Wonder Reader: free Mac reading, VoiceOver-linked speech and local AI — PDF and bookmark update

Hi everyone,

I built Wonder Reader because I wanted to spend more time reading and less time fighting my reading software. If you have ever lost your place while switching between a screen reader and a book's narration, struggled through a PDF, or wished you could translate a passage without juggling another app, this project is for you.

Wonder Reader is a native Mac reading app built around VoiceOver, keyboard navigation and listening. Reading, system text-to-speech, OCR, translation and summaries are all free in this direct-download release. There is no subscription, no account to create and no paid feature unlock. Download it, open a book and start reading. Add local AI later if you want it.

The current public version is 0.1.8, build 42. The download is about 47.3 MB. This update brings a more practical PDF reading view, named bookmarks, independent notes and export, including changes prompted by feedback right here in this thread.

English download page and installation instructions: Download Wonder Reader — English page

Why I decided to make my own reader

I am a student, and Wonder Reader grew out of my own needs as a VoiceOver user. I became fed up with Voice Dream's pricing and an update experience that, for me, did not justify paying an ongoing subscription. I wanted a reader whose direction I could influence, where the everyday problems that matter to me would receive attention. Building something of my own became a more useful response to that frustration.

My priorities are straightforward: comfortable reading, useful keyboard controls, an interface that takes screen-reader users seriously, and full access to the features without a recurring bill. I want feedback to lead to visible improvements. The PDF and bookmark changes below are a concrete example of that already happening.

The name is personal, too. Wonder is my guide dog: quiet, clever, friendly, loyal and occasionally much too clever for her own good. She is the companion behind the app's name. I wanted a little of that feeling of companionship in a reading tool I would use every day.

A listening workflow that keeps your place

One of the features I care about most is the connection between built-in narration and the reading position. Wonder Reader uses the system voices available to Mac applications. Its narration follows the text position so that listening and navigating belong to the same reading workflow.

Here is the idea in everyday use. Start listening, pause when something deserves a closer look, move through the text with VoiceOver, and resume from your new position. You should not have to hunt for the same sentence again in a separate player. Sentence and paragraph shortcuts also help when you want to hear that last thought again or move ahead through familiar material.

In the reading area, K plays or pauses. J and L move by sentence; Shift-J and Shift-L move by paragraph. Command-J and Command-L move between chapters. The text is read-only, so navigation and ordinary key presses do not rewrite your book.

A practical listening tip: if the app's narration and VoiceOver are both speaking the same text, temporarily mute VoiceOver's speech while listening through Wonder Reader. Restore VoiceOver speech when you pause narration and want to browse again. Muting its speech is different from turning VoiceOver off. The app does not automatically change your VoiceOver settings for you.

This is an important distinction because the two voices can overlap while the reading position follows narration. I would rather explain the current behavior clearly than have your first experience be two voices competing with one another. Cursor-tracking preferences can also affect how this feels, and I welcome reports from different VoiceOver and braille setups.

Your voices, your languages, your pace

You can follow VoiceOver's voice settings or use independent speech settings in Wonder Reader. Independent profiles include controls for speed, pitch and volume, with language and voice selection arranged so you can narrow the voice list by language.

The app supports automatic voice switching for text in different languages, with settings for a preferred voice and other-language speech. That is useful when a book includes a quotation or passage in another language. You can also force the preferred voice to read all languages if you find automatic switching distracting. Available voices depend on what macOS exposes and what is installed on your Mac; the app does not supply a separate commercial voice package.

Bring books and everyday documents

You can import DRM-free EPUB, PDF, DOCX, Markdown, plain text, HTML and RTF documents. That makes Wonder Reader useful for both leisure reading and material such as class handouts, articles or documents someone has sent you. EPUB navigation uses the book's supplied table of contents, and saved reading positions help you return to where you stopped.

The original text and generated results have separate reading areas. Command-3 takes you to the original; Command-4 takes you to processing results. You can return to the source when checking a translation, reviewing a summary or verifying something the model has said. The source document is not replaced by AI output.

PDF reading: what changed in build 42

Maldalain pointed out that opening a PDF in a layout much like Preview was not the reading experience they wanted. That was useful feedback. Build 42 now opens PDFs in a continuous, read-only Reading view using their existing text layer, with navigation and source-page mapping. You can move through the text using the reader's controls and add a bookmark that retains its original page location.

A labelled popup switches to Original layout when you need to check the actual page, a figure or the visual arrangement. The PDF itself stays intact. This gives you a reading-focused starting point and a way back to the original rather than forcing every interaction through the page layout.

There is an important boundary in this release: the Reading view relies on the PDF's text layer and its ordering. It does not yet reconstruct every complicated multi-column page or table. Images and diagrams remain available in Original layout. Scanned pages need OCR. Work on bringing original images directly into the accessible reading flow is underway, but that is not a feature I am claiming is in build 42.

