Aloud vs em

No subscription. No ads. No tracking. Nothing you read ever leaves your iPhone. Aloud turns anything you can read into something you can listen to. Share an article from any browser, open a PDF or an EPUB from Files, or paste any text — Aloud reads it aloud in a natural voice, sentence by sentence, with your place kept perfectly. FOR THE READING LIST YOU NEVER GET TO Saving articles is easy; finding an hour to sit and read them is not. Aloud turns that pile into something you get through on the commute, the walk, the washing-up — so you keep up with the world without giving up an evening. Turn on autoplay and it announces the next piece and keeps going, hands free. AND FASTER, IF YOU WANT IT Read from 0.5× to 3× without the voice turning into a chipmunk, and switch on Shorten Pauses to trim the silence at every full stop. At 2× a thirty-minute article fits a fifteen-minute walk. The voices are generated entirely on your iPhone. There is no server doing the talking, which is why Aloud never needs an account, never meters your listening, and keeps working in airplane mode. Each voice downloads its model once — about 190 MB for the English voices, about 390 MB for the one that reads the other thirty languages — and after that, the internet is optional. LISTEN TO ANYTHING • Web articles — share from any browser or paste a link, Aloud extracts just the story • PDFs — including scanned ones, recognized on-device • Books — open an EPUB without copy protection and start from any chapter • Any text you paste, from notes to your own drafts • Your reading list — import your saves from Pocket or Instapaper TWO LANGUAGES, AND IPHONE DUO • Translate a piece on your iPhone and read the original and the translation together • On iPhone Duo, the cover screen is a large player and the open display shows the page A READER, NOT A MEDIA PLAYER • The sentence being spoken is lit; the rest of the page waits quietly • A margin rail shows the whole document — hold and slide to scrub • Your position is saved the moment it changes, per document • A speed dial from 0.5× to 3×, and time remaining that respects it • A sleep timer that fades out instead of cutting you off mid-word • Reader mode: hide the player, lift the whole page, read with your eyes • Find in article, and your choice of size, font, paper and column width MADE FOR LISTENING ON THE MOVE • Keeps reading with the screen locked • Lock-screen and AirPods controls: play, pause, skip 15 seconds • Optional autoplay: when a piece ends, Aloud announces the next and keeps reading • Two shelves — to read, and read — each sorted your way by date, length, or title, with search across titles and sites • An optional unread count on the app icon • Your place remembered in everything FOURTEEN NATURAL VOICES Ten US and UK English voices with real warmth, and four voices that read thirty more languages — all generated on your iPhone. Anything else falls back to the system voice that speaks it. Audition any voice with a tap. PRIVATE BY ARCHITECTURE Once a voice is on your iPhone, Aloud makes no network requests to read to you. Articles are fetched by your phone the way a browser would, the voice models download once from a public host, and everything after that — extraction, speech, your library, your listening history — stays on the device. The App Privacy label says "Data Not Collected" because there is nowhere to collect it to. ONE PURCHASE, YOURS FOREVER Aloud is free to try: the shelf holds three pieces, with every feature included — the natural voices, PDFs and scans, the lock-screen player, all of it. A single purchase lets the shelf hold as many pieces as you like, forever. No subscription, nothing recurring, and your listening is never metered either way. If you read with your ears — long articles, research papers, contracts, fan fiction, your own writing — Aloud was built for you. And if you rely on spoken text every day, we would especially love to hear what you need next.

em is a Markdown writing app for Mac, iPad, and iPhone, built on one idea: your writing files are yours, and you're the only one who should decide what to do with 'em. WRITE 'EM WITH MARKDOWN Capture your thoughts in a distraction-free Markdown editor tuned for each device. em counts your words and reading time, but only if you want it to. FIND 'EM WITH SMART SEARCH Smart Search lists every file holding your words, the ones holding all of them first. Use quotes, +, -, OR and * for precision, filter by library, tag, status or year, and save any search as a Smart Folder that stays current. Only remember what a piece was about? Ask em. PROTECT 'EM WITH VERSION HISTORY Every edit is automatically versioned and backed up to iCloud. Compare and restore versions from any device, so an accidental deletion never costs you your writing. PUBLISH 'EM WITH GHOST Connect em to your Ghost site to edit, back up, and publish natively in Markdown that maps to Ghost's cards. em supports 19 Ghost editorial cards, plus drafts, scheduling, and newsletters. EXPLORE 'EM WITH AI (BUT ONLY IF YOU WANT TO) Ask em questions and get answers grounded in your files, not the internet. On OS 27, Siri can search, add, or edit notes in the libraries you approve. Get an Editorial Review from a prompt you can read and edit — it's a document in your library. em doesn't write your drafts; it helps you edit 'em. ALL FEATURES - Smart Search: Search operators, filters, and Smart Folders - Version History: Automatic versioning, stored in iCloud - Ghost Sites: Sync, edit, publish, and send newsletters - AI on Your Terms: On-device Apple Intelligence by default; optionally Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini with your API key - Siri AI: Search, add, or edit notes in approved libraries (OS 27) - Ask em: Answers from your own archive - Editorial Review: AI feedback from a prompt you control - Apple Shortcuts: Start an AI conversation or publish to Ghost - Journaling Suggestions: Capture memories in Markdown (iOS) - Read Aloud: Hear your draft to catch what your eyes miss - Customization: Reader and Editor fonts and colors - Export: Save any Ghost post as a Markdown file - Offline Editing: Works without an iCloud or Ghost connection - Even More: Printing, word counts, and yes — em dash highlighting PRIVACY, PLAINLY em has no server. That's not a promise about what the developer does with your data — there's no backend, no account, and no company database where your writing could end up. Your writing syncs through your iCloud and nowhere else. AI features are off by default and, if turned on, run on-device with Apple Intelligence. Want a larger model? Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini with your own API key — your account, your billing, revocable anytime. em names the model answering, every time. Transparency Statement: AI was used in developing this app, but every feature idea, design call, and architectural decision was made by a human.