Hi Product Hunt, I'm the founder and developer of ReadingKulture. I built ReadingKulture after losing access to a reading app I loved. I wanted to create something that didn't just let people open books, but gave them a genuinely powerful reading environment that worked even when the internet didn't. ReadingKulture is built around a simple idea: reading should feel like something you own, not something you have to constantly connect to, subscribe to, or work around. So I set out to build a reading app that goes much further than simply opening an ebook. Today, ReadingKulture is a free, offline-first reading platform for Android and iOS, built for people who read books, PDFs, documents, and everything in between. 📖 Read almost anything ReadingKulture reads PDF and EPUB natively, while supporting a range of other formats through on-device conversion, including DOCX, DOC, ODT, RTF, TXT, MOBI and FB2. DOCX files can even be converted on-device into either a reflowable EPUB or a layout-preserving PDF, without uploading the document anywhere. The PDF & EPUB readers support things like text selection, search, zoom, highlights, bookmarks and persistent reading position. They also give you paginated or vertical reading, themes, annotations, auto-scroll and more. 🔊 Turn your books into audiobooks ReadingKulture can turn your books and documents into continuous spoken audio using downloadable natural voices, with system TTS fallback. You can keep listening in the background and control playback from the notification panel or lock screen. The reader screen can automatically advance alongside the spoken content. 🌐 Translate books without sending everything to a server ReadingKulture supports on-device translation for PDF pages, EPUB chapters, or entire text-based books using downloadable language models. Translations are cached locally and remembered for each book, so the translated experience can continue offline. 🤖 Talk to your books You can generate AI-powered book summaries and then ask follow-up questions about the book through a chat interface. ReadingKulture supports its shared assistant as well as bringing your own API key from Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic, or DeepSeek. The AI architecture is deliberately privacy-conscious: ReadingKulture doesn't operate an AI proxy server. Requests go directly from the device to the selected provider, while personal API keys are stored securely and are not logged or included in backups. 📚 Discover books inside the app You don't have to arrive with a library already downloaded. ReadingKulture can search and download free books from sources including Project Gutenberg, Open Library and the Internet Archive, as well as public-domain comics. There is also an in-app download manager for queuing multiple downloads. 📡 Share books with people nearby, without the internet This is one of the features I'm particularly excited about. ReadingKulture users can share one or more books directly with another nearby ReadingKulture user using a QR code over local Wi-Fi or a personal hotspot. No ReadingKulture server. No internet connection. No mobile data. It's peer-to-peer, directly between the devices. ☁️ Keep your library backed up For people who want cloud sync, ReadingKulture can back up and synchronise the library through Google Drive, including reading progress and other library data. There's also an offline & completely portable .rkbackup system that can package books, covers, collections, progress, bookmarks, highlights, summaries and preferences into a versioned archive that can be restored (on the same or another device) without depending on a ReadingKulture backend. 🧠 And the everyday reading stuff matters too You get automated daily reading reminders (at your chosen time), you can build custom collections, bulk-import books from your device, search and filter your library, edit covers, track reading statistics and streaks, create coloured notes and highlights, browse all your highlights and bookmarks in dedicated hubs, share quote cards, use an offline dictionary, and more. And the entire thing is built around an offline-first philosophy. No ads. No subscriptions. No mandatory account. I wanted ReadingKulture to be something people could simply install, bring their own books to, and start reading. I'm still building it, and that's why I'm launching on Product Hunt. I want to hear from people who actually care about reading. What do you think ReadingKulture is getting right? What feels unnecessary? What's missing? And most importantly: What would make you want to use ReadingKulture as your everyday reading app? I'm here throughout the launch, and I'd genuinely love your feedback. Thanks for checking it out. 🧡

ReadingKulture

A free, offline-first app bringing back the reading culture

A free, offline-first app bringing back the reading culture