Bookmarks that can become useful study notes

Build 42 also adds the requested ability to name bookmarks and give them independent notes. Press Command-B to add a bookmark and Command-5 to open the bookmark list. You can edit the name and note while keeping the original excerpt, location and creation date.

A bookmark can therefore be more useful than a place marker. Give it a name such as “Argument to revisit” or “Useful definition,” then add the thought you want to remember. Your note remains separate from the author's text. That is especially helpful when returning to a book after several days or collecting passages for a discussion.

You can export bookmarks and notes through the Mac's Save dialog as UTF-8 plain text or Markdown. The export includes the book title, bookmark name, location, timestamp, excerpt and note. You can keep those notes outside the reader and use them in your own workflow. This is bookmark-based annotation; it is not a claim that the app edits annotations inside the original PDF.

Local AI without setting up an AI server

Wonder Reader brings translation and summaries into the reading workflow. Choose what to process, select the language or summary detail, start the task, then read or listen to the result. You do not have to conduct a chat with a model or write your own prompts for every chapter.

The AI runs locally after you download a supported model. You do not need to install Python, Homebrew or a separate AI server. The application handles the supported model downloads and configuration. Ordinary reading, system speech and Apple OCR work without downloading model weights, so you can try the reader before deciding whether you want the AI features.

The app itself is a small software-only download. Optional models are separate and range from roughly 867 MB for Low to about 3.06 GB for Advanced, with Mid and High in between. Settings shows the choices and sizes and lets you download, enable or remove models. Download size is not the same as working memory, so choose with your Mac's available memory and your documents in mind.

Translation supports multiple languages, and summaries offer different levels of detail. Processing language defaults follow the app's language, with choices in AI assistance. You can work on the current chapter or page, or explicitly choose the whole document. Longer work is divided into smaller pieces for processing rather than assuming that an entire book will fit into a model's context at once.

I have been refining the prompts to encourage complete, natural sentences, consistent names and terminology, and summaries grounded in the source. These are useful reading aids, but small local models still make mistakes. Literary style, relationships between characters, unfamiliar names and numbers deserve checking. A larger model can help, but “Advanced” does not mean every result is correct.

OCR and a clearer sense of what is happening

For scanned material, Apple's local OCR is available without an AI model download. The Advanced vision-model path provides another recognition option when configured. The smaller text-model tiers are not interchangeable image-recognition engines. Recognition quality depends on the document, scan and language. Structured table recognition also depends on newer macOS capabilities; macOS 14 does not provide the same table experience as macOS 26.

Recent updates make processing easier to follow by distinguishing model startup and input preparation from generation. Press slash to hear the current stage, progress to one decimal place and elapsed time. Startup and processing errors are announced and can be queried again, so a quiet wait at zero percent does not have to leave you guessing what the application is doing.

Model downloads show speed and continue when you close Settings. If you quit the app, downloads stop; retained data can be resumed when you start the download again. Incomplete downloads can also be removed. This matters when a large download is interrupted or you decide another model would suit your Mac better.

A few shortcuts to get started

Command-O imports a document. Command-1 opens the library, Command-2 the table of contents, Command-3 the original reading area, Command-4 processing results and Command-5 bookmarks. Command-backtick opens AI assistance; Command-comma opens Settings.

With the reading area focused, Z starts OCR, X starts translation and C starts a summary for the current chapter or page. Shift-Z, Shift-X and Shift-C request whole-document processing. Slash reports progress. In the currently published build 42, Command-Shift-X stops processing. K controls narration, and J/L with or without Shift help you move by sentence or paragraph.

The welcome guide is available from Help. The interface and guides support English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese. The English website now has its own direct address, so international readers do not need to begin on the Chinese page.

Try it with a document you know

You need an Apple Silicon Mac, M1 or later, running macOS 14 or later. Intel Macs are not supported. Download the ZIP from the English page, unzip it, move Wonder Reader.app into Applications and open it. The release is Developer ID signed and notarized by Apple. No account, subscription or UDID registration is needed.

My suggestion is to start with a book or short document you already know. Try listening, move back a sentence, make a named bookmark and export a note. Then try the optional AI if that interests you. You can get a feel for the reading controls without waiting for a model download.

Responsive navigation and stability are central priorities. It was encouraging to read Maldalain's report here that book loading and VoiceOver navigation felt smooth on their setup. I have also tested the signed build's PDF, bookmark, note and export workflow. Other users have reported sluggishness, so I am continuing to investigate that rather than treating one good result as universal. An intermittent Command-Escape issue also remains under investigation.

If you try Wonder Reader, tell me what worked and what got in your way. The macOS version, app build, document format and steps leading to a problem are especially useful. You do not need to upload a private book to report a bug. Specific feedback has already changed this release, and I want that conversation to continue.

Thank you for giving a small independent project a chance. I want Wonder Reader to earn a place on your Mac through useful features, comfortable reading and improvements you can actually see. The full current release is free to try here: Download Wonder Reader — English page

Disclosure: I used AI assistance to help express my requirements and development notes in English. The priorities and experiences described here are mine.