Read Aloud on iOS
Zotero for iOS now includes Read Aloud.
Like the desktop version, Read Aloud on iOS reads PDFs, EPUBs, and webpage snapshots to you in high-quality, natural-sounding voices. It automatically skips in-text citations, headers and footers, and tables, and you can quickly skip ahead by sentence or paragraph or start reading from a given spot. While you’re listening, an Annotate Sentence button highlights or underlines the current sentence with a single tap, so you can make note of important points without selecting text by hand.
Read Aloud on iOS keeps reading if you lock your device or switch to another app, and you can use standard iOS methods (lock-screen controls, buttons on AirPods, Siri) to pause and resume or skip ahead by sentence. When you stop reading, Read Aloud remembers your exact position, so you can pick up later right where you left off.
The iOS version features the same voices as the desktop app. From the Zotero 9 announcement:
Read Aloud requires an internet connection and a Zotero account for high-quality voices, which we’re calling Zotero Voices. If you’d like to use Read Aloud offline, you can still use the text-to-speech voices available on your system, but the quality will be significantly degraded.
We offer two tiers of Zotero Voices: Standard and Premium. Standard voices are generated on Zotero servers, with unlimited minutes for Zotero Storage subscribers and 2 hours/month for free accounts. Premium voices are the highest-quality voices available, processed by external text-to-speech providers — they make fewer mistakes, sound more natural, support many more languages, and can handle multilingual text. Individual Zotero Storage subscribers will receive up to 2 hours of Premium usage (varying by voice) each month, and free and institutional accounts will also receive a small quota in order to try the voices out.
For now, you can request additional Premium minutes for free if you run out. We’ll provide more details on monthly allocations and options for adding additional minutes at a later date.
Don’t yet have Zotero for iOS? Download it from the App Store and try Read Aloud!