Athene Reader

Athene is a reader for the books you already own.

If you keep your library on a calibre server, Athene browses that shelf too, from + in your Library: on your home network, or from anywhere through your own VPN such as Tailscale. Bring your other books from Files, Google Drive or any cloud, from your computer over Wi‑Fi, from a link, or from any app that can share a file, and they go on a shelf that looks like one. EPUB and PDF open as they are; MOBI, AZW3, Word, FB2, RTF, TXT, HTML and comic book files become books as they arrive. Free classics from Project Gutenberg are a tap away, and so is any OPDS catalog.

Your calibre library
Calibre opens on what's new on your server, the next book in a series you're reading, and more by the author you're reading, with Authors, Series and Tags a tap away. Every book has a page of its own, and one tap brings it to your shelf to read offline. Turn on sending and your highlights, notes and how far you've read go back to your calibre library, and highlights you make in calibre's own viewer come into Athene. calibre-web libraries browse the same way.

The page
Open a book and the app steps back. Just the page, on white, sepia or night paper, or paper in any colour you like, in the typeface and size you read best, including any Google Font. Hold a tablet sideways and two pages face each other. Highlight a passage, add a note, drop a bookmark, search the book. The shelf follows the time of day, Morning, Sunset and Night, or stays on the one you pick.

Notes you can draw
Type a note in the margin, or sketch in it with a tray of pens and inks. On a PDF, mark up the page itself with a stylus, or with a finger.

The Notebook
Every highlight, note and drawing from every book you read, in one place, with filters and search. Write what stayed with you after a chapter, a reading session or a whole book, typed or drawn; your reflections stay even if the book leaves your shelf.

Listen
Books in English, read aloud in a warm, natural voice made on your device, even with the screen locked. PDFs too: Listen skips the running heads, page numbers and footnotes, reads scanned pages, and describes the pictures and tables as it reaches them. The voice is a one-time download of about 340 MB.

A dictionary
Select a word to see what it means and how to say it. It is built in, and it works offline.

Ask the page
Tap the owl while you read and ask about what is in front of you. Who is she again? What just happened? The Owl answers from the pages around where you are, never the whole book, and if the pages do not say, it tells you that instead of guessing.

Your model, your choice
On a phone or tablet with Gemini Nano, the Owl thinks on the device and nothing you ask is sent anywhere. Or point it at your own Ollama server, or bring a key from Claude, OpenRouter or OpenAI. Athene asks before the first question leaves the device, names the address it would send to, and remembers your answer.

KOReader
With KOReader on a Kobo, Kindle or PocketBook, your books, your place, and your highlights, notes and bookmarks stay in step through a sync server of your own. Settings shows you how, step by step.

Private by construction
Athene has no account, no ads, no analytics and no servers of its own. Your books, your notes and your questions stay on your device or go only where you have pointed them. The privacy policy says the same, in plain words.

Nothing for sale
Reading is free. No account, no subscription, no limit: the shelf, the reader, the Notebook, Listen, the dictionary, the Owl, calibre and KOReader, your highlights and notes. Nothing in Athene is for sale.

Athene needs Android 12 or later. The on-device Owl, and descriptions of pictures in PDFs, need a device with Gemini Nano, such as a Pixel 9 or later.