I really hate video, prefer reading. But by reading the material to a camera, people get paid by youtube, and then set up a patreon for buying access to the material they read. Everybody loses, hooray:-(
If this comes through, I might no longer need Iceraven (andoid firefox with full addon support, like before they tore it out; I use it for Singlefile)
Derek Lowe has some explanation:
Iceraven on Android; it’s got extensions I use – notably SingleFile — that the main Firefox doesn’t have any more.
If you skip updates long enough, someone might find a security hole, and if you’ve skipped the update that fixes it, you’ll be able to jailbreak it, install koreader, read epubs without conversion, use the filesystem for ebook organization.
Also, you’ll avoid advertisements, which Amazon is now pushing to the homescreens even of kindles that were bought with the extra-cost no-ads option.
I just searched on f-droid, found
BookWyrm (A BookWyrm client for Android.) https://f-droid.org/packages/nl.privacydragon.bookwyrm/
since podcasts are I think just RSS feeds of audio files (mp3 for those I’ve checked) the ads aren’t in any way marked in the stream. The only thing I’ve found is adjusting the skip buttons in antennapod so that skip fwd does 10 seconds, and back does 5; that seems to let me avoid listening to most of the ad; tap fwd until it’s back in material, then back once.
But I listen to a lot less podcasts; if I want hands- and eyes-free material I’m more likely to use TTS in my (text) RSS feed reader of choice, currently Feeder.
Kindle isn’t based on Android; it’s bare Linux with heavy DRM and a very limited ebook reader app on it. Whether the MacOS kindle app would help, I don’t know.
That looks like an app for playing audiobooks; I’ve used Voice Audiobook Player from f-droid for that.
If what you want is the recorded performance of someone reading a book, then yeah, librivox for legal audiobooks, and other commentors have other amswers that are on-topic. But DRM-free ebooks — text things, like epubs — can be read aloud by good ereader apps. I like Moon+ Reader Pro from Google Play, and Cool Reader from f-droid. For me, the emotionless robotic reading of TTS engines is more like a hands- and eyes-free way to enjoy the author’s words as written; I find listening to someone performing an audio reading of the book a different experience.
Before ebook reader apps learned about TTS I used to take my txt ebooks, feed them through flite (Festival Lite), then convert the resulting audio to ogg vorbis and load them on an iRiver PMP to play during long drives.
after Google shut down Reader, I took my OPML (list of subscriptions), and switched to a FOSS local RSS reader; import my OPML and carry on. I’ve switched software occasionally; right now I’m happy with Feeder (from f-droid).
Getting my news is something I care about too much to entrust to someone’s server; I’m happy with it purely local.
Thanks, I hadn’t heard of that one
It’s not GUI (no icons, no widgets) but I have for many years preferred
Search Based Launcher (Minimalistic home-screen) https://f-droid.org/packages/com.vackosar.searchbasedlauncher/
It uses the text names of apps for launching them, and allows both hiding and renaming apps. Renaming is helpful for dealing with e.g. “Voice” being both Google Voice and Voice Audiobook Player.
Thanks, I hadn’t seen this elsewhere, glad to know about it.