PDFs, Read Aloud
Listen to Any PDF, With the Screen Locked.
Reports, white papers, contracts, manuals. Share the PDF to Speek and listen on a walk, in the car or at the gym, in a natural voice that reads every section in order.
The Short Answer
To listen to a PDF on iPhone, open it in Files, Mail or your browser, tap Share and choose Speek, then press play and lock your phone. On Mac, select the file in Finder and press Control Option S. Speek skips running headers, footers and page numbers, reads tables as sentences and remembers your place. It reads text PDFs in English; scans with no text layer may not read well yet.
Most Read Aloud Tools Read the Page, Not the Document.
Built in read aloud features are free and fine for a page or two. On a 40 page report they read every header, footer, page number and figure caption, and they stop when you lock the screen or switch apps.
Speek prepares the PDF for listening first: page clutter is skipped, headings are announced and tables become sentences. Then it plays like an audiobook, with your place kept across days.
What You Hear
A Table, Read as a Sentence.
On the Page
Table 3. Survey response by region (n = 1,204) North 41% South 33% West 26% Page 12 of 48 CONFIDENTIAL DRAFT
What Speek Says
“Of 1,204 people surveyed, 41 percent were in the North, 33 percent in the South and 26 percent in the West.”
How to Do It
From Your Screen to Your Headphones.
Share the PDF
On iPhone, tap Share in Files, Mail, Safari or any app and choose Speek. On Mac, press Control Option S with the file selected or open.
Pick How Much You Hear
Read All for every section in order, Focused for the substance without the boilerplate, or TLDR for a few minutes.
Press Play and Lock Your Phone
Speek keeps playing with the screen off, with play, pause and skip on the lock screen and your headphones.
Page Clutter Skipped
Running headers, footers, page numbers and inline citations are left out, so you hear the document, not the layout.
Your Place Kept
Stop halfway through and pick up on the next walk, on iPhone or Mac. Speed runs from 0.75× to 2×.
Private by Design
Documents are never used to train models, you can delete them at any time, and Keep on This Device removes our copy once the audio is on your phone.
Common Questions.
What is the best app to listen to PDFs?
It depends on what you read. For long reports, papers and decks, pick an app that skips page clutter, reads tables and keeps playing with the screen locked, which is what Speek is built for. For lots of free listening, ElevenReader has a generous free allowance; for scanning printed pages, Speechify has a camera scanner. Our dated guide compares the main options fairly: getspeek.com/best-apps-to-listen-to-pdfs.
Can my iPhone read a PDF aloud for free?
Yes. Turn on Speak Screen in Settings, Accessibility, Spoken Content, then swipe down with two fingers from the top of the screen. It reads what is on screen, including page clutter, and works best for a page or two.
Does Speek read scanned PDFs?
Speek reads the text in a document. A scan with no text layer may not read well yet; if a file cannot be read, Speek tells you why instead of playing something wrong.
How much does it cost?
You start with about 20 minutes free, one time, with every voice. Listener is about 4 hours of listening a month for $8.99 a month or $89.99 a year.
Take That PDF for a Walk.
One app for iPhone and Mac, with every voice on every plan. Join the waitlist and we will email you when your account is ready, with about 20 minutes of listening free to start.