SpeakCoveCommon Challenges for Productivity-Focused Professionals
- Your reading list grows faster than you can get through it. Articles, reports, newsletters, and books pile up because there is never enough time to sit down and read.
- Hours spent commuting, exercising, doing chores, and running errands are lost for learning because the material you need to read is in text form.
- Subscription-based reading and productivity tools each charge a monthly fee. The costs add up across multiple apps, and most of the features go unused.
- Switching between different apps and formats to get to your content creates friction. By the time you find, open, and set up a document, the window of available time has closed.
- Reading on a screen after a full day of screen-heavy work is unappealing. Tired eyes make it hard to engage with material in the evening, exactly when you have free time.
How SpeakCove Helps
Turn Dead Time into Reading Time
Import articles, reports, and books into SpeakCove and listen while commuting, exercising, cooking, or cleaning. With Premium, it keeps playing with the screen locked, so passive time becomes reading time.
Speed Control to Match Your Pace
Familiar material at 1.5x or 1.75x. Dense reports at 1x. Adjust playback speed on the fly so you spend the right amount of time on each piece of content.
Widgets for a Quick Start
Add a SpeakCove widget to your home screen. One tap opens the document you're reading, right where you left off, so there's no app hunting or scrolling to find your place.
Background Playback for Multitasking (Premium)
With the $14.99 one-time Premium purchase, SpeakCove keeps playing when you switch to another app or lock your phone, and works with CarPlay. Without it, playback pauses when you leave the app. Listen to a report while checking email, or a book chapter while navigating.
No Subscription
The free version includes 2 voices, all 10 formats, speed control, sleep timer, iCloud sync, widgets, and sentence highlighting. No ads, no account, no time limits. Premium is a single $14.99 payment (US price), not a monthly fee.
Usage Scenarios
Morning Commute Briefing
Import the day's must-read articles and reports the night before. Listen on the train at 1.5x speed, or in the car through CarPlay with Premium. Arrive at work already briefed on what you needed to read.
Workout Listening
Queue up a book chapter or a long-form article before heading to the gym. With Premium, listen with the phone locked in your pocket and get to material you would otherwise never get to.
Chores and Errands
Cleaning the house, doing laundry, grocery shopping: all activities that leave your ears free. Tap the widget to open your current document whenever you start a task.
Evening Wind-Down Without Screens
After a long day of screen work, import a book or article and listen with the sleep timer set. Rest your eyes while you listen. The timer stops playback so you do not lose your place if you fall asleep.
Weekend Reading Backlog Blitz
Import everything that piled up during the week. Listen at 1.5x or 1.75x during weekend chores and errands. Clear part of your reading backlog without dedicating desk time to it.
Free Text to Speech, Right in Your Browser
Paste text or open any file (PDF, EPUB, Word, scans and more) and press Play. SpeakCove reads it aloud with natural voices in 31 languages. It's free, with no sign-up and no length limit, and your text never leaves your browser.
Open the reader →Try SpeakCove Free. No sign-up required. Start listening in seconds.
One-time purchase, no subscription
Free to start with 2 voices and every format. $14.99 once unlocks all 10 voices, background playback and CarPlay. No subscription, ever.
Listen in the car with CarPlay
Your documents on your car's screen and speakers, with CarPlay in Premium.
Works offline, fully on-device
Your documents never leave your device. The app has no analytics and no ads, and reading and voices work in airplane mode.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What file formats does SpeakCove support?
- SpeakCove supports PDF, EPUB, MOBI, AZW3, DOCX, FB2, CBZ, RTF, TXT, and HTML: 10 formats in total, all DRM-free. This covers articles, reports, ebooks, and most text-based documents. Printed pages can be scanned with the built-in scanner.
- How fast can I set the playback speed?
- Up to 1.75x. SpeakCove has five speeds: 0.75x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, and 1.75x. Slow down for complex material or speed up for lighter content.
- Is SpeakCove free?
- The download is free and includes 2 of the 10 voices (Serena and Max), all 10 formats, all 31 languages, speed control, sleep timer, iCloud sync, widgets, and sentence highlighting. No ads, no account, no time limits. The optional Premium purchase ($14.99 once, US price) adds the other 8 voices, background and lock-screen playback, and CarPlay.
- Can I listen with the app in the background?
- Only with Premium. Background and lock-screen playback, along with CarPlay, come with the $14.99 one-time Premium purchase. This lets you listen while using other apps, with your phone locked, or while navigating.
- Does SpeakCove work offline?
- Yes. All voice synthesis happens on your device. Once a document is imported, you can listen anywhere: on the subway, on a plane, or in an area with no signal. Only the book store, paper search, iCloud sync, and the purchase need internet.
- How do widgets work?
- Add a small or medium SpeakCove widget to your iPhone home screen. It shows your current document, and one tap opens it in the reader. No need to open the app and navigate to your document every time.