Eist (pronounced "esht", Irish for "listen") transforms your EPUB and PDF files into natural-sounding audiobooks using AI text-to-speech.
LISTEN TO ANY BOOK
Import any EPUB or PDF from your device, and Eist reads it aloud with remarkably natural AI voices. No internet required after downloading a voice — perfect for commutes, workouts, or winding down.
MULTIPLE AI VOICES
Choose from a selection of high-quality AI voice engines including Kokoro, Piper, and Supertonic. Each voice offers a different character and style. Preview voices before committing, and switch anytime.
SMART AUDIO SYNTHESIS
Eist intelligently pre-generates audio ahead of your listening position, so playback is seamless. Synthesised audio is cached locally — chapters you've already listened to play back instantly.
FULL PLAYBACK CONTROLS
- Adjustable playback speed
- Sleep timer
- Background playback with lock screen controls
- Chapter navigation
- Skip forward and back
OFFLINE FIRST
Download a voice model once, then listen without an internet connection. Your books, progress, and cached audio all live on your device.
DISCOVER BOOKS
Browse and download thousands of public domain books from Project Gutenberg, directly within the app.
YOUR LIBRARY, YOUR WAY
- Track reading progress across all your books
- Resume exactly where you left off
- View chapter-by-chapter progress
PRIVACY RESPECTED
No account required. No tracking. No analytics. All your books and listening data stay on your device.
SUBSCRIPTION
- Eist Premium
- Unlimited book library
- All AI voice models
- Payment charged to your Apple ID account
- Subscription automatically renews unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period
- Manage or cancel anytime in Settings > Apple ID > Subscriptions
Privacy Policy: https://eist.app/privacy
Terms of Use: https://eist.app/terms
I’ve been using éist for a while now and it’s genuinely transformed how I get through my reading list. The AI narration is surprisingly natural with none of that robotic, stilted delivery you’d expect. It actually sounds like someone is reading to you.That said, it’s not without its quirks. PDFs can have encoding issues where ligature characters get mangled and odd symbols appear in the text. There are also occasional random skips and stops that seem to be glitches, and sometimes subheading text gets mixed into the body text which can make it hard to follow unless you’re reading along with the audio. One UI thing I’d love to see fixed: it’s too easy to accidentally tap other text while reading ahead, which jumps the audio unexpectedly. A double-tap to navigate would go a long way.But for an app doing something this ambitious, these feel like growing pains rather than dealbreakers. What keeps me coming back is how effortless it makes long-form reading. Commutes, workouts, doing the dishes, content I’d otherwise never get to is now just part of my day.Highly recommended for anyone who wants to actually get through their backlog.
Developer Response
Wow thanks for the review!I can add double tap to jump to text in the settings and will look into ironing out more of the pdf parsing issues !
## What's new
- Lock screen Now Playing restored on iOS. Track title, chapter, and play/pause/skip
controls are visible again from the lock screen and Control Center.
- More reliable background playback on iOS. Synthesis pauses periodically while the
screen is locked so iOS no longer force-closes the app during long listening sessions.
- New "Background reliability" toggle (iOS only). Settings → Background reliability
lets you turn the new pacing strategy off if it ever makes playback worse on your
device. On by default.
- Bigger audio buffer ahead of you. When the app is open, Eist now caches up to about
60 minutes of audio ahead of the cursor, so locked-screen playback survives much
longer without pausing to synthesize.
## Under the hood
- Thermal-aware buffering pulls back when the device is hot and resumes when it cools
down, instead of cooking the SoC to fill an already-large buffer.
- Synthesis-side CPU sampler instrumentation for diagnosing background pressure on
older iPads.
Version 1.1.3
The developer, William O'Meara, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
Purchases
Identifiers
Usage Data
Diagnostics
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
Seller
William O'Meara
Size
125.8 MB
Category
Books
Compatibility
Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 14.0 or later.
iPod touch Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 11.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
