Hi all,

I’m a big fan of having ebooks read to me while I’m doing stuff that prevents me from reading them myself (driving, working, doing dishes, etc.).

I’ve been using Evie on my Android phone for a few years now, and while it does what I need, the interface is a bit cumbersome, and I wouldn’t mind a better alternative.

Evie offers paid Amazon TTS, which I neither like nor use, but also has free support for Google’s TTS service (not sure if this is his API or just using built-in services on the phone — looks like the voices are Android TTS voices), which I’ve gotten very fond of. I’ve logged 200+ books like this in recent years, and I’m very content with the quality of the voices (I use en-us-x-tpc-network).

Ideally, a FOSS ebook reader would support Android TTS, as well as controlling playback/reading speed. Does anyone know of such an app? 🙂

Incidentally, I was always “annoyed” that the only way to get money to Evie was through the Amazon TTS subscription, which I don’t need or want. I’m a recent update, they added a new feature: paid background sounds to accompany your story, such as “rain”, “train ride”, etc. I bought them all, just to show my support, and actually ended up using one of the background rain sounds for the last book I went through, and quite enjoyed it. I think this is a very nice way for an app to allow users to spend a bit more to show their support; paid, non-critical features.

Also, just now discovered that they actually have a “donate” button 😅 Sent a few more $ their way.

    • renard_roux@beehaw.orgOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thank you! 😃

      Had a look at Cool Reader, bit it’s somehow not compatible with my OnePlus phone 🤔

      Downloaded Book Reader, but sadly no support for Google Speech in Network mode, so no access to the nicer voices. Also, there seems to be no settings for fonts, font size, background color; a bit too bare-bones for me 😓

      • flatbield@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Book Reader is decidedly simple. I actually use Cool Reader.

        Cool Reader interesting. Works on both of my devices. I did change the theme to just white and the font sizes and a few other settings because I did not like the defaults. Otherwise worked great on my quite old ASUS Tablet and on my somewhat newer LG phone.

        Cool Reader is a true FOSS protect. You could see if someone else has the issue by search or if they have a forum etc or put in a bug report. Not sure about Cool Reader but some communities can be quite helpful. I know the AntennaPod guys were crazy responsive. They fixed a bug I reported in a couple of weeks. Shocked me. I had assumed it would take months if ever.

        • renard_roux@beehaw.orgOP
          0·
          1 year ago

          Managed to install Cool Reader from F-Droid, but also doesn’t support Network voices, which is a no-go for me 😓

          Project looks abandoned, there haven’t been any updates for the past 2 years 🤔

          • flatbield@beehaw.orgEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            Last pull request merged about 6 months ago. Just no releases perhaps. So do not know.

            I find it a bit funny that some people think software should need constant work. I see a lotvof comments about abandoned software on alternativeto.net. Short of critical security updates software should need nothing. If it works it works.