iOS · Android · free to listen
Your reading list, read to you. Quietly, on your phone.
Paste a link or a document. Hearful pulls out the writing and reads it in one of ten natural voices that live on the device itself. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is metered, and it keeps going with the screen off.
No account · works in airplane mode · up to 4× speed
The Quiet Revolution of Listening to Long-Form Writing
23 min · Reader Mode
For years, audio meant podcasts and articles meant screens.
Then the reading list learned to speak for itself, one saved link at a time.
Quietly, privately, in whatever minutes the day left over.
The pile stopped being a pile and became a queue.
Up next
How Walking Rewires the Brain
10
natural voices, generated on the phone
0.75–4×
playback speed, free to 2×
PDF · EPUB · DOCX
plus links, text, Markdown, HTML
0
Hearful servers. There isn't one.
How it works
Save it. Press play. That is the whole method.
0:00
Save
Paste a link, share it from any browser, or import a PDF, EPUB, or Word file. Hearful finds the writing and drops the rest.
0:04
Press play
A natural voice starts within seconds. The sentence being spoken lights up; tap any other to jump there.
23:20
Live your day
Lock the phone. It keeps reading, moves on to the next thing in the queue, and remembers where you were.
Everything in the app
The complete list. Nothing on it is coming soon.
Listening
- Ten natural voices generated on your phone, no account, no upload
- Every system voice your device already has, for other languages and accents
- Voice preview before you switch
- Playback from 0.75× to 2× free, up to 4× with Premium
- Skip 15 seconds back or forward, or drag anywhere on the timeline
- Lock-screen and headphone controls; playback continues with the screen off
- Sleep timer: 10, 20, or 30 minutes, end of sentence, or end of articlePremium
Reading
- Paste a link or share it from any browser on iOS and Android
- Paste plain text or import TXT, Markdown, HTML, PDF, EPUB, and Word files
- Reader Mode extraction that strips navigation, ads, footers, and reference lists
- Sentence highlighting that follows the voice; tap any sentence to jump
- Light and dark themes, serif or sans-serif type, cozy or compact density
Library
- Up next queue: line up several links at once and they play through on their own
- History with resume-where-you-left-off for every article
- Offline saved-article library with full-text searchPremium
- Folders and playlists for listen-later setsPremium
- Sentence bookmarks you can return toPremium
- Audio file downloads of finished articles, yours to keepPremium
Privacy
- Speech is generated on the device; your articles never go to a Hearful server, because there isn't one
- Works in airplane mode once an article is saved
- Free tier supported by ads, with non-personalized ads when you decline tracking
Everything without a Premium mark is free. Premium is $3.99 a month or $29.99 a year.
Private by architecture
The voice lives on your phone. So does everything you read.
Most listening apps send your articles to a server to make the audio. Hearful does not have a server to send them to.
Generated here
Speech is synthesized by the phone's own processor. Your articles are never uploaded to make audio.
Nothing to meter
Cloud readers cap free hours because every minute costs them. Ours costs nothing, so free listening is unlimited.
Nothing to leak
There is no Hearful account and no Hearful server. The reading list exists in one place: your device.
Voices
Ten voices, none of them in a data center.
- Ava
- Clara
- Maya
- Nora
- Sophie
- Adrian
- Ethan
- Miles
- Noah
- Owen
Ava reads by default. Every voice can be previewed before you switch, and the system voices your phone already has stay available for other languages and accents. Voices are bundled with the app, so a fresh install reads in airplane mode.
- Biking to work
- Doing your hair
- Walking the dog
- Cooking dinner
- On the treadmill
- Falling asleep
Pricing
Free to listen. Premium to disappear into.
Free
$0Full listening, supported by ads
- Paste any link, listen in full
- Up to 2× speed
- Ten natural on-device voices
- Share articles straight into the app
- Up next queue and history
Premium
$29.99 / yearEverything, uninterrupted · or $3.99 a month
- No ads, ever
- Up to 4× speed
- Offline saved-article library, up to 500 articles
- Audio file downloads
- Folders and playlists
- Sleep timer
- Bookmarks and full-text search
A year of Premium costs less than one hardcover. Cancel anytime in your app-store account.