Abookify Desktop v0.1.0 — Linux (AppImage + .deb)

The no-Docker way to run Abookify on Linux. Download, open, and it runs the reader and server on your own machine — no terminal, no account, nothing leaves your hardware.

What this is

Abookify Desktop is a small native shell that starts the Abookify server + reader in the background and opens straight to your library. Close it to the tray and playback keeps going; quit from the tray to stop it. It's the same open-source server underneath — the app just manages its lifecycle.

Reading and importing books work the moment it opens. When you want spoken narration (TTS) or transcripts (STT), the app offers to set up an on-device speech engine on first run (with optional GPU acceleration via your host driver) — or you can point it at your own cloud API key instead. No speech engine is required to read.

Downloads (Linux x86-64)

File	Size	SHA-256
abookify_0.1.0_amd64.AppImage	84 MB	257c7600a4e518ca24aea36c5a452f10442f60d2309fa26b268393d81820d3b2
abookify_0.1.0_amd64.deb	10 MB	b3e6befd314e5e93b01023da7b94d043e078ad7bfb93510317ee5be86e465c3d

Install

AppImage (any distro): mark it executable and run it.

chmod +x abookify_0.1.0_amd64.AppImage
./abookify_0.1.0_amd64.AppImage

.deb (Debian / Ubuntu):

sudo dpkg -i abookify_0.1.0_amd64.deb

Then launch Abookify from your applications menu.

Platform coverage

• Linux — available now (this release).
• macOS (.dmg) and Windows (.msi) — coming. The builds are wired but gated on code-signing certificates (Apple Developer ID / Authenticode); they'll ship once signing is in place. This release does not include a macOS or Windows download.

Notes

• The on-device speech engine is fetched on first run — it is not bundled in this download, which is what keeps it small. GPU acceleration uses your host NVIDIA driver directly (no container toolkit needed).
• Open source: the server is AGPL-3.0 (abookify-server); the .abook file-format spec is CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Privacy: your library stays on your hardware. See https://abookify.com/privacy.

Showcase — sample .abook files (17 books, 4 narration types)

Abookify showcase — sample .abook files

Free, public-domain classics packaged as example .abook files, each a complete
book with word-level audio↔text read-along. Download one and open it in the
in-browser viewer, the Abookify app, or the abook
CLI (abook info <file>). Browse them (with 30-second audio previews) at
https://abookify.com/showcase.

17 books across four narration types (all public-domain text from Project
Gutenberg; synthetic narration is clearly labeled — no quality claims vs humans):

Human narration — LibriVox

• Pride and Prejudice · A Christmas Carol · The Time Machine · The Call of the Wild · The Wonderful Wizard of Oz · Peter Pan · Frankenstein · The War of the Worlds · Dracula · The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

AI — Kokoro TTS (Abookify's open-weights voice, word-synced)

• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (af_heart) · The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (am_michael) · Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (af_bella) · The Wind in the Willows (bm_george)

AI — Project Gutenberg neural TTS (PG × Microsoft × MIT; near-perfect alignment)

• The Call of the Wild (AI) — an A/B pair with the LibriVox human reading · Treasure Island

Radio drama — adaptation (low text-alignment by design; shows the honest directional coverage readout)

• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge — Escape (CBS, 1947)

Each .abook bundles its full ATTRIBUTION.txt + license. Asset names are slugs
(<title>-<author>.abook).