How to Make iPhone Read Text Out Loud (Free App)

iOS already reads text out loud — here's the free built-in way

Speak Selection and Speak Screen, buried in the iOS accessibility settings, read whatever you select or whatever's on screen. No install, no setup beyond toggling them on once. For a single sentence, that's genuinely all you need.

What they don't do is keep anything. Text Reader Narrator runs on the same iOS voices but adds word-by-word highlighting, a voice picker you can preview before committing to, speed presets, and a library that remembers exactly where you stopped. That library is useful for anyone who keeps losing their place in a long PDF.

Step by step: read any text aloud

Copy whatever you want to hear: an email, a note, a message, an article.
Open the app on the Reader tab. Tap the three-dot menu top right and choose Paste from Clipboard, or just type into the text area.
Tap the voice button, which shows the current voice's name, to open Select Voice. Tap the play icon next to any voice to preview it before picking it.
Tap the speed button to open Speed & Pitch. Pick a preset, or drag the Speed and Pitch sliders under Fine Tuning yourself.
Press Play. Each word highlights as it's spoken and the text scrolls to keep up. Stop ends it; the circular arrow restarts from the top.
Want it again later? Open the three-dot menu and choose Save as Document. It shows up in Documents.

Which speed should you pick?

Speed is shown as a multiple of normal iOS speech, running from 0.0x up to 2.0x. 1.0x is normal.

Speed presets in the Speed & Pitch sheet
Preset	Speed	Good for
Study	0.8x	Dense notes, language practice
Normal	1.0x	Everyday reading
Fast	1.5x	Familiar material, skimming
Very Fast	2.0x	Re-listening to something you know

How does the free daily allowance work?

Free gives you 5,000 characters a day in the Reader. Every character counts once each time you press Play — spaces and punctuation included — and the bar above the playback buttons tracks what's left today.

Three texts played in one day, no ads watched
Text played	Characters counted	Used so far	Remaining
Email, 1,850 characters	1,850	1,850	3,150
Article, 2,300 characters	2,300	4,150	850
Notes, 1,400 characters	850	5,000	0

After the second text in the table above, 83% of the day's allowance is gone and the app shows Getting Close to Daily Limit. The third text still plays all the way through even though only 850 characters were left; after that, Play is blocked until midnight.

At that point Watch Ad for +2,000 chars is sitting right there. One ad takes the day to 7,000; five ads in a day cap it at 15,000. Premium just removes the ceiling.

What trips people up

Pause doesn't resume — it restarts. In the Reader, Pause stops the speech and the next Play starts from word one again, counting the characters a second time. For anything long, save it as a document and use Continue Reading in Documents instead.
Trim before you play. Skipping this step means a forwarded email can read out three signatures and a legal disclaimer before getting to the actual message.
A flat-sounding voice usually means a Standard voice; download an Enhanced or Premium one and it appears in Select Voice automatically.
The highlight colour is changeable under Highlight Color in the Settings tab, worth doing if you're reading in bright sun.

Questions and answers

How do I make my iPhone read selected text without an app?

Turn on Speak Selection under Spoken Content in the iOS accessibility settings. Then select text in any app and tap Speak. No document library, no speed presets — but it's already on your phone.

Does the app remember my text?

The last text you had open in the Reader is kept between launches. For more than one, use Save as Document from the three-dot menu.

Can I read text messages aloud with it?

Only by copying the message and pasting it in. The app has no link to Messages and doesn't read notifications.

Does reading aloud need internet?

No. Once the voice is downloaded onto your iPhone, reading and highlighting both run offline.

How to download Enhanced and Premium voices for text to speech on iPhone · Text Reader Narrator
How to listen to a PDF on your iPhone like an audiobook · Text Reader Narrator
How to save the Reader's text as an audio file you can share · Text Reader Narrator

How to make your iPhone read text out loud