abogen 1.2.4

Generate audiobooks from EPUBs, PDFs and text with synchronized captions.

abogen

Abogen is a powerful text-to-speech conversion tool that makes it easy to turn ePub, PDF, text, markdown, or subtitle files into high-quality audio with matching subtitles in seconds. Use it for audiobooks, voiceovers for Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or any project that needs natural-sounding text-to-speech, using Kokoro-82M.

Demo

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/094ba3df-7d66-494a-bc31-0e4b41d0b865

This demo was generated in just 5 seconds, producing ∼1 minute of audio with perfectly synced subtitles. To create a similar video, see the demo guide.

How to install?

Windows

Go to espeak-ng latest release download and run the *.msi file.

OPTION 1: Install using script

1. Download the repository
2. Extract the ZIP file
3. Run WINDOWS_INSTALL.bat by double-clicking it

This method handles everything automatically - installing all dependencies including CUDA in a self-contained environment without requiring a separate Python installation. (You still need to install espeak-ng.)

[!NOTE] You don't need to install Python separately. The script will install Python automatically.

OPTION 2: Install using pip

# Create a virtual environment (optional)
mkdir abogen && cd abogen
python -m venv venv
venv\Scripts\activate

# For NVIDIA GPUs:
# We need to use an older version of PyTorch (2.8.0) until this issue is fixed: https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/issues/166628
pip install torch==2.8.0+cu128 torchvision==0.23.0+cu128 torchaudio==2.8.0 --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu128

# For AMD GPUs:
# Not supported yet, because ROCm is not available on Windows. Use Linux if you have AMD GPU.

# Install abogen
pip install abogen

Mac

# Install espeak-ng
brew install espeak-ng

# Create a virtual environment (recommended)
mkdir abogen && cd abogen
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

# Install abogen
pip3 install abogen

# For Silicon Mac (M1, M2 etc.)
# After installing abogen, we need to install Kokoro's development version which includes MPS support.
pip3 install git+https://github.com/hexgrad/kokoro.git

Linux

# Install espeak-ng
sudo apt install espeak-ng # Ubuntu/Debian
sudo pacman -S espeak-ng # Arch Linux
sudo dnf install espeak-ng # Fedora

# Create a virtual environment (recommended)
mkdir abogen && cd abogen
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

# Install abogen
pip3 install abogen

# For NVIDIA GPUs:
# Already supported, no need to install CUDA separately.

# For AMD GPUs:
# After installing abogen, we need to uninstall the existing torch package
pip3 uninstall torch 
pip3 install --pre torch torchvision torchaudio --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly/rocm6.4

See How to fix "CUDA GPU is not available. Using CPU" warning?

See How to fix "WARNING: The script abogen-cli is installed in '/home/username/.local/bin' which is not on PATH" error in Linux?

See How to fix "No matching distribution found" error?

See How to fix "[WinError 1114] A dynamic link library (DLL) initialization routine failed" error?

See How to use "uv" instead of "pip"?

Special thanks to @hg000125 for his contribution in #23. AMD GPU support is possible thanks to his work.

How to run?

If you installed using pip, you can simply run the following command to start Abogen:

abogen

[!TIP] If you installed Abogen using the Windows installer (WINDOWS_INSTALL.bat), It should have created a shortcut in the same folder, or your desktop. You can run it from there. If you lost the shortcut, Abogen is located in python_embedded/Scripts/abogen.exe. You can run it from there directly.

How to use?

1. Drag and drop any ePub, PDF, text, markdown, or subtitle file (or use the built-in text editor)
2. Configure the settings:
   • Set speech speed
   • Select a voice (or create a custom voice using voice mixer)
   • Select subtitle generation style (by sentence, word, etc.)
   • Select output format
   • Select where to save the output
3. Hit Start

In action

Here’s Abogen in action: in this demo, it processes ∼3,000 characters of text in just 11 seconds and turns it into 3 minutes and 28 seconds of audio, and I have a low-end RTX 2060 Mobile laptop GPU. Your results may vary depending on your hardware.

