SchriftOhr

SchriftOhr

Read it, or have it read to you

Open an EPUB, PDF, or Markdown file and read it on a real page — or have it read aloud in a natural voice, on device and offline. Your place is the same place either way: stop listening and the page opens where the voice stopped; read ahead and the voice picks up from your eyes.

In early testing on TestFlight · coming to the App Store for iPhone, iPad & Mac

iOS 17 and macOS 14 or later. The neural voices run on the Neural Engine where the machine has one, and fall back to the processor where it doesn't.

What it does

Read

  • Real justified pages you scroll or turn, in five looks from Paper to Midnight
  • Your own margins, line spacing, type size, and a dyslexia-friendly face
  • Start the voice from any line and the page follows it, turning as the spoken word reaches the next page
  • One place per book, shared between reading and listening — mid-sentence

Listen

  • Reads EPUB, PDF, and Markdown/plain-text files aloud
  • Apple's natural voices, or eighteen built-in neural voices that run entirely on device — no account, no subscription
  • The sentence being read stays highlighted, teleprompter style, with the spoken word underlined
  • Picks up exactly where you left off, per book

A cast of voices

  • The app reads the book and finds who speaks — then you give the main characters their own voices
  • The narrator reads the prose and everyone else, the way a good audiobook does it
  • Spoken-play mode for dialogue books and plays: the names aren't read aloud — the voices carry the parts, like a radio drama
  • Where a line has no name attached, you can settle it yourself — or cast by voice type and let the whole book follow

Bring your own library

  • Point it at a folder of books you already own — it reads them where they lie and never moves, renames or deletes anything
  • A thousand books indexed in under a second, sifted by shelf, author or series
  • Search by title or author across everything at once
  • Or keep a copy in the app's own library, synced through iCloud

Teach it a name

  • Type a name as it's printed and how it should sound — hear it in the book's own voice before you keep it
  • Taught once, it holds in every book
  • Your pronunciations follow you between your devices, and can be written to a file to keep or share

Keep what you find

  • Hold a passage to keep it with a colour and a note
  • Bookmarks and kept passages in one notebook, with a Markdown export
  • Find in Book, and a contents list that works while reading or listening

Made for the car

  • A driving view with big play/pause and skip buttons
  • “Mark this spot” — one tap to flag a place to review later
  • Plays with the screen off, or keeps it awake while you read
  • Download the neural voice once for fully offline listening

On your Mac

  • Every tool in the menu bar with a shortcut — contents, find, notebook, reading style, the voices, play and pause
  • Turn pages with the arrow keys; the same tools sit at the foot of the window in the order you choose
  • Screen off takes the whole display black while it reads on
  • One universal app: Apple silicon and Intel both run it natively

Export (Mac)

  • Turn any book into a chaptered .m4b audiobook with cover art
  • The cast comes with it: every character in their own voice, exactly as the live reading sounds
  • Listen in any podcast or audiobook app — or open the .m4b back in SchriftOhr, with chapters, resume and bookmarks
  • Interrupted exports pick up where they left off

Private by design

Everything runs on your device. Your books, your place, and any audio you make stay on your Mac or iPhone — nothing is uploaded, and SchriftOhr collects no data at all. The neural voice model downloads once from its open-source host so speech works offline. Details in the privacy policy.

You are responsible for having the right to read or copy the books you open. Audio SchriftOhr makes is for your own personal use.

About the name

SchriftOhr is German for writing-ear — Schrift, writing, and Ohr, ear. Which is the whole app in one word: what is written, heard.

It was called text2Ear until July 2026. Same app, same developer, and it shares its Schrift with MarkSchrift.