Listen 2 Reader

Listen2 runs neural text-to-speech directly on your iPhone or iPad without connecting to cloud services. No subscription or accounts — just a 7 day free trial and then a one-time purchase.

Most text-to-speech apps either use the tried and true system voices or require monthly payments for cloud processing. Listen2 runs neural voice models locally using your iOS device's CPU and Apple Neural Engine, giving you natural-sounding speech without ongoing costs or privacy tradeoffs.

WHAT MAKES LISTEN2 DIFFERENT

Multi-Voice Engines, One App
Piper provides reliable neural voices across 13 languages. Supertonic offers a fresh take on a voice engine — flow-matching models running on Apple's Neural Engine via CoreML for natural rhythm and expressive speech. Choose from 100+ voices in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Greek, Hindi, Vietnamese, Swedish and Hungarian. More coming.

Voice Tuning
Adjust the model parameters of any voice to suit your preferences. Save presets to switch between profiles. Preview pronunciation rules before saving them.

Import Anything
PDF, EPUB, DOCX, DAISY, markdown, plain text, clipboard, or web articles. Share from Safari and Listen2 extracts the article text. Paywalled content works (even sites on which other major TTS apps fail) when shared from a browser where you are logged in.

Machine Learning Word Sync
CTC forced alignment matches audio to text at the word level. Watch each word highlight as it is spoken — across Latin and non-Latin scripts alike. Highlighting engine newly re-build to be lean and efficient that's dramatically easier on your battery life.

Smart Document Reading
Multi-column layout handling, footnote filtering (for PDF files), hyphenated word rejoining. AI Vision for scanned PDFs. Full EPUB, DOCX, and DAISY support.

Figure Descriptions
On-device AI vision generates spoken descriptions of figures, charts, and photos as you listen. For non-English documents, descriptions translate automatically via Apple's on-device Translation framework. (Works with EPUB and PDF as a first roll-out)

Pronunciation Rules
Fix how any word is spoken without changing display text. Rules for names, terms, or abbreviations. Live preview before saving.
Built-in presets for footnote markers. Global or per-document. Doesn't break highlighting.

True Offline Privacy
Processing, normalization, and synthesis all happen on-device. Documents never leave your phone. No uploads, account, or tracking.

FEATURES
- 100+ neural voices across 13 languages, plus dozens of Apple system voices
- 3+ engines: Piper (broad language support), Supertonic (high-fidelity CoreML, flow-matching models), and Kokoro. Apple system voices offer efficient, quality options if using enhanced or premium models.
- Voice tuning with saveable presets
- Word-by-word or sentence highlighting
- PDF, EPUB, DOCX, DAISY, TXT, Markdown support
- AI figure descriptions with auto-translation (PDF and EPUB support)
- Collections with intros, cover art, and auto-advance
- Web Article Collections — batch articles into an auto-playing queue
- Clipboard import and Siri shortcut support
- 0.5x to 2.5x playback speed (Kokoro supports up to 1.4x because of real-time constraint)
- Background playback with lock screen controls
- Import from Files, links, Share Extension, or other apps
- Export any document as a plain-text file from the library
- Pronunciation rules with live preview
- Atkinson Hyperlegible and OpenDyslexic fonts
- Full VoiceOver support with rotor navigation and Magic Tap
- Elapsed and remaining time in now playing & reader view.

WHO IT'S FOR
- Commuters turning drive time into learning time
- Students reviewing papers and textbooks
- Professionals handling confidential documents privately
- VoiceOver users looking for a fully accessible TTS reader
- Readers with dyslexia who benefit from audio-visual sync
- Anyone tired of TTS subscriptions

One-time purchase. 7-day free trial. No subscriptions.