iOS · Android · free to listen

Your reading list, read to you. Quietly, on your phone.

Paste a link or a document. Hearful pulls out the writing and reads it in one of ten natural voices that live on the device itself. Speech stays on your phone, listening is unlimited, and it keeps going with the screen off.

Coming soon to iPhone and Android

No account · works in airplane mode · up to 4× speed

9:41

Chapter 2 · The pile

The Atlantic

The Quiet Revolution of Listening to Long-Form Writing

23 min · Reader Mode

For years, audio meant podcasts and articles meant screens.

Then the reading list learned to speak for itself, one saved link at a time.

Quietly, privately, in whatever minutes the day left over.

The pile stopped being a pile and became a queue.

Up next

How Walking Rewires the Brain

8:47◷ Sleep23:20

Ava

1.5×

natural voices, generated on the phone

0.75–4×

playback speed, free to 2×

EPUB · DOCX

plus links, text, Markdown, HTML

Hearful servers. There isn't one.

How it works

Save it. Press play. That is the whole method.

0:00
Save
Paste a link, share it from any browser, or import an EPUB or Word file. Hearful finds the writing and drops the rest.
0:04
Press play
A natural voice starts within seconds. The sentence being spoken lights up; tap any other to jump there.
23:20
Live your day
Lock the phone. It keeps reading, moves on to the next thing in the queue, and remembers where you were.

Everything in the app

The complete list. Nothing on it is coming soon.

Listening

Ten natural voices generated on your phone, no account, no upload
Voice preview before you switch
Playback from 0.75× to 2× free, up to 4× with Premium
Skip 15 seconds back or forward, or tap the timeline to jump
Lock-screen and headphone controls; playback continues with the screen off
Sleep timer: 10, 20, or 30 minutes, end of sentence, or end of article

Reading

Paste a link or share it from any browser on iOS and Android
Paste plain text or import TXT, Markdown, HTML, EPUB, and Word files
Photograph a printed page and hear it; the text is read on the phone
Reader Mode extraction that strips navigation, ads, footers, and reference lists
Sentence highlighting that follows the voice; tap any sentence to jump
Light and dark themes, serif or sans-serif type, cozy or compact density

Library

Up next queue: line up several links at once and they play through on their own
History with resume-where-you-left-off for every article
Unlimited saved library with search, tags, and archive
Three playlists free; unlimited playlists with Premium
Sentence bookmarks you can return to
Audio file downloads of finished articles, yours to keepPremium

Privacy

Speech is generated on the device; your articles never go to a Hearful server, because there isn't one
Works in airplane mode once article text is saved
No ads and no tracking prompt, on the free plan too

Everything without a Premium mark is free. Premium is $6.99 a month or $49.99 a year.

Private by architecture

The voice lives on your phone. So does everything you read.

Most listening apps send your articles to a server to make the audio. Hearful does not have a server to send them to.

Generated here

Speech is synthesized by the phone's own processor. Your articles are never uploaded to make audio.

Nothing to meter

Cloud readers cap free hours because every minute costs them. Ours costs nothing, so free listening is unlimited.

Your library, your choice

There is no Hearful account or Hearful server. Your library stays on your device unless you choose to connect your own cloud storage or export it.

Voices

Ten voices, none of them in a data center.

Ava
Clara
Maya
Nora
Sophie
Adrian
Ethan
Miles
Noah
Owen

Ava reads by default. Preview a voice before you switch. Download the English voices once during setup; an optional pack adds thirty languages in Settings. Once the voices and article text are saved, you can listen in airplane mode.

Biking to work
Doing your hair
Walking the dog
Cooking dinner
On the treadmill
Falling asleep

Pricing

Free to listen. Premium to disappear into.

Free

Full listening, no ads

Unlimited listening, never metered
Ten natural on-device voices
Up to 2× speed
Sentence highlighting
Unlimited library, search, and bookmarks
Sleep timer
Up next queue and three playlists

Premium

$49.99 / year

For people who listen a lot · 14 days free on the yearly plan · or $6.99 a month

Up to 4× speed
Your whole Up next saved for offline listening
Audio file downloads
Unlimited playlists and nested folders
Smart Stop at the end of the reading
Smart Skip for citations, footnote marks, and web addresses
Word-by-word highlighting

The trial's charge date is shown before you start it. Cancel anytime in your app-store account. Prices may vary by country.

The pile can start reading itself tonight.