Cadence Reader
Need a hand? We're a small team and we read every message.
The fastest way to reach us is by email at [email protected]. To help us help you, please include your device model, operating system version, the app version (Settings → About), and a short description of what happened. If the problem is with a particular book, tell us the file format and roughly how large it is.
There is no analytics, no advertising and no tracking of any kind, and your books never leave your device. What we hold is narrow: an account we create for you silently so a subscription can be recognised, and, if you subscribe to Cadence Plus, information about your books so your devices can stay in step. That means titles, authors, where you are in each book, your per-book settings, favourites, finished marks and bookmark notes. Never the files. Our Privacy Policy lists all of it.
Because a subscription has to belong to something. When you first open Cadence it quietly creates an account for you, and there is no registration screen because there is nothing to fill in. We do not ask for your name, your email address or a password, and there is no password to forget.
On iPhone and iPad your account is recognised through a signed receipt from Apple, so it follows your Apple Account to your other Apple devices. On Android and the web, the app generates a random identifier and stores it in your device's secure storage. That identifier is not derived from anything about you or your hardware, and it is not shared with anyone.
For reading aloud: EPUB, PDF, DOCX, RTF, and TXT. You can also import audio and video files, including MP3, M4A, M4B, AAC, WAV, FLAC, OGG/Opus, MP4, M4V, MOV, MKV, and WebM, so audiobooks and recordings sit in the same library as your books.
The most common cause is DRM. Cadence Reader works with DRM-free files only, so purchases locked to Kindle, Apple Books, or Kobo cannot be opened. Password-protected files are also refused. Scanned PDFs that contain images of pages rather than real text have nothing to read aloud. The app needs a text-based PDF. Extremely large files are rejected as a safeguard against running your device out of memory.
Tap import in the library and pick a file with your device's file picker. That includes files stored in iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or anywhere else your Files app can reach. On Android you can also share a file into Cadence Reader from another app, and on both platforms you can open a supported file directly from elsewhere and choose Cadence Reader to handle it.
Cadence Reader uses the text-to-speech voices already installed on your device. There is no cloud speech service: no sentence of your book is ever sent anywhere to be spoken, and every voice on your device is available on every plan. Any voice you add through your device's own settings appears in the app's voice picker automatically. On iOS that is Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices; on Android it is in your system text-to-speech settings, where you can also install extra language packs.
Cadence Reader is built to keep reading with the screen off, using proper background audio with lock-screen and notification controls. Some Android phones (Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei/Honor, and OnePlus in particular) ship aggressive battery managers that shut background apps down anyway. The app detects those devices and offers a short setup guide; you can also do it by hand by allowing Cadence Reader to run unrestricted in your battery settings, and by enabling auto-start where your phone offers it.
Not for reading. Importing, parsing, speech synthesis and playback all run on your device, and the app works in airplane mode.
Two things do use a connection, and only Plus subscribers ever meet the second. Checking that a subscription is still valid needs one occasionally, and if it cannot reach us Cadence Plus keeps working for a further 16 days rather than locking you out. Sync needs one to send and receive changes, and queues them until it has one.
No. Microphone access is explicitly blocked in the app. It will never be requested. The app does ask for notification permission on Android so it can show playback controls while it reads.
Imported books and their generated audio live in Cadence Reader's private storage on your device. You can delete individual books within the app, or remove everything by uninstalling it. Because we never hold the files themselves, we recommend keeping your own backup of any important originals.
Deleting a book on one device deletes it everywhere if you are a Plus subscriber, because that is what sync is for. To erase what we hold, use Delete my account in Settings. That removes the account and everything attached to it. Your books stay on your device, because they were never ours to delete, and your subscription is not cancelled by it: that has to be done in the App Store or Google Play.
Yes, one: Cadence Plus, offered monthly or yearly. There is no advertising and nothing else is sold in the app.
Cadence is free to use and stays free. On the free plan you keep one book at a time and can swap it as often as you like, and that one book gets nearly everything the app does: every format, every voice, the speed, pitch, sentence pause and skip interval, the sleep timer, both highlight modes, the themes and the type settings, plus three bookmarks with notes. Accessibility is never restricted on any plan.
Cadence Plus adds a full library, unlimited bookmarks, jumping about by a book's table of contents, an iOS home-screen widget and Live Activity, your library as a browse list for Android Auto, Wear and the Assistant with play-by-name from any of them, and sync between your devices.
Information about your books, never the books. Your titles and authors, where you are in each one, your per-book settings, favourites, finished marks and bookmark notes. Files are not synced, so a book imported on your phone appears on your tablet as an entry you still need to supply the file for. If the same book moves on two devices at once, the more recent change wins, except for reading positions, where rewinding wins on purpose: going back is almost always deliberate, and being dragged forward again by a device you are not holding is the more annoying outcome.
Through the store you bought it from, not through us. On iPhone and iPad that is your Apple subscription settings, and on Android it is Google Play. We cannot cancel it on your behalf, and neither deleting the app nor deleting your account will stop it billing. Cancelling stops the next renewal and Cadence Plus keeps working until the period you have paid for runs out.
Nothing is deleted. Every book stays on your device. All but one of them lock: you can still see, sort, export and delete a locked book, you just cannot open it. Before the subscription ends the app asks which book you want to keep reading, and if you never answer it keeps the one you opened most recently. That one behaves like the ordinary free plan, so you can swap it whenever you want. Subscribing again unlocks everything, exactly as it was.
Bookmarks work the same way. Lapse holding ten in a book and you keep all ten. Only the eleventh is refused.
We'd love to hear it. Email us at [email protected] with as much detail as you can.