Listening: Text to Speech

As a grad student I love this app. I’ve had it about 6 months now, but the most recent update fixed a lot of my issues with it. I do wish the mobile version allowed me to see the document’s cover bc there’s so many sometimes I get them mixed up. I also wish it allowed me to build a filing system for readings for certain things. Hopefully they work on that when they finish out the little bugs. I love it though! It is a serious time saver.

It’s too bad I really like the service, but the app gets in a state where it just shows a blank screen and it’s completely unresponsive. I’ve had to delete and reinstall in order to fix it. After the fifth time I gave up.

I canceled months ago and continue to be charged. Customer service told me my account would be canceled but that never happened. Now the customer service email is no longer in service. The product is fine but this is the only way I can think of to contact anyone at this company.

I made an account and bought 3 months for the price of one. Found out the app still needs a ton of work and deleted my account and unsubscribed in the app itself. Come to find out 7 months later it had been billing me the whole time. So now I am out ~$90. I am super sad that this app isn’t what it says it is. As a student with learning “disabilities” this could have the power to drastically change how I learn and my bandwidth. But in science(biochemistry and relevant) and philosophy(my major and minor) the app is useless for reading papers. I am very disappointed and hope someday an app will come along which can truly do what this claims to do. What was wrong with it: 1)more often then not the app would read the pdf out of order. 2)most of the jargon and a ton of the abbreviations it misread or mispronounced. (In chemistry Ca+ does not mean California) 3)the app would skip full pages/paragraphs/sentences. And sometimes it wouldn’t load or detect words on full pdfs. Possibly this could work for more cut and dry topics but I doubt it could work for anything above a 5 grade level.

The app has become increasingly buggy to the point of being unusable. Rarely can I get a full reading of an uploaded pdf, even a single article. Processing takes ridiculously long. I think maybe they just can't afford the compute anymore. I have placed multiple support requests over the past several months and have received no reply. This company seems to be dead in the water--do not purchase!

Currently the subscription is $10. I don't think it's worth that. Here's why 1) Audio controls don't work with Bluetooth buttons. Not in my car, not on my headphones. So no fast forward, rewind. There are screen buttons that can jump back 10 sec. Sometimes I just want to jump back 1 sentence, or 3 sec. Not smooth navigating. 2) Pronounciation: can be all over the place. It's not bad overall but common words can be off. Scientific words are more often wrong. Strings of numbers are read nonsensically. (Eg 1980s is pronounced one thousand nine hundred and eighty S) . Choppy pronounciation pulls me out of concentration instantly. And sprinkle enough in, and the listening experience becomes more work than it's worth. 3) Importing: the OCR needs work. It does an adequate job ignoring footnotes but often it will chunk words together without spaces. Sotheeffectisanarratortryingtoreadalongstringofwordsanditsincomprehensible. Descriptions of graphs and figures aren't always left out of narration. The flow is so hit or kiss that I can't really recommend this over using Apple Siri voice reading with the accessibility features.

With the first few pdfd I used it worked perfectly! Perfect transcription and totally clear reading. So when it works, it’s fantastic. But lately I’ve been uploading new papers, all in the exact same format as the first one, and the transcribed version imported into the app, which the voice reads, is constantly missing pieces. I have no idea why but the app is missing full chunks of the original. I have tried re-uploading the document in different planets and the same thing continues to happen. The app has no “help” or troubleshooting section, or contact information in order to understand why this issue happens or how to fix it or how to prevent this from happening with future documents.

App requires payment but does not warn about it. In fact, it first asks you to create an account and then afterwards it requires payment. What’s more, it’s quite expensive, so I don’t suggest you sign up in the first place. Misleading to have it as a “free” app

Just so you know. They want you to buy their subscription right off the bat. There is no way to use the app without paying.

It’s glitchy and it sounds bad which is fine but it’s also very slow it pauses multiple times and says it’s loading and I have to go back to get it to start playing again. Really wish it worked better