Text to Speech - Speaky

Where has this app been all my life? I am a busy professional and often find myself in the car waiting for the next red light so I can read the article that i found on the web but haven't had time to finish reading yet. Speaky reads the article aloud for me while I am driving. I love it! Only con is that speaky reads right through periods with almost no pause. It pauses at commas the way I want it to pause at periods. The pause at commas could be about 2/3 as long as it is. Wish Speaky would pause at periods - or even let me dial in how long to pause at different types of punctuation. Over all a great productivity tool - well worth the $3.99 I spent on it.

***Update*** Please fix the compatibility issues with article titles. When trying to use the “read all entries” feature, an endless string of html appears and the app crashes. I’m not sure if it is an issue solely with the websites I’m using or if it’s something you can fix on your end. I would really like to be able to listen to multiple articles at once again. Thanks! Speaky had been one of my favorite apps! I’m constantly driving and this app allows me to catch up on my article reading while on the road. I’ve noticed more instances of compatibility issues with webpages and the app crashes often without rhyme or reason. Please release an update soon fixing these issues! I would give it 5 stars if I could!

There are other similar apps out there and I have tried pretty much all of them, but I keep coming back to this one. It is easy to use and super reliable. It lets you choose almost all the voices currently installed on iOS. You can add more from iOS’s Settings. This app is perfect for commuters and language learners, or anyone who wants to listen to an article rather than reading it. It works offline once an article is loaded and saved. It even works in the background as well as when the screen is turned off, so you can do other things while listening to an article.

I like the convenience of being able to listen to the articles I was going to read online on my phone. It’s also nice to be able to customize the voice such as the language and accent. Many of the voices sound unfortunately robotic. I am currently using the English (United Kingdom) Arthur (voice rate 0.40) because he sounds more natural to me. Although I have recently started using Aaron (English - United States), and I may even prefer him to Arthur. I noticed Speaky can not always extract an article— sometimes only a few seconds of one- for whatever reason(s). Also, the voice keeps changing to other voices/ accents from my preferred one— which makes it a hassle to keep having to change it back. Despite these issues, I recommend reading the tutorial and adding/ using share shortcut to Safari so that you can open the articles in the app (usually takes a few seconds to extract).

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Once I load the text file and choose it in the side bar to be read out loud, the app hangs. It freezes and I can’t do anything but force-quit the app and try again —only to experience the same problem over and over. It freezes with the sidebar half covering the page to be read. Also, no easy way of changing voice or speed or hearing a preview or soundbite to see if you like it. You have to blindly choose your settings then load a page to read to hear if you like the voice settings. If not, the app has already frozen by now and you have to force-quit. It’s very frustrating. I wouldn’t recommend this app to any one. I’ve already deleted it from my device. I hope this candid review helps any one looking to purchase this dud. Don’t do it!