text2Ear
Read it, or have it read to you
Open an EPUB, PDF, or Markdown file and read it on a real page — or have it read aloud in a natural voice, on device and offline. Your place is the same place either way: stop listening and the page opens where the voice stopped; read ahead and the voice picks up from your eyes.
In early testing on TestFlight · coming to the App Store for iPhone, iPad & MaciOS 17 and macOS 14 or later. The neural voices run on the Neural Engine where the machine has one, and fall back to the processor where it doesn't.
What it does
Read
- Real justified pages you scroll or turn, in five looks from Paper to Midnight
- Your own margins, line spacing, type size, and a dyslexia-friendly face
- Start the voice from any line and the page follows it, waiting when you drift back to reread
- One place per book, shared between reading and listening — mid-sentence
Listen
- Reads EPUB, PDF, and Markdown/plain-text files aloud
- Apple's natural voices, or thirteen built-in neural voices that run entirely on device — no account, no subscription
- The sentence being read stays highlighted, teleprompter style
- Picks up exactly where you left off, per book
A cast of voices
- The app reads the book and finds who speaks — then you give the main characters their own voices
- The narrator reads the prose and everyone else, the way a good audiobook does it
- Spoken-play mode for dialogue books and plays: the names aren't read aloud — the voices carry the parts, like a radio drama
- Every name it found is listed, however few lines they have — put anyone in the cast yourself, even a character the book never names as a speaker
Teach it a name
- Type a name as it's printed and how it should sound — hear it in the book's own voice before you keep it
- Taught once, it holds in every book
- Your pronunciations follow you between your devices, and can be written to a file to keep or share
Keep what you find
- Hold a passage to keep it with a colour and a note
- Bookmarks and kept passages in one notebook, with a Markdown export
- Find in Book, and a contents list that works while reading or listening
Made for the car
- A driving view with big play/pause and skip buttons
- “Mark this spot” — one tap to flag a place to review later
- Plays with the screen off, or keeps it awake while you read
- Download the neural voice once for fully offline listening
A library of your own
- Keep a copy of any book in your library — synced through iCloud
- A cover-tiled Recent shelf and a real folder view
- Easy on the eyes: adjustable text size, highlight color, and a dyslexia-friendly font
On your Mac
- Every tool in the menu bar with a shortcut — contents, find, notebook, reading style, the voices, play and pause
- Turn pages with the arrow keys; the same tools sit at the foot of the window in the order you choose
- Screen off takes the whole display black while it reads on
- One universal app: Apple silicon and Intel both run it natively
Export (Mac)
- Turn any book into a chaptered .m4b audiobook with cover art
- The cast comes with it: every character in their own voice, exactly as the live reading sounds
- Listen in any podcast or audiobook app — or open the .m4b back in text2Ear, with chapters, resume and bookmarks
- Interrupted exports pick up where they left off
Private by design
Everything runs on your device. Your books, your place, and any audio you make stay on your Mac or iPhone — nothing is uploaded, and text2Ear collects no data at all. The neural voice model downloads once from its open-source host so speech works offline. Details in the privacy policy.
You are responsible for having the right to read or copy the books you open. Audio text2Ear makes is for your own personal use.