MPV Config

I highly recommend using MPV to play your audio files, as it supports displaying subtitles even without a video track. Here’s my mpv.conf:

# --- MPV Settings ---
save-position-on-quit
keep-open=yes
# --- Subtitle ---
sub-ass-override=no
sub-margin-y=50
sub-margin-x=50
# --- Audio Quality ---
audio-spdif=ac3,dts,eac3,truehd,dts-hd
audio-channels=auto
audio-samplerate=48000
volume-max=200

Docker Guide

If you want to run Abogen in a Docker container:

1. Download the repository and extract, or clone it using git.
2. Go to abogen folder. You should see Dockerfile there.
3. Open your termminal in that directory and run the following commands:

# Build the Docker image:
docker build --progress plain -t abogen .

# Note that building the image may take a while.
# After building is complete, run the Docker container:

# Windows
docker run --name abogen -v %cd%:/shared -p 5800:5800 -p 5900:5900 --gpus all abogen

# Linux
docker run --name abogen -v $(pwd):/shared -p 5800:5800 -p 5900:5900 --gpus all abogen

# MacOS
docker run --name abogen -v $(pwd):/shared -p 5800:5800 -p 5900:5900 abogen

# We expose port 5800 for use by a web browser, 5900 if you want to connect with a VNC client.

Abogen launches automatically inside the container.

• You can access it via a web browser at http://localhost:5800 or connect to it using a VNC client at localhost:5900.
• You can use /shared directory to share files between your host and the container.
• For later use, start it with docker start abogen and stop it with docker stop abogen.

Known issues:

• Audio preview is not working inside container (ALSA error).
• Open cache directory and Open configuration directory options in settings not working. (Tried pcmanfm, did not work with Abogen).

(Special thanks to @geo38 from Reddit, who provided the Dockerfile and instructions in this comment.)

Similar Projects

Abogen is a standalone project, but it is inspired by and shares some similarities with other projects. Here are a few:

• audiblez: Generate audiobooks from e-books. (Has CLI and GUI support)
• autiobooks: Automatically convert epubs to audiobooks
• pdf-narrator: Convert your PDFs and EPUBs into audiobooks effortlessly.
• epub_to_audiobook: EPUB to audiobook converter, optimized for Audiobookshelf
• ebook2audiobook: Convert ebooks to audiobooks with chapters and metadata using dynamic AI models and voice cloning

Roadmap

• Add OCR scan feature for PDF files using docling/teserract.
• Add chapter metadata for .m4a files. (Issue #9, PR #10)
• Add support for different languages in GUI.
• Add voice formula feature that enables mixing different voice models. (Issue #1, PR #5)
• Add support for kokoro-onnx (If it’s necessary).
• Add dark mode.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter any issues while running Abogen, try launching it from the command line with:

This will start Abogen in command-line mode and display detailed error messages. Please open a new issue on the Issues page with the error message and a description of your problem.

Contributing

I welcome contributions! If you have ideas for new features, improvements, or bug fixes, please fork the repository and submit a pull request.

For developers and contributors

If you’d like to modify the code and contribute to development, you can download the repository, extract it and run the following commands to build or install the package:

# Go to the directory where you extracted the repository and run:
pip install -e .      # Installs the package in editable mode
pip install build     # Install the build package
python -m build       # Builds the package in dist folder (optional)
abogen                # Opens the GUI

Feel free to explore the code and make any changes you like.

Credits

• Abogen uses Kokoro for its high-quality, natural-sounding text-to-speech synthesis. Huge thanks to the Kokoro team for making this possible.
• Thanks to @wojiushixiaobai for Embedded Python packages. These modified packages include pip pre-installed, enabling Abogen to function as a standalone application without requiring users to separately install Python in Windows.
• Thanks to creators of EbookLib, a Python library for reading and writing ePub files, which is used for extracting text from ePub files.
• Special thanks to the PyQt team for providing the cross-platform GUI toolkit that powers Abogen’s interface.
• Icons: US, Great Britain, Spain, France, India, Italy, Japan, Brazil, China, Female, Male, Adjust and Voice Id icons by Icons8.

License

This project is available under the MIT License – see the LICENSE file for details.
Kokoro is licensed under Apache-2.0 which allows commercial use, modification, distribution, and private use.

Tags: audiobook, kokoro, text-to-speech, TTS, audiobook generator, audiobooks, text to speech, audiobook maker, audiobook creator, audiobook generator, voice-synthesis, text to audio, text to audio converter, text to speech converter, text to speech generator, text to speech software, text to speech app, epub to audio, pdf to audio, content-creation, media-generation