Listenly for iPhone is ready for testing. I'm trying to build the most polished, best-in-industry experience for switching between reading and listening to any text. Would love to hear your feedback!
The beta installs through TestFlight, Apple's app for trying apps before their release:
- On your iPhone, install TestFlight from the App Store.
- Open the beta invite on your iPhone, then tap Accept and Install.
New voices, unlimited
With the iOS app, Listenly uses the power of your iPhone to generate audio. That means no listening cap, no hour packages to buy, and no connection needed.
The new voices aren't as expressive as the ones we use on the web, but they still sound very good and support many languages. I believe this is the right direction for Listenly: good narration is becoming a commodity anyone can access, and we want to be at the forefront of that.
Read and listen without losing your place
The sentence being spoken is highlighted, so you can follow along. Tap it in the player to jump into the text, long-press any sentence to listen from there, or read ahead and come back to the voice when you're ready. Whenever you stop, Listenly keeps your place, so you can pick up later by reading or by ear.
Clean text from almost any file
- Opens almost every mainstream format: PDF, EPUB, MOBI, AZW3, FB2, DOCX, TXT and Markdown.
- Even scans and messy PDFs come out clean. Every PDF runs through Mistral OCR, so scanned pages and multi-column layouts become clean, formatted text that reads and narrates well.
- Chapters you can actually navigate. Listenly detects the table of contents, so long books and papers get proper chapter navigation.
- Figures, tables, code and formulas stay. They're preserved for both reading and narration, instead of being dropped or read out as symbol soup.
Web articles without the clutter
- Most links just work. Pages are fetched through Bright Data, so most blogs, news sites and X articles import, including sites that block simple scrapers.
- Only the article. Paste a link or share it from Safari, and you get a clean reader view with no cookie walls, ads or pop-ups, ready to narrate.
Your purchases come with you
- Books you bought keep their original voice. The app narrates with new on-device voices by default, but your listenly.io purchases play their recording in the voice you chose. Stream it, download it for offline listening, or switch the book to an on-device voice.
- Sign in and keep everything. Your purchases, uploads and listening progress sync between the app and the web.
Pricing
Free during the beta. After the public launch, I plan to try a $29/year subscription with a 3–7 day free trial. If you're part of the hacka.network community and need it, there will be a free option for you.
Tell me what breaks
Throw your hardest content at it: the ugly scan, the article no reader mode survives, the 900-page book. Tap the feedback button in the player, send feedback through TestFlight, or email me at evan@listenly.io.
The beta needs an iPhone with iOS 18 or later and the free TestFlight app.