Show HN: Lue – Terminal eBook Reader with Text-to-Speech

33 superstarryeyes 8 8/16/2025, 6:00:33 PM github.com ↗

Shown HN: Lue - Terminal eBook Reader with Text-to-Speech

Hello,

Just went live on GitHub with this project.

I really enjoy listening to my eBooks as audiobooks but was frustrated by the available options. Converting books into audiobooks with scripts is tedious, and most tools stumble over footnotes, headers, or formatting. I wanted something simple: just throw a book at it, and it starts reading immediately without any clicking or loading.

I also wanted it to be customizable and modular because new, better TTS engines are released all the time. For this initial release, I settled on Edge and Kokoro because they’re both fast (real-time) and good quality. I’ve already made modules for Kitten TTS, Gemini and a few others, and they work too. So I hope this setup is future-proof.

Here’s what Lue supports:

Multi-format: EPUB, PDF, TXT, DOCX, HTML, RTF, and Markdown.

Modular TTS system: Default Edge TTS (online) and Kokoro TTS (offline/local), with an architecture to add more models.

Rich terminal UI: Full keyboard and mouse support, customizable color themes, smooth scrolling.

Smart persistence: Automatically saves reading progress across sessions.

Cross-platform & multilingual: macOS, Linux, Windows, supporting 100+ languages.

I’d love feedback on both usability and the TTS experience. Are there any features you wish it had?

Comments (8)

nd4spdviper · 1h ago

For some reason I'm more interested on the "read epubs in terminal" than the TTS part. Don't know for certain for how long would one be interested on reading monospace text, also without certainty of the app remembering where I left, pagination and that stuff.

For me, running it on my home server so it can save my progress would be good.

superstarryeyes · 1h ago

thanks for your insight! i started to build this project mainly for the tts features but you can certainly just read text on it.

it saves the state of having the narration on or off, so if you ever open the book again you don't hear any voice. also the reading progress and state is automatically saved to your system log files. I'm pretty sure with a few settings in the config.py file you could direct them to your server.

about the monospace fonts. yes, they're not the prettiest but they're very easy to read! easier than many much more beautiful fonts. and if you're tired of reading, just switch on the tts. ;)

starkparker · 50m ago

In a DE and depending on the terminal emulator, one could probably set up a profile that uses variable-width fonts and switch to it for Lue. That experience would depend on how well it renders text, particularly typographical elements.

superstarryeyes · 36m ago

that's a really cool idea! i wonder if it would break the ui though? i should try that.

me, mainly i just look for the most beautiful monospace font i can find that has a nostalgic feel. recently my favourite has been "modeseven" (https://online-fonts.com/fonts/modeseven), which is also featured in the screenshot on the github page.

tiberius_p · 1h ago

Can it be made to work on Android from Termux or Userland?

superstarryeyes · 1h ago

this I'm unable to answer because I don't have the means to try, but i'd love to know if it's doable. edge tts is surely light enough to run since all the processing happens in the cloud. the basic setup is just python and ffmpeg. let me know if you get it running!

Ciantic · 2h ago

I plan to test this, but I'm still holding off. This is coming from a user who seems to have a new account on GitHub and HN. Must take caution first and read about the implementation.

P.S. "lue" means "read" in Finnish.

superstarryeyes · 2h ago

hei! no worries, take your time. just a first-time builder here who finally decided to release something after years of scripting privately for myself. thought this project might be use to someone else too. and yes, i'm from finland!