Guides & Tips
Helpful articles about ebooks, text-to-speech, and getting more from your reading.
How to Make Your iPhone Read Any Text Aloud
Speak Selection, Speak Screen, Safari's Listen to Page and VoiceOver explained step by step, their limits for long reading, and when a reader app works better.
Natural Text-to-Speech on iPhone: How Offline AI Voices Work
What makes a voice sound natural, how neural voices differ from robotic ones, the real trade-offs of on-device vs cloud TTS, and how to pick a voice for a book.
How to Listen to Word Documents and Web Pages on iPhone
Listen to Word, TXT, Markdown, RTF and HTML files, pasted text and web pages on iPhone: practical workflows, tips for clean audio and what stays on your device.
Text-to-Speech for Dyslexia: A Practical Guide
How to read by listening with dyslexia: set the right speed and voice, follow the highlighted line, and handle school PDFs and scanned worksheets on iPhone.
Learn a Language by Listening to Books (and Reading Along)
A practical method to learn a language with books: read along slowly, re-listen, speed up, and find free books and native voices in 30+ languages on iPhone.
Listen to Your calibre Library on iPhone with OPDS
Connect calibre's content server to your iPhone over OPDS, download books from your own library and listen offline. Includes Kavita, Komga and troubleshooting.
What's New in VocaRead 3.0: A Faster Library, a New Reading Engine, and an iPad Player
VocaRead 3.0 is the biggest update since launch. Here's everything that changed — and everything that quietly got better since 2.5.
How to Try VocaRead's New Reading Engine (Beta)
VocaRead 3.0 ships a second on-device reading engine you can switch on in a single tap. Here's what it is, how to enable it, and what to expect.
How to Organize a Big Book Library in VocaRead: List View, Filters, Collections, and Listen Next
Twenty books are easy. Two hundred need a system. Here's how VocaRead 3.0's list view, filters, sorting, and collections keep a large library usable.
VocaRead on iPad: A Player Designed for the Big Screen
With 3.0, VocaRead's player is laid out for iPad instead of stretched from iPhone. Here's what changed, and how to use iPad and iPhone together.
How to Listen to Your Books in the Car with CarPlay
Turn the drive into reading time. Here's how VocaRead works with CarPlay, what got more reliable in 3.0, and a few tips for hands-free listening.
How to Listen to Scanned PDFs on iPhone (Without Uploading Them Anywhere)
Old scans, photographed pages, two-column papers: VocaRead reads them aloud using on-device OCR. Here's how it works and what improved in 2.6 and 3.0.
How to Listen to Web Articles on iPhone: Share Sheet, URL Import, and Readarium
Long reads pile up in browser tabs. Here are three ways to turn any web page into audio with VocaRead — including a read-it-later workflow with Readarium.
How to Fix Mispronounced Names in a Text-to-Speech Book
A character's name said wrong 400 times will ruin a novel. VocaRead lets you teach the voice the correct pronunciation once — here's how to do it well.
Control VocaRead Hands-Free: Siri, Shortcuts, Widget, and Apple Watch
Resume a book by voice, pause from your wrist, start the sleep timer from a Shortcut. Everything VocaRead can do without unlocking your phone.
Read Actively While You Listen: Highlights, Notes, Bookmarks, and Sharing Excerpts
Listening doesn't have to be passive. Here's how to mark what matters in VocaRead, export it to your notes, and share a passage in two taps.
How to Fall Asleep Listening to Books (Without Losing Your Place)
Listening to a book is one of the best ways to drift off — until you wake up three chapters ahead. Here's how a sleep timer fixes bedtime reading.
How to Turn Any PDF Into an Audiobook on iPhone
Reports, papers, manuals, ebooks — PDFs are everywhere, and they're painful to read on a phone. Here's how to listen to any PDF instead.
How to Listen to Kindle Books (MOBI/AZW3) on iPhone in 2026
Got a folder of MOBI or AZW3 files? Here's how to turn DRM-free Kindle books into natural-sounding audiobooks on your iPhone.
Best EPUB Reader for iPhone in 2026: How to Choose
An honest guide to choosing an EPUB reader for iPhone: DRM, read-aloud quality, offline use, privacy, price model and sync, with a comparison table.
How to Listen to EPUB Books on iPhone and iPad
Turn any DRM-free EPUB into audio on iPhone or iPad: built-in iOS speech vs a dedicated reader, how to import, pick a voice, and get through long books.
Text-to-Speech vs Audiobooks: An Honest Comparison
Human narrators vs AI voices, compared honestly: performance, the catalogue gap, cost per title, speed and notes, and when to choose each or both.
Free Ebooks from Project Gutenberg: A Complete Guide
What Project Gutenberg is, what public domain means where you live, how to find good free classics by genre and language, and how to listen to them offline.
How to Read More Books by Listening While Commuting
The real maths of commute listening: how many books 15 to 60 minutes a day adds up to, which books work in audio, and how to set up offline listening.