Leaflet for the books you read. Wavelet for the podcasts and audiobooks you listen to. Triplet for your music. Hamlet to hold the whole library on a machine you control. Each one takes files and feeds you already have and opens them well.
No account with us, no feed deciding what you see, no subscription. Your library is yours. The apps just open it.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening.
At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard.
Dickensp. 3 / 412
142 · Attention spans are fine, actually
The Long Form
21:07−31:33
LeafletWavelet
Four apps, one idea.
One for reading, one for listening, one for music, one for hosting. Each does one job and gets out of your way.
Leaflet Public beta
Ebooks
A reader for the books already on your device. EPUB, Kindle files (MOBI and AZW3), PDF and plain text. Paged or scrolling, with bookmarks, highlights and your place kept in every book. It can follow news sites and blogs too.
One player for everything you listen to. Podcasts come in from their public feeds, audiobooks as your own files. Two libraries on one player, downloads that stay until you delete them, and nothing tailored to you.
A music player for the songs you already own. Point it at a folder and it reads the song details itself. It doesn't stream, and nothing picks your next song for you.
The same four rules for every app, current and future. Every design decision has to fit inside them.
Offline first
Leaflet, Wavelet and Triplet work in airplane mode. Hamlet runs on your own hardware. There's no Letworks server, so nothing reports back to us. The only time an app goes online is when you ask it to: fetching a feed, looking up a cover, syncing to your own storage.
No account with us
The apps read the files and feeds you give them. There's nothing to sign up for, so there's nothing to lose access to. Sync is optional, and it goes to storage you already control: your Google Drive or your own Hamlet server.
One job each
A reader reads, a player plays. Keeping each app to one job keeps it fast, and keeps its settings screen shorter than a chapter.
Yours to keep
Standard formats in, standard formats out. Your files are never locked inside the app. Stop using a Letworks app tomorrow and your library walks out the door with you, untouched.
Questions
Why separate apps instead of one?
Because a good reading screen, a good audiobook player and a good music player have less in common than they look. Splitting them keeps each app small and lets each one get finished, instead of one app sitting at 60% forever.
Wasn't Wavelet supposed to be two apps?
It was. Podcasts and audiobooks turned out to share about ninety percent of a player, so they became one app. Music got its own app, Triplet, because albums and playlists want a different screen than chapters do.
Can I use them today?
Leaflet and Wavelet are in public beta on Android and going officially live soon. Triplet goes into open beta very soon. Hamlet is still being built. There are no dates, on purpose. Announced deadlines mostly produce apologies.
Do they sync?
Only if you want them to. Leaflet, Wavelet and Triplet can each sync to your own Google Drive, and each app can only see its own files there. Leaflet and Wavelet can also sync with your own Hamlet server. Either way the data goes somewhere you control, never to us. And with sync off, everything stays on your device.
What will they cost?
Nothing during the beta. After that, each app unlocks one of two ways: pay a little, once, or watch one untargeted ad, once. There's no subscription, and the ad isn't aimed at you. The full reasoning is on the About page.