If you love to read books on your iPhone or iPad and wish your device could read to you, it can! Here’s how. We can toggle the “Speak Screen” function on the iPhone or iPad and have our device read our emails, notes, and webpages and to our ebooks. I mostly use this function to read books, though.
Whenever I am commuting, and I am stuck cramped on the subway and have no way to look down on my phone and read, I turn on this function and have my iPhone read the book to me. This functionality is also a great alternative to downloading audiobooks. Here’s how to turn it on.
Go to the Settings and select the “Accessibility” menu on your iPhone or iPad.
- In the Accessibility menu, select “Spoken Content,” and under that, toggle the “Speak Screen” to the on position.
- This function will enable the two-finger to swipe down from the top of the screen to start the feature.
- You may also select the other options here, such as the speaking rate, and also under “Voices,” you can download various voices that will read to you.
- Now, open any page with text. For example, I am using the Amazon Kindle app. Two-finger swipe down from the top screen, and it will start reading.
The best part is that it also paginates through the ebook and reads it for you page by page. Neat!
Here is a video of me showing you how to turn on this feature: on YouTube shorts. (I used LumaFusion to create and edit this video quickly).
Enjoy!