On-device only.
No cloud. No account. No telemetry. Your books and the audio they become live entirely on your iPhone.
00 — On-device AI · Private narration
Your books, read aloud
— privately, on your iPhone.
Local Narrator turns any EPUB or PDF in your library into a real audiobook — read aloud by a local AI voice model running on the Apple Neural Engine. Nothing leaves your device. No cloud. No account. It even works offline.
The on-device AI moment
The future of AI is local. Local Narrator has been there all along.
Apple Intelligence, iOS 27, and Apple's on-device Foundation Models — the whole industry is moving AI off the cloud and onto the device, where it stays private and runs instantly. Local Narrator already does exactly that: a neural AI voice model that runs entirely on your iPhone's Apple Neural Engine. Your books become audiobooks without a single byte leaving your phone.
On-device AI
Local AI model
Apple Neural Engine
No cloud
Private by design
01 — The Idea
A small, careful app for people who still read.
Drop a book in. Pick a voice. Press play. Local Narrator quietly handles the rest — the text, the speech, the page you stopped on last night.
A local AI voice model.
The Kokoro neural model runs on the Apple Neural Engine, on-device — no servers, no API calls. Warm, natural, and remarkably small.
Bilingual.
English and Spanish, with the right voice for each language. A Spanish book is never read by an English narrator.
Like a real audiobook.
Lock-screen controls, background playback, sleep timer, and a Home and Lock screen widget. It just behaves.
02 — Three steps
From the cover of a book to the sound of it, in under a minute.
01
Drop in your EPUB or PDF.
Use the share sheet, the Files picker, or AirDrop. The book stays on your iPhone — only your iPhone.
02
Pick a voice. English or Spanish.
Choose from neural voices that suit the book — or fall back to Apple's built-in system voices. Free either way.
03
Press play. Carry on with your day.
Walk, drive, do dishes. Local Narrator picks up exactly where you stopped last time you were listening.
03 — The voices
Quiet, warm, and language-aware.
A small, hand-picked roster shipped with the app. Each voice trained for the language it speaks. Switch between them at any time — your reading position is preserved.
Heart
EN-US
Bella
EN-US
Adam
EN-US
George
EN-UK
Dora
ES
Alex
ES
Apple's built-in system voices are also available, in every language your iPhone supports.
04 — The promise
A simple, unfashionable idea: your reading is your business.
We never see your books. We never see your reading. There is no server. There is no account. There is nothing to opt out of.
No accounts
No telemetry
No ads
Works offline
05 — The price
One small fee. Yours forever.
Free to download and try with one book and Apple's system voices. One in-app purchase unlocks the rest. No subscription, no upsell, no surprises.
— One-time purchase
$9.99
Family Sharing supported. No subscription. Future updates included.
- ✓ Unlimited books
- ✓ All neural voices, English and Spanish
- ✓ 0.5× to 3.0× playback speed
- ✓ Home & Lock-screen widget
- ✓ Sleep timer & unlimited bookmarks
- ✓ Every future update, on the house
Free to download · Try first, buy later
06 — Questions
On-device AI, answered.
Does Local Narrator use the cloud or send my books to a server?
No. Local Narrator runs its AI voice model entirely on your iPhone's Apple Neural Engine. Your books, and the audio they become, never leave your device. There is no server, no account, and no telemetry — it works in airplane mode.
Is this on-device AI, like Apple Intelligence on iOS 27?
Yes — it shares the same philosophy. As Apple moves AI on-device with Apple Intelligence and its Foundation Models in iOS 27, Local Narrator already runs a local neural voice model on your iPhone, privately and offline, with no cloud round-trip.
What file formats can it read aloud?
Local Narrator turns EPUB ebooks and text-based PDF files into audiobooks. Drop a book in with the share sheet, Files, or AirDrop, pick a voice, and press play.
What languages and voices are supported?
English and Spanish, each with its own language-matched neural voices so a Spanish book is never read by an English narrator. Apple's built-in system voices are also available in every language your iPhone supports.
How much does Local Narrator cost?
It is free to download and try. A single one-time in-app purchase of $9.99 unlocks unlimited books and all neural voices forever. There is no subscription, and Family Sharing is supported.
Which iPhones are supported?
Local Narrator requires iOS 18.6 or later and runs best on iPhone 15 or newer, where the Apple Neural Engine powers the on-device AI voices.