Configuration

Options	Description
Input Box	Drag and drop ePub, PDF, .TXT, .MD, .SRT, .ASS or .VTT files (or use built-in text editor)
Queue options	Add multiple files to a queue and process them in batch, with individual settings for each file. See Queue mode for more details.
Speed	Adjust speech rate from 0.1x to 2.0x
Select Voice	First letter of the language code (e.g., a for American English, b for British English, etc.), second letter is for m for male and f for female.
Voice mixer	Create custom voices by mixing different voice models with a profile system. See Voice Mixer for more details.
Voice preview	Listen to the selected voice before processing.
Generate subtitles	Disabled, Line, Sentence, Sentence + Comma, Sentence + Highlighting, 1 word, 2 words, 3 words, etc. (Represents the number of words in each subtitle entry)
Output voice format	.WAV, .FLAC, .MP3, .OPUS (best compression) and M4B (with chapters)
Output subtitle format	Configures the subtitle format as SRT (standard), ASS (wide), ASS (narrow), ASS (centered wide), or ASS (centered narrow).
Replace single newlines with spaces	Replaces single newlines with spaces in the text. This is useful for texts that have imaginary line breaks.
Save location	Save next to input file, Save to desktop, or Choose output folder

Special thanks to @brianxiadong for adding markdown support in PR #75

Special thanks to @jborza for chapter support in PR #10

Special thanks to @mleg for adding Line option in subtitle generation in PR #94

Book handler options	Description
Chapter Control	Select specific chapters from ePUBs or markdown files or chapters + pages from PDFs.
Save each chapter separately	Save each chapter in e-books as a separate audio file.
Create a merged version	Create a single audio file that combines all chapters. (If Save each chapter separately is disabled, this option will be the default behavior.)
Save in a project folder with metadata	Save the converted items in a project folder with available metadata files.

Menu options	Description
Theme	Change the application's theme using System, Light, or Dark options.
Configure max words per subtitle	Configures the maximum number of words per subtitle entry.
Configure silence between chapters	Configures the duration of silence between chapters (in seconds).
Configure max lines in log window	Configures the maximum number of lines to display in the log window.
Separate chapters audio format	Configures the audio format for separate chapters as wav, flac, mp3, or opus.
Create desktop shortcut	Creates a shortcut on your desktop for easy access.
Open config directory	Opens the directory where the configuration file is stored.
Open cache directory	Opens the cache directory where converted text files are stored.
Clear cache files	Deletes cache files created during the conversion or preview.
Use silent gaps between subtitles	Prevents unnecessary audio speed-up by letting speech continue into the silent gaps between subtitle etries. In short, it ignores the end times in subtitle entries and uses the silent space until the beginning of the next subtitle entry. When disabled, it speeds up the audio to fit the exact time interval specified in the subtitle. (for subtitle files).
Subtitle speed adjustment method	Choose how to speed up audio when needed: TTS Regeneration (better quality) re-generates the audio at a faster speed, while FFmpeg Time-stretch (better speed) quickly speeds up the generated audio. (for subtitle files).
Use spaCy for sentence segmentation	When this option is enabled, Abogen uses spaCy to detect sentence boundaries more accurately, instead of using punctuation marks (like periods, question marks, etc.) to split sentences, which could incorrectly cut off phrases like "Mr." or "Dr.". With spaCy, sentences are divided more accurately. For non-English text, spaCy runs before audio generation to create sentence chunks. For English text, spaCy runs during subtitle generation to improve timing and readability. spaCy is only used when subtitle mode is Sentence or Sentence + Comma. If you prefer the old punctuation splitting method, you can turn this option off.
Pre-download models and voices for offline use	Opens a window that displays the available models and voices. Click Download all button to download all required models and voices, allowing you to use Abogen completely offline without any internet connection.
Disable Kokoro's internet access	Prevents Kokoro from downloading models or voices from HuggingFace Hub, useful for offline use.
Check for updates at startup	Automatically checks for updates when the program starts.
Reset to default settings	Resets all settings to their default values.

Special thanks to @robmckinnon for adding Sentence + Highlighting feature in PR #65

Voice Mixer

With voice mixer, you can create custom voices by mixing different voice models. You can adjust the weight of each voice and save your custom voice as a profile for future use. The voice mixer allows you to create unique and personalized voices.

Special thanks to @jborza for making this possible through his contributions in #5

Queue Mode

Abogen supports queue mode, allowing you to add multiple files to a processing queue. This is useful if you want to convert several files in one batch.

• You can add text files (.txt) directly using the Add files button in the Queue Manager. To add PDF, EPUB, or markdown files, use the input box in the main window and click the Add to Queue button.
• Each file in the queue keeps the configuration settings that were active when it was added. Changing the main window configuration afterward does not affect files already in the queue.
• You can view each file's configuration by hovering over them.

