Question 1

What is Silo Read?

Accepted Answer

Silo Read turns a PDF, EPUB, Word file, or scan into a chaptered M4B audiobook on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. It reads documents aloud sentence by sentence, recognizes scans on the device, searches everything you import, plays audiobooks you already own, and answers questions about your library with validated citations.

Question 2

Does Silo Read send my documents anywhere?

Accepted Answer

No. Import, OCR, search, narration, transforms, cited answers, and audiobook assembly run on your device, and Silo Systems receives none of that content. On Mac, optional voice and model downloads go directly to their pinned source only after you approve their size, and that host sees ordinary request details such as your IP address, but no document, prompt, or voice audio. App Store traffic and external links are handled by Apple or your browser.

Question 3

What can I import?

Accepted Answer

PDF, EPUB, DOCX, PPTX, RTF, saved web pages, plain text, text-bearing DAISY books, and photos or scans of printed pages, plus MP3, M4A, M4B, and other system-supported audio with a listening position saved across launches.

Question 4

What does the audiobook studio export?

Accepted Answer

Silo Read preserves the imported original while you rename, split, merge, reorder, include, or skip chapter copies. It renders AAC chapter audio, retries failed chapters selectively, re-renders only what changed, and assembles a single M4B with cover art, audiobook metadata, and native timed chapters.

Question 5

Can Silo Read summarize or answer questions about my documents?

Accepted Answer

Yes, with a local text model. Silo Read makes original-preserving shortened, simplified, summarized, enriched, and custom-prompt variants, and OCR cleanup works without any model. Its answers are grounded in local passages and carry validated document, chapter, page, and sentence citations. When the evidence or the model is missing, Silo Read shows the evidence instead of inventing an answer.

Question 6

Can Silo Read narrate in my own voice?

Accepted Answer

On Mac, yes, if you made the voice in Silo Clone (coming soon, macOS 26). Silo Read does not record audio or create voices: export the voice from Silo Clone as a .silovoice file, import it in Silo Read's voice picker, and install the optional personal-voice engine (about 3.2 GB). Narration in that voice then runs entirely on your Mac.

Question 7

What does Silo Read cost and require?

Accepted Answer

Pricing: $19.99 one-time · no subscription. One universal purchase covers iPhone + iPad + Mac. It requires iOS 17+, iPadOS 17+, macOS 14+. Apple system voices, reading, OCR, and search need no download, and iPhone and iPad include the neural reading voice. On Mac, the neural reading voice (336 MB), the local text model, and the personal-voice engine are separate optional downloads you approve first.

Private PDF tools for Mac.

The handoff.

Open the file. Hear it. Search it.

Burn in what must not leave.

Ask the archive. Cite the page.

In this workflow.

Formats

How to verify privacy