Hearken

What it does

Hearken is an audiobook-style reader that turns your own books and documents into audio using on-device text-to-speech. Import EPUBs, PDFs, Markdown, HTML, FB2, or text files, download a voice model once, and listen offline anywhere — even on a plane. Because narration runs locally on your phone, your books and documents do not need to be uploaded to a cloud TTS service.

Hearken converts your books and PDFs into audiobooks with natural, offline text-to-speech. Narration runs entirely on-device — no account, no cloud, nothing uploaded.

Hearken turns any text into a private, on-device listening experience. Import your books, listen anywhere, follow along with the text. Import EPUB, PDF, FB2, HTML, Markdown, or plain text. Your books line up on one shelf, with reading progress saved for each. Set the speed, set a sleep timer, and search inside the book to jump straight to any passage. Daily activity and running totals show how much you've listened and keep your momentum going. Narration runs entirely on your phone. No cloud, no servers. After the one-time voice download, everything works in airplane mode. Nothing to sign up for, nothing uploaded. Your books stayfrom hearken.cc

• 
  HearIt2020 · apps.apple.com · ▲81

  Create your own audio books from any file for free.

• 
  Outtloud2025 · outtloud.com · ▲208

  Create unlimited audiobooks & podcasts from your documents!

• 
  Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command2024 · github.com · ▲105

  QuickPiperAudiobook locally generates an mp3 audiobook on Linux with one easy command. It can convert PDFs, epub, mobi, and many more by using ebook-convert. It uses any piper TTS model, and thus supports a wide variety of languages. I've had great success using it to read more while reducing eye strain and computer usage. I think I've probably read 30 or so books this way now over the past year. Being able to listen to any content you want in audio form free and offline while going for a walk is extremely handy. I hope it helps you as well! Cheers

• 
  I generated 70k audiobooks with OpenAI Text-to-Speech2024 · listenly.io · ▲140

  Hey HN. I’m Ivan, hacker from Ukraine. For about a year, I was working on Listenly — an app to listen to text content with OpenAI's natural-sounding text-to-speech model. At some moment, I realized that it would be cool to take all the public domain e-books and create audio versions for them. So I did it... kind-of. It would cost an immense amount of money to generate all the audio right away (OpenAI TTS costs approximately $0.84/hour of audio; 11labs, for comparison, is 10 times more expensive). So, I took a more gradual approach. I took all the metadata from the Project Gutenberg…

• 
  Heard for iOS: ePub reader with on-device text to speechJul 2026 · heard.quest · ▲5

  Heard is an offline iOS EPUB reader with natural text-to-speech. Listen to your own EPUB books or 56 included classics on iPhone—no ads or accounts.

• 
  VoiceRead AI — Offline Text to SpeechApr 2026 · ▲10

  Your browser’s voice, now 100% offline.

• 
  SimCity, but with Permits▲919

  A free city-building game in your browser. You are the mayor. You know what the city needs. Now get it past the zoning board, the neighbors, the appeals court and the next election.

  Life & fun · 2d ago · permit.petercai.com

• IV
  I've been paying for a rural Tanzanian's education for 10 years▲778

  Life & fun · 14d ago · tanzaniaeducationproject.org

• 
  Bigwords.page – Turn any screen into a sign. The URL is the app▲728

  Turn a phone, tablet or TV into a sign. Type a message and it fills the screen: welcome signs, timers, Wi-Fi passwords and more. No app, no account, free.

  Life & fun · 15d ago · bigwords.page

• 
  Guitoro, a virtual guitar you strum with your keyboard▲573

  Play a free virtual guitar online with your keyboard or by touch. Slow songs down and see every chord, string and strum. Acoustic, classic, electric and bass.

  Life & fun · 9d ago · guitoro.com

• 
  See *almost* any carriers phone settings▲432

  Carrier settings from iPhone, Pixel and Galaxy firmware, decoded and compared: APNs, VoLTE, 5G and Wi-Fi Calling per carrier, and what each build changed.

  Life & fun · 13d ago · carrierexplode.com

• 
  The whole Solar System and every tracked satellite, live in the browser▲407

  Life & fun · 23d ago · space.bl2.net

• IR
  I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s▲2,935

  I might be the only SRE on Earth with his own bowling center. It's a more in-depth gig than you'd think. My family and I bought an abandoned 8-lane bowling center in the rural mid-west. In our small town there weren't many recreation options for families. You've heard of a food desert? This is an R&R desert. It had been abandoned for a good reason. The roof leaks, the electrical system was constantly surging, and my 70-year-old bowling equipment (still) doesn't work perfectly. The system that keeps your score is particularly interesting to me. It's the thing you watch during your game, but…

  Life & fun · Jul 2026

• 
  Elevators▲1,680

  How elevators push your buttons

  Life & fun · Jul 2026 · john.fun

• 
  18 Words▲1,160

  Play 18 Words, the free daily word puzzle. The official home is 18words.com. Tap Play now to open today

  Life & fun · Jul 2026 · 18words.com

• BA
  Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)▲1,033

  Over the past few months, our team has been building more and more slidedecks using web frontend technologies with coding harnesses like Claude Code, but a common complaint is to make even small edits we need to edit the code either manually or via the harness. To avoid this loop, I ended up creating Bento, a single HTML file with everything you need in a slide tool including animations and shared editing. There's no install or cloud login, everything works offline. The default deck is around 560 KB and it doesn't need to fetch anything once you got it. Open it in a browser and then you can…

  Dev tools · Jul 2026 · bento.page

• 
  Getting GLM 5.2 running on my slow computer▲937

  A few days ago I found myself trying out GLM 5.2 and was really positively impressed. The capabilities and security I was getting from this LLM are similar to those I've gotten from models like Claude or GPT, and this really surprised me. But then I thought, "I wonder how it would work on a normal computer like mine," and above all, "I wonder if it would work without going into OOM on a computer like mine." So I started working with the help of agents to test this possibility. I started converting the model to int4, understanding MTP usage, and if possible implementing DSA for long context.…

  AI · Jul 2026 · github.com

• 
  OpenSEO▲928

  Hello! For the last 2 months, I've been building OpenSEO. It's a user friendly UI wrapping the DataForSEO API which has high quality SEO data for keywords, backlinks, AI SEO and competitor research. Instead of paying $100+ per month, you buy DataForSEO credits and pay only for usage. The coolest thing about the project so far has been hearing about what people are building on top of it. People are using coding agents to quickly integrate with Google Search Console, Google Ads and building their own AI SEO and reporting features. Many were already building their own custom solutions around…

  Dev tools · Jul 2026 · openseo.so