Text Reader Narrator: frequently asked questions

No. There's no sign-up anywhere in the app and nothing to log into. Whatever you save stays on the device you saved it on.

Mostly, as long as the voice you want is already downloaded. Reading aloud, highlighting, importing files, scanning with the camera and exporting audio all run locally. Importing a web page, Speech to Text, downloading a new voice, ads and buying Premium all need a signal.

5,000 characters of Reader playback a day, plus 2,000 more for each short video you choose to watch, up to five a day — 15,000 characters at most. It resets at local midnight.

Every character counts once each time you press Play, spaces and punctuation included. A 1,850-character email leaves 3,150 of the 5,000. Play the same text twice and it's billed twice.

The app puts up ⏰ Daily Reading Limit Reached and gives you three options: Watch Ad for +2,000 chars, Upgrade to Unlimited, or OK, I'll wait until midnight. Whatever you were already playing finishes, even past the limit.

From iOS. The app just reads from whatever voices Apple ships with your iPhone or iPad, so your list depends on your device and what you've downloaded — nothing cloud-based or AI-generated in it.

No, and the app says so on the card. Classic Voice picks the compact system voice for your language, which happens to give that flat, dated sound, and resets speed and pitch to normal. It's a reasonable stand-in, not the real thing.

iOS ships one voice per language, and for several of those it's female by default. A male one usually just needs downloading in Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content > Voices; the app labels each voice Male or Female so you know before you pick.

It reads a page you scan right now with the camera, not something already sitting in your photo library. Scan with Camera (OCR) is Premium: it opens Apple's scanner, reads the text on the device, drops it into the Reader, and you press Play.

No. The app only reads a PDF's actual text layer, and a scanned PDF is just images of pages, so there's nothing to grab. Scan the paper itself with the camera scanner instead.

M4A, not MP3 — that's a hard limit, not a setting. With Premium, Export renders the Reader text at your chosen voice and speed, then Share Audio saves it to Files, AirDrops it or sends it on. M4A opens fine on iPhone, Mac, most Android phones and most computers anyway.

Because in the Reader, Pause stops the audio and the next Play starts the text over from word one. For anything long, save it as a document first and use Start Reading or Continue Reading in Documents, which actually remembers your spot.

No. Speech to Text only transcribes live, straight from the microphone, in whatever language your device is set to, and it stops itself after enough silence.

No cap at all. The Transcribe tab has no usage limit; the 5,000-character daily allowance only applies to reading aloud in the Reader.

No. It opens whatever you can reach through the Files app — plain text, PDF, Word .docx, DRM-free ePub. Anything bought through Kindle or Apple Books is locked to those apps and won't import.

No iCloud sync — each iPhone or iPad keeps its own documents, and deleting the app deletes them for good on that device.

Only to decide whether free-version ads are shown personalised or not. Say no and you still see ads, just not tailored ones. Nothing you read or dictate is ever used to target one.

Students getting through notes and handouts, commuters, language learners who want a native-sounding voice at a slower pace, and people with dyslexia, visual fatigue or low vision who'd rather listen and follow the highlighted word. It can help with reading; it isn't a medical or therapy tool, and it doesn't claim to be.