# Aloud!, text to speech reader

> Read out loud PDF, books (TTS)

Canonical page: [https://chrome-stats.com/d/id852033350](https://chrome-stats.com/d/id852033350)

## Overview

- **ID:** `id852033350`
- **Platform:** Apple
- **Type:** Apple app
- **Status:** Available
- **Publisher:** Chun Kai Lau
- **Category:** Productivity
- **Rating:** 4.30 / 5 (242 ratings)
- **Version:** 1.15.4
- **Last updated:** 2025-06-24
- **First published:** 2014-04-12
- **Size:** 54 MB
- **Data as of:** 2026-09-23
- **Store listing:** [Apple App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/aloud-text-to-speech-reader/id852033350)
- **Website:** [https://appappworks.com/aloud](https://appappworks.com/aloud)
- **Privacy policy:** [https://appappworks.com/aloud/privacypolicy](https://appappworks.com/aloud/privacypolicy)

## Description

Aloud! is a powerful Text-to-Speech reader that turns PDFs, DOCX, EPUB, and web pages into natural audio you can listen to anywhere. It supports offline playback, background listening, and a range of voices with adjustable rate and pitch, plus synchronized word highlighting to follow along.

It remembers your place across documents, makes reading accessible for people with dyslexia and visual impairments, and supports a wide variety of formats including ZIP archives. Trusted since 2014, Aloud! is designed to boost focus, learning, and productivity.

## Rankings

- #100,087 — Overall
- #39 — speech to text
- #60 — listen
- #60 — speech

## Review summary

Users praise Aloud! as a long‑standing, multilingual, text-to-speech reader that’s free and helpful for listening to ebooks and other texts. However, many reviews repeatedly complain about reliability and UX issues: crashes when loading PDFs or after updates, ads and broken pro upgrades, playback bugs like repeating paragraphs and awkward pronunciation/punctuation handling, and navigation problems that prevent starting at a chosen point or saving progress. These reliability and monetization problems overshadow the app’s strengths for most users.

### Pros

- Very helpful for listening to ebooks and other texts, especially PDFs.
- Supports many languages, making it useful for multilingual users.
- Long-standing, free-to-use tool that many users rely on.
- Valued by users as a key accessibility option for those who prefer listening to text.

### Cons

- Frequent crashes, especially when loading PDFs, and crashes after updates.
- Intrusive ads and broken upgrade flow (ads persist after paying; pro widget issues; 'No Transaction Registered').
- Playback issues like repeating paragraphs, robotic voice, and poor punctuation handling.
- Navigation problems: cannot start reading from a chosen point and scrolling can reset to the end.
- Save feature not working and lag during scrolling, indicating reliability and performance problems.

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Source: [Chrome-Stats](https://chrome-stats.com/d/id852033350)