Offline-first reading for phones and tablets
Fablum - Private E-book Reader for EPUB and PDF
Fablum is a private ebook reader built for people who want their library to stay local, readable, and under their control. You can open EPUB and PDF files, browse free books from OPDS catalogs like Project Gutenberg, and listen with built-in text to speech without handing your reading life to an account system.
Most readers force a trade. You get a decent interface but weak format support. You get lots of features but half of them need a subscription to unlock. You get cloud sync and storefronts, then discover the app is really built to sell you something. Fablum takes the opposite route. It starts with reading itself: a clean library, a focused reader, dependable progress saving, and the kind of small details that matter after the twentieth book, not just the first launch.
It is also an offline ebook reader in the plainest possible sense. Your books stay on your device. Your progress stays on your device. Search, sorting, themes, and text to speech still work when the network disappears. The online pieces are the ones that should be online: pulling in a new book from a URL, browsing an OPDS catalog, or checking what is available to download.
Pure reading. No distractions.
Private. Yours.
Reader foundations
Read EPUB and PDF with full privacy
"Private" gets used loosely in software. In Fablum, it starts with the basics being true. The app does not require an account. It does not push your library toward a storefront. It does not treat your notes, reading progress, and file history as something that needs to leave the device in order to feel useful. If you simply want an epub reader app that opens fast, remembers your place, and lets you keep going on a train or a flight, that is the core promise.
EPUB gets the full flexible reading experience: table of contents, chapter navigation, saved position, type size controls, reading themes, scroll mode, and text-to-speech. PDF keeps its structure while still feeling like part of the same app instead of a bolted-on second viewer. That matters if your library is mixed, which most real libraries are. Manuals, scanned books, academic papers, and novels do not arrive in one format, and a good ebook reader app should not make you care.
Fablum also stays honest about where the current privacy line is. The live app already keeps your books local, avoids account lock-in, and works well offline. Deeper protection layers such as PIN-based hiding are part of the broader privacy roadmap, but the everyday privacy win is here now: your reading is not treated like a cloud service.
- Saved reading progress every few seconds, so reopening a book feels boring in the best way.
- Light, dark, and sepia reading themes with the reader controls kept out of your way.
- One consistent library for novels, documents, handbooks, and long-form reference material.
Book discovery without a store
Browse free books from OPDS catalogs
OPDS support is one of those features many reading apps claim and then quietly hide behind a brittle menu, a dated browser view, or an import flow that assumes you already know what file you need. Fablum treats OPDS like a normal part of the reading experience. Open the catalog browser, land in Project Gutenberg, move through categories inside the same sheet, search when the feed supports it, then download straight to your library.
That means free public-domain books stop feeling like homework. Gutenberg is the default starting point because it is reliable and huge, but the point is broader than one catalog. OPDS turns free collections into something you can actually browse on a phone. Covers load inside the flow, download formats are surfaced clearly, and when a book offers more than one EPUB variant, Fablum picks the best one instead of making you decode file names.
This is also where Fablum starts to feel like a cross-platform ebook reader rather than a single-device utility. The catalog flow does not depend on a separate desktop app, a browser handoff, or a later sync. You find something, tap download, and keep reading in the same place. If you want the detailed walkthrough, the live OPDS guide explains exactly how the flow works and why it matters for free-book readers.
Hands-free reading
Listen with built-in text-to-speech
Text to speech is often treated like a box-checking feature. The app can technically read a paragraph aloud, but it sounds robotic, loses your place, or hides the controls far enough away that you stop using it. Fablum takes a more practical view. If you are cooking, commuting, walking, or resting your eyes, text to speech has to be easy to start and easy to keep using.
In EPUB books, the reader can speak with the voices already available on the device. You can slow it down for dense nonfiction, speed it up when you are listening to a familiar novel, or switch voices without leaving the reading flow. The current sentence stays highlighted and the current word is tracked as playback continues, so it still works as reading, not just background audio.
The quiet advantage is that none of this depends on uploading a book to a remote service. If the voice exists on the device, the book can stay on the device too. That matters for privacy. It also matters for reliability. An on-device feature has fewer places to break. The live text-to-speech page goes deeper, but the short version is simple: if you want to listen to an EPUB without changing your workflow, the reader is already ready for it.
Library management
Your library, organized your way
Reading apps are easy to judge from the reader view. They are harder to live with from the library. Fablum puts real work into the part you use before and after every reading session: the grid of covers, the search field, the sort order, and the little maintenance tasks that keep a growing collection usable.
Add books from files, direct URLs, OPDS catalogs, or the app's documents folder. Search by title or author. Sort by date added, title, author, or progress. Filter by genre when the library actually has genres to filter. Edit metadata when a sideloaded file arrives with a bad title. Completed books drop out of the way instead of clogging the top of the grid forever. None of that sounds glamorous, which is probably why so many competitors let it slide. It is also the reason one app feels calm after a month and another feels messy after a week.
This is where Fablum leans into being a tool rather than a showroom. The point is not to impress you with how many surfaces it has. The point is that when you open the app with fifty books, the right one is still easy to find. That matters just as much as a pretty page turn.
Offline first
Works offline, no account needed
The best way to respect reading privacy is often the least dramatic one: do not ask for more infrastructure than the job requires. Fablum keeps the core reader local, then draws a clean line around the features that truly need the internet.
What keeps working without a connection
- Open any book already in your library and resume from the last saved place.
- Use search, sorting, genre filters, metadata edits, and completion tracking.
- Switch reading themes, change type size, and keep listening with on-device text to speech.
- Move through your library as if the network never existed, because for these tasks it does not need to.
What still needs the internet
- Download a book from a direct URL.
- Browse public OPDS catalogs and pull in new titles.
- Fetch remote covers and catalog metadata for books you do not have yet.
- Nothing else gets artificially blocked just because you are offline.
Pricing stance
One price, everything included
Readers are tired of basic reading being turned into a meter. The point of this product is to ship a complete core reader, not an endless ladder of add-ons.
The core reader is meant to stand on its own.
EPUB and PDF support, OPDS browsing, library tools, and text to speech belong in the main product. That is the useful part. That is the part people open every day. If optional services arrive later, they should stay optional. Buying a reading app should feel like buying a reading app, not signing up for another utility bill.
That approach also makes the site easier to understand. You are not here to decode artificial feature walls. You are here to answer a straightforward question: can this app handle my books, keep my place, and stay out of the way? Fablum is being built around "yes."
What readers say
What readers say
These are the complaints and requests that kept surfacing in competitor reviews, OPDS communities, and privacy threads while the product was being shaped. Fablum was built to answer them directly.
"Stop charging a subscription for basic reading."
One-time purchase preference shows up again and again in the category. People can tolerate paying for a good tool. They are much less patient with paying every month just to keep opening their own files.
"If an app says it supports OPDS, make it feel normal."
OPDS users are loyal because the feature solves a real problem. They are also quick to notice when support exists only on paper. Smooth browsing and sane download choices matter more than checking the box.
"Please do not make the iOS version the weaker one."
That frustration is all over the category. Android-first readers often leave iPhone users with a stripped-down build. Fablum is intentionally designed so the mobile experience feels complete on both sides.
Download Fablum
Download Fablum
Fablum is available on both stores. Pick your platform, install, and start reading. No account needed, no trial limits, no feature gates. The full reader is the product. EPUB and PDF support, OPDS catalog browsing, library tools, text to speech, and offline reading are all included from the first launch.
If you want to know more before installing, the live guides for OPDS browsing and text to speech walk through the features in detail. The privacy policy and terms of use are linked below if you want to read those first.