Slurp vs Lector

Read it later. Hear it now. Slurp reads anything aloud and lights up every word as it is spoken. Articles, PDFs, Word documents, newsletters, feeds, podcasts and video live in one library that syncs through your own iCloud. Free, with no account and no tracking. SAVE IT FROM ANYWHERE • Share a link, text, an email or a file from any app: Slurp sits in the share sheet • Web links become a clean article, pictures and all • PDF, Word, OpenDocument, RTF, TXT, Markdown and HTML files keep their formatting • Posts from X and Bluesky arrive complete A READING LIST THAT STAYS TIDY • Collections and sub-collections, in the order you drag them into • Want to Read and Finished lists, and filters for articles, PDFs, posts, podcasts and video • Search runs over the full saved text, not just titles • Items, collections and reading position sync through your own iCloud A READER WORTH STAYING IN • Clean typography with the article's real images, kept for offline reading • The highlighted word stays in view as the page scrolls with the voice • PDFs read page for page, with headers and footers left unspoken • Pick up exactly where you stopped, on whichever device is in your hand FIVE VOICES, FOUR ON YOUR DEVICE • Kokoro, KittenTTS and Inflect: neural voices that run on your iPhone, with no key and no network • Apple: every voice installed on your device, Siri voices included • ElevenLabs: optional, with your own key • Read at 0.75× to 2×, and switch voice for a single item GENERATE ONCE, LISTEN EVERYWHERE New saves are narrated in the background and the finished audio syncs to your other devices, so playback starts at once, even with no signal. PODCASTS AND VIDEO, SAME LIBRARY YouTube, Vimeo, Apple Podcasts and Spotify episodes play beside your articles, with the same player and Lock Screen controls. Podcasts download when you add them. YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS, SPOKEN Follow any RSS or Atom feed, play a new entry on the spot or file it away for later. PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION No account, no analytics, no server of ours that holds what you read. Your library lives on your devices and in your own iCloud. A bug report is sent only when you send one. Slurp is also on the Mac, with browser extensions and a shortcut that reads whatever you select in any app: slop.ee/goodies/slurp Made by Slop Agency.

Lector turns your documents into speech, spoken by your iPhone, on your iPhone. Import a PDF, an EPUB, a Word document, RTF, Markdown, or plain text — or share an article straight from Safari — press play, and listen while your hands and eyes are busy: while you work, while you drive, while you walk the dog, while dinner cooks. The name is Latin for reader. For two thousand years a lector has been the one who reads aloud so that others can attend to what they are doing — the appointed reader in church, the monk reading to a silent refectory, the hired reader on a platform above the cigar rollers of Havana and Tampa. Lector puts that old office in your pocket. WHAT IT DOES • Reads PDF, EPUB, Word (.docx), RTF, Markdown, and plain text • Imports articles shared from Safari, and reads text you type or paste • Highlights each sentence as it speaks and scrolls the page for you • Turns a PDF's table of contents into real chapters, with a navigator to jump anywhere • Exports any document — or a single chapter — to an M4A audio file • Keeps reading in the background, with Dynamic Island and Lock Screen controls • Six Siri and Shortcuts actions: play, pause, resume, stop, next, previous • Sleep timer, speed control, voice favorites, light and dark appearance • Honors large Dynamic Type sizes throughout VOICES Lector speaks with Apple's voices, generated entirely on the device. Every voice installed on your iPhone appears in the app, grouped by language, with your favorites pinned to the top. One recommendation: download an Enhanced or Premium voice (Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices). They are free, and they are markedly closer to a human reader. PRIVATE BY ARCHITECTURE No account. No analytics. No server. Documents are read and spoken on the phone and never uploaded anywhere — there is no backend to upload them to. The privacy label says Data Not Collected because that is simply true. ONE PRICE, ONCE Everything in Lector is free to use. The free library holds three imported documents at a time — delete one and the slot opens again — and typed text and shared articles never count against it. A single purchase removes the cap for good. Not per month, not per year — once. The developer was tired of apps that offered a three-day trial and then wanted a hundred and twenty dollars a year, so Lector is built the other way around: the free version is the full app, and the only thing money buys is a bigger bookshelf. Requires iOS 17 or later.