Free beta on TestFlight
The home for the library you already own
Read your ebooks. Play your audiobooks. Follow readalouds that highlight every sentence as it's narrated. One native iOS app for all of it, from your own servers or right on your device.
iPhone · CarPlay · No account required
Readalouds
Narration that follows the text
Highlight follows the narration
The current sentence lights up as it's read, page after page. Look away, look back, and you never lose the line.
Tap a sentence to jump the audio
The text is the timeline. Tap anywhere in the book and the narration picks up right there.
Swipe between reading and listening
Move from the reader to the player and back without losing your place. Read at home, listen in the car, resume where you left off.
Three ways to enjoy a book
Ebooks
A fast, clean EPUB reader with custom fonts, full typography and theme control, bookmarks, and a distraction-free reading mode.
Audiobooks
A full-featured player with chapter navigation, playback speed, voice boost, sleep timer, and skip controls tuned to your taste.
Readalouds
Books with synchronized narration. Text and audio stay locked together, so switching between reading and listening is seamless.
Your servers. Your files.
Codex Reader hosts no content and sells no books. It's a beautiful home for the library you already have, wherever it lives.
Storyteller
Connect your self-hosted Storyteller server for ebooks, audiobooks, and full readalouds.
Plex
Point Codex at your Plex audiobook libraries and keep listening everywhere.
OPDS
Browse and download from any standard OPDS catalog you already use.
Your device
No server at all? Import EPUBs, M4B audiobooks, or folders of audio straight from the Files app.
Your library, everywhere you are
Built to feel native because it is native. Codex Reader shows up in all the places an iPhone app should.
CarPlay
Browse your lists and chapters and keep listening on the road.
Lock Screen & Dynamic Island
Live Activities for playback, the sleep timer, and downloads.
Widgets
Jump back into your current book from the Home and Lock Screen.
Siri & Shortcuts
Start playback and open books by name, hands free.
Control Center
A Continue Listening control one swipe away.
Offline-first
Everything you've downloaded works with no connection at all.
Built around ownership and privacy
Codex Reader is for readers who keep their own libraries. That only works if the app respects what's yours.
Progress stays on your device
Codex Reader never uploads where you are in a book to anyone. Not even to us.
No account required
There's nothing to sign up for. You sign in only to your own servers.
Your downloads are just files
Books live on your device in plainly named folders you can browse in the Files app.
Encrypted backups, optional
Protect your settings and library if you switch phones, encrypted end to end.
Built on the open-source Storyteller platform. Inspect the code, self-host it, or contribute.
Coming soon
Codex Cloud
No server? Codex Cloud will turn the books you own into readalouds. No hardware, no setup. Upload an ebook and its audiobook, and get back a synchronized readaloud on all your devices.
Upload
Add an ebook and its matching audiobook (files you own).
Align
Codex Cloud synchronizes the narration with the text, creating a readaloud.
Enjoy
Download the finished readaloud to your devices and read along.
Questions
A book whose text and narration are synchronized. As the audio plays, the current sentence is highlighted in the reader, and you can tap any sentence to jump the narration there. Readalouds come from a Storyteller server today, and from Codex Cloud when it launches.
No. You can import EPUBs, M4B audiobooks, or folders of audio files straight from the Files app and everything works fully offline. A Storyteller, Plex, or OPDS server adds library sync and readalouds, but none of them are required.
EPUB for ebooks, and M4B or MP3 for audiobooks, including multi-file audiobook folders.
No. Your reading progress, bookmarks, and stats stay on your device. Codex Reader has no account system and never uploads where you are in a book to us or anyone else. If you turn on iCloud sync (a Premium feature), your data syncs through your own iCloud and still never touches our servers.
iPhone, with full CarPlay support. The beta runs through TestFlight; an App Store release is coming.
Codex Cloud is an upcoming optional service that aligns your ebooks and audiobooks into readalouds without you running any hardware. It's in development now. Join the waitlist above and we'll tell you the moment it opens.
Yes. Codex Reader is built on the open-source Storyteller platform, which you can run on your own hardware for full control over your library and alignment pipeline.
Reading and listening to your own library is free and stays free. Codex Premium, an optional in-app purchase, adds offline audiobook downloads from Plex and Audiobookshelf, unlimited connected libraries, and iCloud sync. During the TestFlight beta, every tester gets Premium for free.