Timber vs Lectern

Timber turns readers into listeners. Anything you want to read, you can listen to instead. Paste a link, drop in a PDF, open a book, or snap a photo of a printed page. Timber pulls out the real text, cleanly, and reads it aloud in a voice you pick. There is a companion desktop app that moves your open browser tabs into your ears. Ever asked your phone to read a page aloud and had it stop halfway, or skip the part that mattered? That is not you missing a setting. Most reader tools are not built to get the whole article. Timber pulls the full text out first, before it ever starts speaking. What you paste is what you hear, start to finish. It was built by a teacher, after watching students struggle to read, who could not find one app that read well, respected privacy, and did not hold the basics hostage. WHAT TIMBER PROMISES • No account. No sign-up. Open it and read. • The core reader is free, and stays free. • What you read is nobody's business. Articles, books and clipboard text are processed on your device. What you read is never shared, sold, or used for ads. VOICES, PROPERLY • 300+ voices across 71 languages, free, spoken entirely on your device. • Every Apple voice on your device works, free, including Enhanced and Premium. • Every voice library includes a free male and female voice in your language. No teaser locked behind a trial. • Record a reference of your own voice and Timber can read in it. Created on device, never uploaded. A READER THAT FEELS LIKE PAPER • Warm parchment design. An open book under a reading lamp, not a tech product. • Every word lights up as it is spoken, and keeps pace whether you slow it right down or push it fast. • Tune the size, the face and the line spacing until it is comfortable. 30 palettes built in, plus a full dyslexia mode. BRING ANYTHING • Paste a link and Timber extracts the article. No ads, no popups, just the text. • Share from Safari or any browser. Import PDFs, EPUB, Word and PowerPoint. Follow RSS feeds. • Point your camera at a printed page and Timber reads it back to you. • Scanned chapters carry junk on every page. Timber spots a line that repeats and silences it across the whole document in one tap. • Browse 70,000+ free public-domain books from Project Gutenberg. • Translate an article on device, or get a quick summary on device. No cloud, no AI account. • Export any article as spoken audio to take with you. • Optional iCloud sync keeps your library on all your devices. FOR CLASSROOMS AND STUDY • Mark passages while you listen, then hand out what you marked as a worksheet. • MLA and APA citations built in. • A chapter becomes a lesson in the time it takes to listen to it. TIMBER PRO (optional, subscribe or pay once) The free reader is complete. Pro unlocks the full neural voice catalog beyond each library's free pair, the whole speed range, every palette, and ongoing personal-voice listening after the free 24-hour trial. Monthly, yearly, or lifetime. The trial simply lapses. It never auto-charges. Privacy Policy: https://timberreader.com/privacy.html Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Timber was made for the kid in the back row who hears a story better than they can read it, and for everyone whose eyes are tired, busy, or somewhere else. If that is you, welcome.

Listen to anything. Lectern turns the things you already read into something you can listen to. Import a PDF, an EPUB book, a Word document, notes, an article, or a photo of a printed page, press play, and hear it in a natural voice, generated entirely on your iPhone. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Your documents never leave your phone. Text extraction, page scanning and speech generation all run on the device. No account, no upload, no server. WORKS OFFLINE. NO CREDITS. The voices are built in. Listen for as long as you like, on a plane or in a tunnel, with nothing metered. MADE FOR LONG LISTENING Whole books, textbooks, reports. Playback keeps going with the screen locked, the lock screen and Control Center show what's playing, and Lectern remembers exactly where you stopped, to the sentence, even after the app is closed. FOLLOW ALONG The sentence being read is highlighted and the page scrolls with it. Tap any sentence to start there. Skip by chapter, by 15 seconds, or scrub the whole document. YOUR PACE Half speed to three times speed, and it still sounds like a person. WHAT IT READS • PDF, including scanned PDFs (on-device text recognition) • EPUB books with chapters and covers • Word documents (.docx), text, Markdown, RTF • Pasted text from anywhere • Photos of pages, from the camera or your library LECTERN PRO Lectern Pro unlocks whole books and long documents, an unlimited library, all ten studio voices, and audio export. The free version lets you listen to real documents first, so you can hear the voices before you decide. Lectern Pro is available as a monthly or annual subscription, or a one-time lifetime purchase. Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the period. Manage or cancel in Settings › Apple Account › Subscriptions. Privacy policy: https://luke-fairbanks.github.io/privacy-policy/lectern/ Terms of use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/