You have the audiobook. You have the ebook. You want the words to light up while the narrator reads. Here is every serious way to do that in 2026, including the ones that are not Witbound.
Amazon calls this immersion reading, or Read & Listen. Whatever the name, the promise is the same: your eyes and ears move through the book together, so your attention stays on the page. The apps below all get you some version of it. They differ in how precisely the text follows the voice, whose books they accept, and what they ask of you in money, hardware, and data.
| App | Word-by-word highlight | Works with your own files | Needs a server | Price model | Privacy label |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WitboundiPhone and iPad | Yes. Every word lights up as it is spoken, and you can tap any word to jump the narration there. | Yes. Your own epub or PDF, paired with your own m4b or mp3. | No. Everything happens on the device in your hand. | $14.99 one time. | data not linked to you (App Store label) |
| StorytellerOpen source, self-hosted | No. It keeps your place by chapter and position, so you can switch between reading and listening without word-level highlighting. | Yes. Your own ebooks and audiobooks. | Yes. You install, run, and maintain your own server before anything works. | Free and open source. | Self-hosted. Your books and data live on your own server. |
| Amazon WhispersyncKindle Read & Listen | Yes. Polished highlighting inside the Kindle app while Audible narrates. | No. Kindle and Audible purchases only. Your own files are not welcome. | No. It runs on Amazon's cloud. | Buy both the Kindle edition and the Audible edition of every single book, where the pair exists at all. | Tied to your Amazon account. |
| Audiobook playersBookPlayer, Prologue, and others | No. Excellent players, but audio only. There is no text on screen to follow. | Mostly. BookPlayer plays your files directly. Prologue streams from your Plex library. | Varies. BookPlayer needs none. Prologue needs a Plex server. | Mostly no charge, with optional paid upgrades. | Varies by app. |
Storyteller is a genuinely good project. If you enjoy self-hosting and you are comfortable keeping a server alive, it costs nothing and respects your ownership completely. Its sync is by chapter and position rather than by word, and the server is yours to run.
Amazon's Read & Listen is the most polished version of the idea, and the most expensive. Every book must be bought twice, once from Kindle and once from Audible, and the whole experience stays inside Amazon's walls. If your library already lives there and the double price does not bother you, it works well.
BookPlayer and Prologue are lovely audiobook players. That is the point of them. If you never want text on screen, you may not need a read-along app at all.
Witbound is for the remaining case, which we think is the common one: you own DRM-free books, you want every word highlighted as it is spoken, and you do not want to run a server or open an account to get it. You pay once, and nothing about your library ever leaves your device. If you are new to the format, start with our list of free public-domain audiobook and ebook pairs.
Word-by-word Read & Listen, on your device, with your files.
Get Witbound on the App Store