Every book
has a voice.
Drop in a PDF. Unknown reads it aloud in a lifelike voice, lights up every line in time with the audio, and answers questions about what it just read. All of it on your Mac.
Free for 50 pages a month · macOS 14.1 or later
Coming sooniPhone · Windows · Android
Press play.
Watch it read.
That is not a recording of a person. It is one of Unknown's 28 narrators, produced by the same engine that runs inside the app - and it lights up as it goes, exactly the way your own books will.
This is what your books will sound like. Drop in a PDF and press play. Unknown reads it aloud in a lifelike voice, and lights up every line in time with the audio. Nothing is uploaded. The voice you are hearing is running on the Mac in front of you. Twenty-eight narrators. Every book you own. Ready in seconds.
In the app this runs on any book you own, at any speed, with the paragraph you are hearing lit up on the page.
Twenty-eight voices.
Audition them here.
Every voice below is the real thing, lifted straight out of the app. Click a name to hear it. Give each book the narrator it deserves.
Everything a book should
have been able to do.
Read-along highlighting
The page lights up paragraph by paragraph, locked to the audio. Look away, look back, and you have not lost your place.
Chat with your books
Summaries, meanings, answers - about the page you are on, the whole book, or your entire library. The conversation stays on your Mac.
PDFs, EPUBs, scans
Textbooks, papers, novels, reports, photocopies. OCR is built in. If you can open it, Unknown can read it.
Mind maps in one click
Turn any book into an AI-drawn map of its big ideas and how they connect, then rearrange it however you think.
Highlights, notes, bookmarks
Mark a paragraph, save a line, keep notes per page or per book - right on the page, while it reads.
A shelf nobody else sees
Lock private books behind Touch ID. They vanish from the library, and from the AI's view, until you unlock them.
Nothing leaves your Mac.
Most reading apps ship your books to a server and rent you the answer. Unknown does not. Every page is read, narrated and reasoned about by the machine in front of you - no upload, no data centre spinning up on your behalf, no bill in watts.
The voice is local
The neural voices run on your own hardware. Your books are never uploaded, streamed, or processed in the cloud - and after a one-time sign-in, none of it needs the internet at all.
Your library stays yours
Converted books live on your disk. No server-side copies, no sync you did not ask for, nothing to lose in someone else's breach.
No one watches you read
What you read, when you read it, how far you got. None of it is a product here. It stays on your machine, where it belongs.
Start free. Go unlimited.
Every plan runs entirely on your Mac. Pro raises the limit, and yearly removes it.
- 50 pages narrated every month
- All 28 voices
- Read-along highlighting
- On-device AI chat & mind maps
- 100% on-device, private by design
- 500 pages a week, 3,000 a month, or unlimited on yearly
- Everything in Free
- Support an independent, privacy-first app
Unknown, in one table.
| What it does | Turns PDFs and EPUBs into interactive audiobooks: narrated aloud, highlighted in sync, ready to answer questions |
|---|---|
| Platform | macOS 14.1 (Sonoma) or later · iPhone, Windows, and Android versions coming soon |
| Formats | PDF and EPUB, including scanned files via built-in OCR |
| Voices | 28 neural voices, American and British |
| AI | Chat with a book or your whole library, AI mind maps - on-device, Apple silicon |
| Reading tools | Highlights, bookmarks, per-page notes, hidden shelf behind Touch ID |
| Where it runs | 100% on-device - no uploads, no cloud, works offline |
| Footprint | Energy-efficient by design - Apple silicon instead of power-hungry cloud AI |
| Free plan | 50 narrated pages per month, all voices included |
| Pro | 50% off intro pricing: $2.99 weekly (500 pages/wk), $4.99 monthly (3,000 pages/mo), or $49.99 yearly (unlimited) |
Questions, answered.
What is Unknown?
Unknown is a macOS app that turns PDFs and EPUBs into interactive audiobooks. It reads your books aloud in 28 lifelike neural voices that run entirely on your Mac, highlights each paragraph in time with the audio, and includes OCR so scanned pages work too. You can also chat with your books and turn them into AI-drawn mind maps, all on-device. Nothing is ever uploaded.
Does Unknown have AI features?
Yes. You can chat with your books - summarize a page or the whole document, ask about anything from the page you're on to your entire library - and turn any book into an AI-drawn mind map of its ideas. The AI runs locally on Apple silicon Macs, so your books and questions never leave the machine.
Does Unknown work offline?
Yes. Narration runs on your own machine, so after a one-time sign-in you can convert and listen to books with no internet connection at all. There is no server doing the work - your books never leave your Mac.
What file formats does Unknown support?
PDF and EPUB. That covers textbooks, research papers, novels, and reports. Scanned PDFs work too, because OCR is built in - Unknown reads the text off the page image before narrating it.
How does Unknown turn a PDF into an interactive audiobook?
Drop a PDF or EPUB into Unknown and press play. The app narrates it in a lifelike neural voice and highlights each paragraph in sync with the audio - an audiobook that reads along with you and answers your questions as you listen.
Does the narration really happen on my Mac?
Yes. The neural voices run locally, on-device. Your books are never uploaded, streamed, or processed in the cloud, and no one tracks what you read.
Can Unknown read scanned PDFs?
Yes. OCR is built in, so scanned pages and textbooks work alongside digital PDFs, EPUBs, papers, and novels.
Is Unknown free?
The free plan narrates 50 pages every month with all 28 voices included. Pro is 50% off as an introductory offer: $2.99 a week for 500 pages a week, $4.99 a month for 3,000 pages a month, or $49.99 a year for unlimited pages - managed securely in the app.
What does Unknown run on?
Unknown is a native macOS app and requires macOS 14.1 (Sonoma) or later. iPhone, Windows, and Android versions are coming soon.
Is Unknown eco-friendly?
Yes. Narration and AI run locally on Apple silicon, which is built for performance per watt - not on racks of power-hungry GPUs in a data center. No cloud compute is spent on your reading, and nothing travels the network.
Which voices can narrate my books?
28 lifelike voices, American and British, warm and bright. Preview each one, pick a narrator per book, adjust playback speed, and resume exactly where you left off.
The books you never got
around to reading are
about to start talking.
Free for 50 pages a month · macOS 14.1 or later
Coming sooniPhone · Windows · Android