How to use Speak Screen on iPhone

Why bother with text-to-speech?

If you have read the same paragraph four times and still could not say what it was about, hearing it can get you through. Text-to-speech will not fix every reading problem and it is not a treatment for anything. It is a cheap way to change the input when your eyes keep sliding off the page. Speak Screen is the free version that you already own, which is why it sits on our reading shelf next to paid options.

Step by step: turn on Speak Screen

Apple's support guide also lists a Siri shortcut: ask Siri something like "Speak screen."

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Tap Accessibility, then tap Read & Speak. (On older iOS versions this menu is called Spoken Content.)
3. Tap Speak Screen and turn it on. While you are here, turn on Show Controller if you want the playback controls to stay on screen.
4. Go to any app with text and swipe down with two fingers from the top of the screen. Your iPhone starts reading from the top.
5. Use the controller to pause, change the speaking rate, skip forward or back, or tap Speak on Touch to read just the part you tap.

Speak Selection: read only what you highlight

Speak Screen reads everything on the screen, including menus and captions you did not want. Speak Selection is the precise version: turn it on in the same Read & Speak menu, then select text anywhere and tap Speak. Use it for a dense paragraph in an email, a single section of a contract, or the line in a recipe you keep losing.

Both features can highlight the words as they are spoken. Apple lets you customize the highlight style and color. Following a moving highlight is a useful anchor if your eyes tend to jump around a page.

Change the voice and speed

In Settings, Accessibility, Read & Speak, you can choose a voice and dialect, set a default language, let iPhone detect languages automatically, drag the Speaking Rate slider, and add pronunciations for names it gets wrong. Spend two minutes here once. The default voice is fine but flat; our card's catch line is that built-in voices sound flatter than paid ones.

Newer iOS versions also include Accessibility Reader, a full-screen reading view where you can change fonts, layouts and background colors, with an Autoplay option that reads aloud automatically. If the page you are reading is cluttered, try it.

Where Speak Screen works well, and where it does not

• Works well: articles in Safari, emails, notes, most ebook apps, and saved articles in a read-later app such as Instapaper.
• Works less well: pages with ads, menus and pop-ups, which get read aloud too; use Speak Selection or Accessibility Reader instead.
• Does not replace an audiobook: a narrator brings pacing and voices that text-to-speech does not. For long fiction, try a library audiobook first; see how to listen on Libby.

When a paid voice is worth it

If you listen to text for hours a week, a paid app like Speechify offers far more natural voices across phone and browser. Its Premium plan was $139 a year or $29 a month when we checked, and the free plan keeps a short list of basic voices. Use Speak Screen for a month first. If you are using it daily and the voice is the thing you hate, then compare. Our reading apps shortlist ranks both.