Abogen will process each item in the queue automatically, saving outputs as configured.

Special thanks to @jborza for adding queue mode in PR #35

About Chapter Markers

When you process ePUB, PDF or markdown files, Abogen converts them into text files stored in your cache directory. When you click "Edit," you're actually modifying these converted text files. In these text files, you'll notice tags that look like this:

<<CHAPTER_MARKER:Chapter Title>>

These are chapter markers. They are automatically added when you process ePUB, PDF or markdown files, based on the chapters you select. They serve an important purpose:

• Allow you to split the text into separate audio files for each chapter
• Save time by letting you reprocess only specific chapters if errors occur, rather than the entire file

You can manually add these markers to plain text files for the same benefits. Simply include them in your text like this:

<<CHAPTER_MARKER:Introduction>>
This is the beginning of my text...  

<<CHAPTER_MARKER:Main Content>> 
Here's another part...  

When you process the text file, Abogen will detect these markers automatically and ask if you want to save each chapter separately and create a merged version.

About Metadata Tags

Similar to chapter markers, it is possible to add metadata tags for M4B files. This is useful for audiobook players that support metadata, allowing you to add information like title, author, year, etc. Abogen automatically adds these tags when you process ePUB, PDF or markdown files, but you can also add them manually to your text files. Add metadata tags at the beginning of your text file like this:

<<METADATA_TITLE:Title>>
<<METADATA_ARTIST:Author>>
<<METADATA_ALBUM:Album Title>>
<<METADATA_YEAR:Year>>
<<METADATA_ALBUM_ARTIST:Album Artist>>
<<METADATA_COMPOSER:Narrator>>
<<METADATA_GENRE:Audiobook>>
<<METADATA_COVER_PATH:path/to/cover.jpg>>

Note: METADATA_COVER_PATH is used to embed a cover image into the generated M4B file. Abogen automatically extracts the cover from EPUB and PDF files and adds this tag for you.

About Timestamp-based Text Files

Similar to converting subtitle files to audio, Abogen can automatically detect text files that contain timestamps in HH:MM:SS, HH:MM:SS,ms or HH:MM:SS.ms format. When timestamps are found inside your text file, Abogen will ask if you want to use them for audio timing. This is useful for creating timed narrations, scripts, or transcripts where you need exact control over when each segment is spoken.

Format your text file like this:

00:00:00
This is the first segment of text.

00:00:15
This is the second segment, starting at 15 seconds.

00:00:45
And this is the third segment, starting at 45 seconds.

Important notes:

• Timestamps must be in HH:MM:SS, HH:MM:SS,ms or HH:MM:SS.ms format (e.g., 00:05:30 for 5 minutes 30 seconds, or 00:05:30.500 for 5 minutes 30.5 seconds)
• Milliseconds are optional and provide precision up to 1/1000th of a second
• Text before the first timestamp (if any) will automatically start at 00:00:00
• When using timestamps, the subtitle generation mode setting is ignored

Supported Languages

# 🇺🇸 'a' => American English, 🇬🇧 'b' => British English
# 🇪🇸 'e' => Spanish es
# 🇫🇷 'f' => French fr-fr
# 🇮🇳 'h' => Hindi hi
# 🇮🇹 'i' => Italian it
# 🇯🇵 'j' => Japanese: pip install misaki[ja]
# 🇧🇷 'p' => Brazilian Portuguese pt-br
# 🇨🇳 'z' => Mandarin Chinese: pip install misaki[zh]

For a complete list of supported languages and voices, refer to Kokoro's VOICES.md. To listen to sample audio outputs, see SAMPLES.md.

See How to fix Japanese audio not working?

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
audio-display=no
# --- 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.
• Pass in -e WEB_AUDIO="1" for docker run to enable audio.

Known issues:

• Audio preview is not working inside container (ALSA error) if using a VNC client.
• 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:

abogen-cli

If you installed using the Windows installer (WINDOWS_INSTALL.bat), go to python_embedded/Scripts and run:

abogen-cli.exe

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.

Common Issues & Solutions

About the name "abogen"

The name "abogen" comes from a shortened form of "audiobook generator", which is the purpose of this project.

