Listen
Have almost anything on your iPhone read *to* you
Sometimes I feel like I hold a bit of a secret weapon. A “life hack” as it were. I not only read a lot on my iPhone/iPad, I listen to a lot.
Podcasts, yes. Music, of course. Audiobooks, sometimes. But the real key for me is being able to listen to just about anything on these devices. How? Thanks to the accessibility features of iOS.
Basically, whether I’m in Safari or Pocket or Medium reading, I use the iOS ‘Speak Selection’ functionality to read things to me. You can do this almost anywhere within iOS (once you enable the feature in ‘Settings’) by selecting a block of text and hitting ‘Speak.’
Or, I find the real key is to enable ‘Speak Screen’ which allows you to quickly trigger the contents of any screen to be read to you simply by swiping two fingers down on an iOS screen.
I’m a little wary of sharing this “hack” broadly because I worry that content publishers will ask for Apple to remove such functionality.¹ If that sounds crazy, remember that when the Kindle originally launched, it had the ability to read any text outloud to users. The publishers/authors, not wanting to cannibalize their extremely lucrative (read: rip-off) audiobook sales, quickly put an end to this feature.
And, if I remember correctly, the Kindle’s read-back feature was decent. But the feature on iOS is great — not only thanks to the ease-of-use, but because of the voice, ‘Alex.’
We all know Siri by now. She’s a fine voice (or, in some regions, he’s a fine voice). But Alex destroys Siri when it comes to computer voices. While he started as an OS X feature, he’s available in iOS as a separate (relatively large) download. Head to the ‘Voices’ area under ‘Accessibility’ -> ‘Speech’ and under ‘English’ to download Alex (sadly, English-only).
Alex reads basically everything to me these days. He’s like a parent, reading to put me to sleep at night. Except I’m 34 years old, and he’s a synthetic computer voice. Albeit, a dreamy one.
If this all sounds a little bit like the plot of Her to you, I’m right there with you. Alex isn’t Samantha, of course. In fact, Alex isn’t even quite Siri — there’s no way to interact with him at all; he’s all one-way.
But in a way, he’s more personal than Siri because he’s always in my ear, not just when I think of random things for Siri to answer/do. The feeling is amplified by the fact that I use a Jawbone Era most of the time to listen to things. Yes, a Bluetooth earpiece. So yes, it’s like Her — minus a sultry Scarlett Johansson voice that can actually interact with you. One day.
By the way, you may have noticed that Pocket and Instapaper and the like have built-in read-back functionality into their apps. This is smart. I think we’re going to see this become more and more of a normal thing — especially if/when Apple perfects some wireless earbuds.
Still, for now, with this hack, I’m never quite sure if I’m at the forefront of a movement towards listening because I’ve always been a better audible learner — I remember things I hear much better than what I read — or if people see me “reading” this way and think I’m completely insane.²
But there are so many use-cases where listening is just more convenient than reading — like when driving, or even just walking down the street. And — another life hack: proofreading. So even before we get to the interactive world of Her, I suspect more of us may be listening to Alex, Siri, or their brethren soon.
¹ Though, of course, I’m not sure they could since it is there first and foremost for accessibility reasons.
² And megan may actually think I’m more insane because she knows how fast I listen to things this way — basically 3x speed of the regular voice-over voices. Another great feature of Speak Selection!
