts the book to sleep and when it starts by itself.

“Fade out at the end” — how many seconds the sound fades for; 20 by default.
“Rewind when it fires” — how far to go back when the timer fires; 30 seconds by default.
“Counts” — “By playback time” or “By the clock”. By playback time at 1.5×, a half-hour timer ends after twenty minutes; by the clock, after thirty.
“Extend by shaking” and “Auto sleep timer”: from what time to what time the timer starts by itself, and for how long.

The auto timer is off by default; once on, it works from 22:00 to 6:00, runs for 30 minutes and never overrides a timer you set by hand.

05/08

Data: offloading and backups

The “Data” section is about space and safety: what goes to iCloud and how to take the catalog with you.

At the top: “Used on device” and “In iCloud”.
“Offload finished books automatically” offloads without asking once you finish a book; with “Offload only over Wi‑Fi”, offloading waits while you are on cellular. Offloading itself belongs to Pro.
“Catalogue backup in iCloud” is on by default: the catalog goes into your iPhone backup, the audio does not.
“Auto cleanup” (Pro) holds the rules by which space frees itself. “Backup as a file” is a catalog backup in one file plus an export to a table and JSON.

The Storage screen with its operations and the list of the largest books is a tab of its own, not a settings row.

06/08

Privacy

Two switches, both about what is visible outside the app.

“Hide the title on the lock screen”: the system player shows “Audiobook”, with no author and no cover. Off by default.
“Index in system search”: books and authors can be found in Spotlight. On by default; turning it off also removes what is already indexed.
Under the section the main point is spelled out: no analytics are collected, and the app never goes online — neither for covers nor for metadata.

Hiding the title applies to the lock screen, Control Center and everything else that takes its data from the system player; it does not hide widgets or CarPlay lists.

07/08

Maintenance

Three buttons for when something has gone wrong, or when you want to start your settings from a clean slate.

“Clean up catalog” removes authors, series and narrators with no books left.
“Rescan library” checks every book’s files, recounts the lengths and rebuilds search — deleting nothing. The result appears as a line under the section.
“Reset settings” returns the skips, speed, timer, appearance, language and the rest to their defaults. Books, progress, bookmarks and the purchase stay.

After a reset the language changes at the next launch. A deleted “On device” shelf does not come back with a reset.

08/08

Large text and VoiceOver

There is no separate “large buttons” setting: the app follows the system text size.

Make the text larger in the iPhone settings: “Display & Brightness” → “Text Size”, or “Accessibility”.
With large text the player buttons grow, the second row wraps onto two lines, and list rows stack into a column.
The figures on the skip buttons never break between digits; at the largest sizes they move inside the icon.
With VoiceOver every button has a label — “Back 15 seconds”, “Back to where playback started” — and the scale reads as “Position in the book” and steps by a minute.

The text size in the reader is a setting of its own, from 14 to 28 points, and does not depend on the system one.

What the settings do not have

An “Import” section: name patterns and the default encoding are not configurable — the app parses the files by itself and asks when it is unsure.
An equaliser or a mono mix.
Sleep timer presets of your own: the durations are fixed, and your own length is set in the player.
A light and dark scheme switch: the theme sets the scheme.
Changing the language without restarting the app.

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