After releasing the project, I learned from community feedback that the prefix "abo" can unfortunately be understood as an ethnic slur in certain regions (particularly Australia and New Zealand). This was something I was not aware of when naming the project, as English is not my first language.

I want to make it clear that the name was chosen only for its technical meaning, with no offensive intent. I’m grateful to those who kindly pointed this out, as it helps ensure the project remains respectful and welcoming to everyone.

How to fix "CUDA GPU is not available. Using CPU" warning?

This message means PyTorch could not use your GPU and has fallen back to the CPU. On Windows, Abogen only supports NVIDIA GPUs with CUDA. AMD GPUs are not supported on Windows (they are only supported on Linux with ROCm). Abogen will still work on the CPU, but processing will be slower compared to a supported GPU.

If you have a compatible NVIDIA GPU on Windows and still see this warning: Open your terminal in the Abogen folder (the folder that contains python_embedded) and type:

python_embedded\python.exe -m pip install --force-reinstall torch==2.8.0+cu128 torchvision==0.23.0+cu128 torchaudio==2.8.0 --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu128

If this does not resolve the issue and you are using an older NVIDIA GPU that does not support CUDA 12.8, you can try installing an older version of PyTorch that supports your GPU. For example, for CUDA 12.6, run:

python_embedded\python.exe -m pip install --force-reinstall torch==2.8.0+cu126 torchvision==0.23.0+cu126 torchaudio==2.8.0 --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu126

If you have an AMD GPU, you need to use Linux and follow the Linux/ROCm instructions. If you want to keep running on CPU, no action is required, but performance will just be reduced. See #32 for more details.

How to fix "WARNING: The script abogen-cli is installed in '/home/username/.local/bin' which is not on PATH" error in Linux?

Run the following command to add Abogen to your PATH:

echo "export PATH=\"/home/$USER/.local/bin:\$PATH\"" >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc

How to fix "No matching distribution found" error?

Try installing Abogen on supported Python (3.10 to 3.12) versions. You can use pyenv to manage multiple Python versions easily in Linux. Watch this video by NetworkChuck for a quick guide.

How to fix "[WinError 1114] A dynamic link library (DLL) initialization routine failed" error?

I faced this error when trying to run Abogen in a virtual Windows machine without GPU support. Here's how I fixed it: If you installed Abogen using the Windows installer (WINDOWS_INSTALL.bat), go to Abogen's folder (that contains python_embedded), open your terminal there and run:

python_embedded\python.exe -m pip install --force-reinstall torch==2.8.0+cu128 torchvision==0.23.0+cu128 torchaudio==2.8.0 --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu128

If you installed Abogen using pip, open your terminal in the virtual environment and run:

pip install torch==2.8.0 torchaudio==2.8.0 torchvision==0.23.0

How to fix Japanese audio not working?

Japanese audio may require additional configuration. I'm not sure about the exact solution, but it seems to be related to installing additional dependencies for Japanese support in Kokoro. Please check #56 for more information.

How to use "uv" instead of "pip"?

Abogen needs "pip", because Kokoro uses pip to download voice models from HuggingFace Hub. If you want to use "uv" instead of "pip", you can use the following command to run Abogen:

uvx --with pip abogen

How to uninstall Abogen?

• From the settings menu, go to Open configuration directory and delete the directory.
• From the settings menu, go to Open cache directory and delete the directory.
• If you installed Abogen using pip, type:

pip uninstall abogen # uninstalls abogen
pip cache purge # removes pip cache

• If you installed Abogen using the Windows installer (WINDOWS_INSTALL.bat), just remove the folder that contains Abogen. It installs everything inside python_embedded folder, no other directories are created.
• If you installed espeak-ng, you need to remove it separately.

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 the spaCy project for its sentence-segmentation tools, which help Abogen produce cleaner, more natural sentence segmentation.
• 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.

Star History

[!NOTE] Abogen supports subtitle generation for all languages. However, word-level subtitle modes (e.g., "1 word", "2 words", "3 words", etc.) are only available for English because Kokoro provides timestamp tokens only for English text. For non-English languages, Abogen uses a duration-based fallback that supports sentence-level and comma-based subtitle modes ("Line", "Sentence", "Sentence + Comma"). If you need word-level subtitles for other languages, please request that feature in the Kokoro project.

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, markdown to audio, subtitle to audio, srt to audio, ass to audio, vtt to audio, webvtt to audio, content-creation, media-generation