vatavale / folivox

# Folivox
**The audiobook workhorse. A powerful tool in a simple interface, free.**
Drop in a book, pick a voice, press Render. Get a chaptered audiobook read in any voice you like,
on your own computer.
FB2 · EPUB · DOCX · PDF · TXT  →  `.m4b` / `.mp3` with chapters, cover and metadata
## What is this
Folivox turns a whole book, many hours of it, into a finished audiobook. Out of the box it reads with
CosyVoice 3, an open model that clones a voice from a short sample,
running entirely on your machine: no account, no subscription, no per-character fee, nothing uploaded.
It is one application with many engines behind it. The book can be read by the free local CosyVoice 3, by the
local Fish Audio Drama 3 (80+ languages, several voices in one scene; needs a Mac with enough memory),
or by ElevenLabs, OpenAI, Gemini, Cartesia or Fish Audio online with your own API key. A narrator voice can come from the bundled
catalog, from your own recording, or be designed for this particular book. Everything around the voice,
from text clean-up to quality control, chapters and a crash-safe journal, is the same whichever engine you choose.
Use the **web studio** (`folivox ui`, in 49 interface languages) or the **command line**: same pipeline, same
results.
## Quick start
### 1. Install
Pick one way. Each needs no administrator rights and is safe to run again.
**One command** (recommended). Open a terminal (macOS: **Terminal** in Applications → Utilities; Windows:
**PowerShell** from the Start menu; Linux: any terminal), paste the line for your system and press Enter.
macOS and Linux:
 [code] 
Windows (PowerShell):
 [code] 
 With git (if you want the source code) 
macOS and Linux:
 [code] 
Windows (PowerShell):
 [code] 
 With Docker (home server or NAS) 
Optional, not needed on a normal computer. Create a stack from docker-compose.yml (or
docker-compose.nvidia.yml for an NVIDIA GPU), set `FOLIVOX_UI_TOKEN` to a password, deploy
and open `http:// :8765/`. Works from Portainer, Dockhand or `docker compose up -d`. Details:
docs/docker.md.
### 2. Start
Open a new terminal window and run:
 [code] 
Your browser opens the studio. Drop a book, choose a voice, press **Render audiobook**. To stop the studio,
press `Ctrl+C` in the terminal.
The installer sets up everything for you: `uv`, ffmpeg, the PyTorch build that fits your hardware (NVIDIA GPU,
Apple Silicon or CPU) and Folivox. Then it checks your computer and downloads the models (about 6 GB for the
voice and 1.6 GB for the quality check) with a progress bar; an interrupted download continues where it
stopped. Prefer the terminal to the studio? `folivox render book.fb2` puts the audiobook next to the book.
### 3. Update
 [code] 
Whichever way you installed, this fetches the latest version and keeps your models, voices, settings and
unfinished renders. Check the version with `folivox --version`.
### 4. Uninstall
 [code] 
It removes only what Folivox created. Your books, audiobooks, ffmpeg and uv are never touched.
Detail