Open a Word document, an EPUB, a PDF — or photograph the pages of a paper book — and Lamplight reads it to you, highlighting every word as it goes.
It is a reader, not a converter. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is processed on a server, and there is no queue to wait in — you open a book and it starts talking.
The word being spoken is highlighted as you hear it. In the Windows app the timing comes from the voice itself, so it never drifts out of step.
Photograph the pages and it transcribes them on your own machine. It crops to the page you meant, strips running headers, and rejoins hyphenated lines.
Half speed to triple speed, with a sleep timer, automatic page turns, and a button that steps back one sentence when your attention drifts.
Word, EPUB, PDF, plain text, or anything you have copied. Scanned PDFs with no text in them are transcribed page by page instead of refused.
Every book you open goes on a shelf with the exact spot you stopped at. Close it, come back next week, press play.
Books, photographs and transcriptions never leave the machine. The only thing sent anywhere is your sign-in and a count of books opened.
Three builds of the same reader, one for each kind of computer. The same voices, the same books, the same place kept in them.
chmod +x Lamplight-linux && ./Lamplight-linux.
It needs WebKitGTK, which most desktop distributions already have; on Debian or Ubuntu,
sudo apt install gir1.2-webkit2-4.1 installs it.
Built on Ubuntu 24.04, so it wants a reasonably current distribution.
About two minutes, most of which is waiting for the download.
Everything has a button too. These are for when your hands are already on the keys.
| Space or K | Play or pause |
| J / L | Back or forward one sentence |
| ← / → | Previous or next page |
| F | Focus mode — dim all but the current sentence |
| − / + | Text size |
| R | Read the highlighted passage |
| ? | Show this list in the app |
| Click a word | Start reading from there |
| Alt-click a word | Teach the voice how to say it |
Search by title or author and it looks through several free collections at once, showing only books it can actually open. Everything here is public domain — out of copyright, free to read, free to keep.
| Source | What it holds | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Wikisource | Books transcribed and corrected by hand, in 12 languages | Best — no scanning errors |
| Project Gutenberg | 59,000 classics, the oldest free-book library there is | Excellent |
| Internet Archive | Millions of scanned books, including obscure and out-of-print ones | Good — occasional scanning errors |
| LibriVox | 21,800 audiobooks read aloud by volunteers | A real human voice |
| Bibles | Three complete translations, opened straight from the sidebar | Best — hand-proofread |
Any book from the text collections, spoken by a neural voice with every word highlighted. You control the speed and can jump anywhere.
Switch the search to “Human narration” for LibriVox recordings. A real reader, chapter by chapter, with the same speed control and sleep timer. No word highlighting, because there is no transcript to follow.
Anything with text in it opens instantly, whatever its size — a 17,000-page file takes about a third of a second. Only pictures of text need real work, because every page has to be transcribed.
| Format | Works | Speed | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| .docx Word | Yes | Instant | The one to use — small files, keeps chapters |
| .txt plain text | Yes | Instant | Fastest of all |
| .epub ebook | Yes | Instant | Chapters come through properly |
| .html web page | Yes | Instant | Saved articles work well |
| .md markdown | Yes | Instant | |
| .pdf with text | Yes | Seconds | Most PDFs from a computer |
| .pdf scanned | Yes | 2–5 s per page | Transcribed automatically, up to 200 pages |
| .jpg .png .heic | Yes | 2–5 s per page | Photographs of paper pages |
| Pasted text | Yes | Instant | Anything you have copied |
| .doc old Word | No | — | Open in Word and save as .docx |
| .mobi .azw Kindle | No | — | Encrypted by Amazon |
| .rtf .odt .pages | No | — | Export as .docx or .txt first |
The ones people actually ask.
$10, once. Not a subscription — you pay a single time and the app is yours, including every update afterwards.
Create your account first, then use the button at the bottom of this page to message an admin. They will tell you how to pay and let you in once you have.
The books themselves are free and always will be: everything in the library is public domain, meaning its copyright has expired and anyone may read or copy it.
So that whoever runs this can control who uses it. You sign in once and it remembers you — you will not be asked again unless you sign out or your access is withdrawn.
Approval is manual: after you create an account, an admin has to let you in. If you have been waiting, ask the person who sent you the link.
Mostly. Opening your own files, reading, the shelf and all your settings work with no connection at all.
Three things need internet: the online library, the natural voices in the Windows app, and the first transcription of a photograph (the transcriber downloads itself once, then works offline).
If the connection drops entirely, the app keeps working for 14 days on its last sign-in check, so a train journey never locks you out of a book you already have.
The one for your computer. Windows, Mac and Linux each get the same reader, speaking with the same neural voices, highlighting each word as the voice reaches it.
Two things to know before you download: the Mac app needs an Apple Silicon machine — an M1 or later — and the Linux app needs a reasonably current distribution, for WebKitGTK.
No. That warning appears for any program not signed with a paid certificate, regardless of what it does. Click More info and then Run anyway.
Chrome may separately say the file “is not commonly downloaded”, which means only what it says — few people have downloaded it. Neither message is a virus detection.
No. Books, photographs and the text pulled out of them stay on your computer. Transcription runs on your own machine, not on a server.
Two things do leave: your email and password when you sign in, and a count of how many books you have opened, so an admin can see the app is being used. Never titles, never contents.
Yes — photograph the pages and add them. It crops to the page you meant even if the facing page is in shot, removes the running header at the top, rejoins words split across lines, and skips stray marks.
It works best on clear, well-lit, upright printed text. If a word still comes out wrong, click Fix a word and correct it, and the voice will use your correction.
Not from the built-in library — books still in copyright cannot legally be given away, so no free source has them. If you own the book as a file, open it directly and Lamplight will read it. If you own it on paper, photograph the pages.
Yes. Hold Alt and click the word, then type how it should sound. It is remembered for every book from then on.
From half speed to three times speed, adjustable while it is reading. Most people settle around 1.5x to 2x once they are used to it. The app shows how long the book has left at whatever speed you have chosen, and learns how fast your particular voice actually reads.
Yes, to the sentence. Every book you open goes on a shelf with its position, so you can keep several on the go and pick any of them up where you left it.
Not in practice. A 30 MB text file — around 17,000 pages, about forty novels — opens in a third of a second. The only limits are on transcription: 200 pages for a scanned PDF, and photographs are transcribed one at a time.
Yes. Bibles in the sidebar opens the King James (1611), the American Standard (1901) or the World English Bible. Each is complete and hand-proofread, and arrives with the books of the Bible as its chapters, so you can go straight to one.
The modern translations — the NIV, ESV, NASB and others — are still in copyright and cannot be included. The three above are free for anyone to read.
No. Lamplight is a desktop program — Windows, Mac or Linux. There is no phone version.
Come back to this page and download it again. Your shelf, your place in every book and your settings are stored separately and survive an update.
There is no self-service reset yet — ask the admin who approved you. They can remove the account so you can create it again.
Asking for access, arranging payment, a problem, or a book that will not open — this goes straight to the admin panel inside the app.