To listen to an article on your iPhone, copy its link and paste it into a text to speech app like Focal Voice — the app extracts the readable text (no menus, ads, or comments) and reads it aloud with a natural voice. It works for news articles, blog posts, newsletters, X posts, Reddit threads, and even direct links to PDFs.

Your reading backlog, as a playlist

Everyone has the same graveyard: 30 open Safari tabs and a folder of "read later" links that never get read. Turning articles into audio flips the problem — a 4,000-word feature becomes a 20-minute listen on your commute, and the backlog actually shrinks. Think of it as a personal podcast feed built from whatever you meant to read this week.

How to listen to any article

  1. Copy the link. In Safari, X, Reddit, or your newsletter app, tap Share → Copy Link.
  2. Import it. Open Focal Voice and choose Import from URL. The article's text is extracted and cleaned automatically.
  3. Press play. Pick a voice, set your speed (news is comfortable at 1.5–2×), and listen with the text highlighted as it's read.

Queue it up: Import a handful of links on Sunday evening and you've got a week of commute listening — each article saved in your library with its own progress.

Import from URL option in Focal Voice for listening to articles, X posts and Reddit threads
Paste any link — article, X post, Reddit thread, or PDF URL.

What about Safari's built-in reader?

Safari can read some pages aloud (Listen to Page), and it's fine for a quick one-off. The difference is workflow: Focal Voice keeps every article in a library with saved positions, consistent voices, speed control, and offline downloads — plus the option to turn a heavy long-read into a two-host AI podcast instead of straight narration.

Frequently asked

Can it read X posts and Reddit threads?

Yes — paste the post or thread link and the readable content is extracted, so you can catch up on a long thread hands-free.

Does it work with paywalled articles?

Focal Voice can only extract what the page makes publicly readable. If an article is behind a hard paywall, import won't see the full text — copy the text you have access to and use Paste Text instead.

Can I listen to a PDF that's linked on a page?

Yes. Links that point straight to a PDF import like documents — see how to listen to a PDF.