Support

Athene for iPhone and iPad

Write to athene@theadipost.com. It reaches the person who wrote the app. If something is broken, say which device, which iOS version, and what the book was; that is usually enough to find it.

Getting books in

Athene reads EPUB and PDF, and turns MOBI, AZW3, Word, FB2, TXT and HTML files into books as they arrive. Tap + on the Library for Free Books from Project Gutenberg, a book sent from your computer over Wi‑Fi, a link to a book on the web, or an OPDS catalogue. You can also open a file from Files, iCloud Drive, Mail or any other app and choose Athene from the share sheet. The book is copied into Athene, so it stays available whether or not the original does.

Athene sells no books. It reads the ones you already have.

Connecting a calibre server

Athene talks to calibre’s own content server, to calibre-web and to anything else that serves an OPDS catalogue. In the calibre screen, enter the server’s address, for example http://192.168.1.20:8083, with the username and password you use for that server, and connect. The port can be left off: Athene tries calibre’s 8080 and calibre-web’s 8083 by itself.

It can’t reach the server.

Athene says why: calibre isn’t running, the port is wrong, the computer is asleep, or Local Network is switched off. If calibre’s Content server is off, “Show me how” walks you through turning it on. Otherwise, check that the device is on the same network, and that iOS has been allowed to find local devices: Settings → Athene → Local Network. Over Tailscale or another VPN, the server’s VPN address works as it does at home; a server reached over the open internet needs an https address.

It connects but the shelf is empty.

calibre-web only exposes books over OPDS to accounts that have permission to download. Check that account in calibre-web’s admin.

Downloads stall or fail partway.

calibre-web rate-limits OPDS requests. Athene waits and retries on its own; give it a moment before trying again.

Send to Calibre

Turn on Send to Calibre in Settings → Sync and your highlights and how far you’ve read go back to your calibre library, into columns you choose, and finished books can be marked as read. The ⓘ beside the switch explains what to set up in calibre on your computer first.

Listen

Tap the headphones while you read and the book is read aloud from where you are. The voice runs on your device and is a one-time download the first time you use it, about 242 MB, so start it on Wi‑Fi. It keeps reading with the screen locked, and the lock screen’s controls pause and resume it.

iCloud Sync

Turn it on in Settings → Sync. Your place, highlights, notes, drawings, collections, papers and reading settings then follow you to every device signed in to your iCloud. It is off until you turn it on, and it goes only to your own private iCloud; the words you wrote are stored in iCloud’s encrypted fields.

The Owl

The Owl answers questions about the passage you are reading. It can run three ways: on Apple Intelligence, where the device supports it and it is turned on in Settings; against an Ollama server you run yourself, by entering its address in the Owl’s setup screen; or with an API key you bring from Anthropic, OpenAI or OpenRouter.

If the Owl says it isn’t available, the usual cause is that Apple Intelligence is off or still preparing on that device, and no server or key has been configured. One of the three has to be true.

Purchases

Athene sells nothing today. Everything it does is free: the reader, the library, Listen, the dictionary, the Owl, iCloud Sync, your calibre server, your highlights and notes.

Your data

Everything Athene knows lives on your device, and in your own iCloud if you turn on iCloud Sync. Deleting the app deletes what is on the device, including your library, so export or move anything you want to keep first. The privacy policy sets out exactly what is stored and what is sent.

Reporting a bug

Write to athene@theadipost.com with your device and iOS version, what you did and what happened instead, and, for a book that won’t open or renders wrongly, where the book came from and the file if you are able to share it. A book that fails is almost always a book with something unusual in it, and having the file is the difference between a fix and a guess.