How to Turn Any E-Book or Article Into an Audiobook

Like most accessibility features on iOS, Speak Screen is off by default. It’s up to you, then, to turn it on so that you can readily access it when you want or need to hear the content of your device’s screen. Just follow these steps to enable Speak Screen on your iOS device.

And that’s it. You’re now ready to make an audiobook out of any e-book — or an audio story out of any article, for that matter — on your iOS device.

With Speak Screen duly enabled, all you have to do to activate it is to swipe down with two fingers from the top of the screen.

Your device will then immediately start speaking the content of the screen. You’re then free to listen through your device’s speakers or pop in your earphones and carry on with your task or your day.

After activating Speak Screen, you’ll notice that a semitransparent overlay will appear, bearing the name of the app where Speak Screen is current in effect. This is the Speak Screen control panel, which lets you control Speak Screen by tapping any of its control buttons:

• Tortoise: Decrease the speaking rate.
• Rewind: Go back to the previous page or paragraph.
• Pause/Play: Pause or resume Speak Screen.
• Fast Forward: Skip to the next page or paragraph.
• Hare: Increase the speaking rate.

You can tap the leftward pointer button to minimize the control panel, although the control panel is automatically minimized after several seconds of inactivity. You can then tap the rightward pointer button to restore the control panel.

Tap the X button to deactivate Speak Screen and stop your device from speaking the content of the screen.

Speak Screen is perfect for turning e-books into audiobooks. And nowhere is it more effective than in Apple’s own e-reading app, iBooks.

Just launch iBooks and open the e-book you want to read — or rather, listen to. Then, activate Speak Screen and you’re good to go.

Don’t worry about losing your place in a book, since Speak Screen automatically flips to the next page as it progresses.

And don’t worry about keeping your device’s screen active. On the contrary, you’re free to put the display to sleep. This means that you can activate Speak Screen and lock your device without stopping or otherwise interrupting your audiobook.

You can even exit iBooks and Speak Screen will continue doing its thing. So while your audiobook is being spoken in the background, you’re free to use other apps, provided that the apps don’t make use of audio and, perhaps more important, that the apps don’t distract you so much as to keep your focus away from what you’re supposed to be listening to and concentrating on in the first place.

Speak Screen works not only with e-books. Actually, it can be used in any app as long as there’s speakable content on screen. But apart from e-books, Speak Screen is perhaps most recommended for use with articles, especially long-form ones.

I, for one, often call on Speak Screen in The New Yorker Today to read New Yorker magazine articles aloud to me. Of course, Speak Screen also works well with articles in Apple’s web browser, Safari.

As with e-books, Speak Screen lets you lock your device or exit the app without stopping or otherwise interrupting your article turned audio story.

You can set Speak Screen so that content is highlighted as it is spoken. This allows you to easily keep track of where Speak Screen currently is in a page or post. You can enable content highlighting for Speak Screen by following these steps.

Thereafter, words, sentences, or both — depending on your preference — will be highlighted as Speak Screen speaks them, with the page automatically scrolled to accommodate content highlighting.

Of course, actual audiobooks, or at least those that are professionally produced, have the significant advantage of being narrated by humans, complete at best with the vocal variations and nuances that are called for by the material. And there are apps that feature articles read by real people rather than text-to-speech software. Speak Screen can’t boast the use of actual humans, but you can change the voice it uses into a more natural-sounding, or at least more pleasant-sounding, one. Just follow these steps.

And that’s how you can turn any e-book or article into an audiobook or audio story — no app required, since all you need is the built-in iOS feature Speak Screen. If you have any questions, remarks, or suggestions, feel free to enter them in the comments section below.