Listening: Text to Speech Reviews

by Jack Ski3

I made an account and bought 3 months for the price of one. Found out Listening still needs a ton of work and deleted my account and unsubscribed in Listening itself. Come to find out 7 months later it had been billing me the whole time. So now I am out ~$90.

I am super sad that Listening isn’t what it says it is. As a student with learning “disabilities” this could have the power to drastically change how I learn and my bandwidth. But in science(biochemistry and relevant) and philosophy(my major and minor) Listening is useless for reading papers. I am very disappointed and hope someday an app will come along which can truly do what this claims to do.

What was wrong with it:
1)more often then not Listening would read the pdf out of order.
2)most of the jargon and a ton of the abbreviations it misread or mispronounced. (In chemistry Ca+ does not mean California)
3)Listening would skip full pages/paragraphs/sentences. And sometimes it wouldn’t load or detect words on full pdfs.

Possibly this could work for more cut and dry topics but I doubt it could work for anything above a 5 grade level.

by Bu_bbly45

Listening did not work for me at all when I tried getting PDFs onto it to listen to. Then I tried cancelling within the trial window and found they didn’t offer any way to do so through their app. So I had to go into my Apple settings to cancel the subscription that way. Seemingly that worked except I come to find out I was not refunded AND I’m continuing to be charged as if I have the subscription still despite having cancelled it. Don’t get Listening. Nothing is transparent and it’s not worth the hassle.

by Isuahsoen

So I’m cancelling my free trial of Listening because it only allows you to paste a url of an article to convert it into an audio which isn’t really helpful considering most articles I need to read are in pdf format. How am I supposed to “paste” a pdf into a little box that’s really designed for urls? URLs typically only display the abstract of an article so again how would conversion work even if I did have a url? Thought I’d save myself some time today but wasted all of it trying to use Listening only to find out it does not convert PDFs simply by uploading them since there’s nowhere to upload them. Very confusing

by RH78693840384992

There’s absolutely no way to try it before you pay for a subscription. Lots of flashy advertising for Listening online, but I can’t verify if it actually does a good job until I fork over some money. They should allow you to read like 5 papers to test it before you commit. I’m guessing the product isn’t very good if they don’t let you test it first. Also there’s no indication that you need to pay until you enter your email. Listening is probably a data farm. Deleted immediately and don’t recommend.

by DLOlivier

As a grad student I was so excited to find Listening. Unfortunately, the PDF loaded into Listening with no spaces between the words so the automated voice just jumbled all the words together and it didn’t work out. I’d be very interested in Listening if it worked properly. I was using Listening on my iPhone. While this may not do this on the desktop, that option wouldn’t be worth a subscription to me as I wanted a way to listen to my papers without being tied to my desk. Great idea, just needs a little work.

by AdSickened

I am a grad student and really, really wanted this to work. I held on to the subscription for a few months longer than I should have because I hoped for some serious improvements, but those never came. I cannot recommend Listening and have instead taken to telling fellow academics to avoid it.
Text readers and academic articles never mix well and unfortunately Listening is no different. It is nice in concept - a reader app specifically oriented around academic articles that organizes by header sections and does not read the citations or header/footer information. I loved the idea of the text being available in Listening to follow along with. However, in practice Listening is a mess. The headers often do not correspond to the headers in the article (often many extra headers with no information below them, or headers that are just parts of a sentence). The text does not match the articles chronologically- often accidentally creating new and weird sentences or rearranging the text by reading across two columns or skipping sections. This is a huge issue because at times the authors’ intentions would be contradicted or made confusing by Listening ’s improper reading of the material. If the listener is not aware of this issue, they may end up mistaking the article entirely.

by Youlovetre

Listening doesn’t read PDFs properly. I’ve tried to read multiple documents with this service. Every document I read with Listening has the first or last sentence of a page cut off on just about every page. On multiple occasions I’ve had paragraphs get rearranged. The most recent document I’ve tried to read the reader skipped a large amount of pages, making a big chunk of the text just disappear and not be read. On another pdf, halfway through the document the reader decided to put the last page in the middle for no rhyme or reason. If this is meant to help students read and learn, these glitches are not conducive to this mission statement. I don’t even really understand how you can make a computer/AI that can’t read things in the right order. That should be your first priority when you make something like this. Do NOT spend your money on a service that only half works. I feel like my time and money is wasted every time I try to use this. They need to do a massive improvements before they can expect people to pay them. Starting with delivering what they claim.

by Annerb000

Impossible to cancel! Was really interesting in trying this out since I’d much rather listen to papers while out walking or working out. I’m glad I gave them a prepaid card instead of my real card, because they make it impossible to find the cancel button in Listening or on their website. Their FAQs say log in and go to settings to cancel, but the website has no apparent log in and every link just takes you to input your card details. Listening settings doesn’t have a cancel button either. Sad that Listening that would be great for scientists or anyone who’d rather listen than read is just a scam.

by Krissy_FL2

DO NOT SUBSCRIBE TO TRIAL. Developer doesn’t allow you to cancel! Report Listening!! TOTAL SCAM!!

by Adam K Amberg

Giving this 2 stars because of the great potential, but in its current state, it’s extremely buggy, and only really works about a third of the time. You often have to load, delete, then reload papers onto Listening and sometimes then it still doesn’t work. All that to say, the few times I’ve Gotten it to work have been great. It’s an expensive app, but if it worked as advertised it would absolutely be worth that price point. But in its current form, I would caution people against paying for it. Grateful for the free trial though.

by Jsskttl

I really, really want to love Listening because the concept is absolutely amazing but I can’t get it to really work for any of the papers I try to upload. I’ve even tried uploading the same paper in different ways (I.e., share from chrome, upload the downloaded pdf directly from my computer, and copy and paste the url for the pdf), but I can’t get it to download more then one section most of the time and definitely can’t get it to section out the article (I.e., abstract, intro, methods, etc.). I don’t think it’s user error, but if it is I’d be happy to hear any suggestions on how to make it work better because I would seriously love if this product could do what it’s advertised because it’s such a great idea and would save me a ton of time!

by Valendez123

With the first few pdfd I used it worked perfectly! Perfect transcription and totally clear reading. So when it works, it’s fantastic.

But lately I’ve been uploading new papers, all in the exact same format as the first one, and the transcribed version imported into Listening , which the voice reads, is constantly missing pieces. I have no idea why but Listening is missing full chunks of the original. I have tried re-uploading the document in different planets and the same thing continues to happen. Listening has no “help” or troubleshooting section, or contact information in order to understand why this issue happens or how to fix it or how to prevent this from happening with future documents.

by Academon13

My PDFs aren’t read in correctly, so the AI reader jumps to random parts of every PDF I’ve tried loading into Listening . For reference, I was trying to get it to read routinely formatted, published academic papers. It should have worked according to Listening ’s description. This has a lot of potential, but it’s unfair to be charging people money for a broken product.

by Nickname4242435

Writing this on December 19th, 2023. I was super excited about Listening but after using it a few days I’ve determined it’s useless to me as is. It’s advertised as a scientific paper AI reader but it can’t even understand superscripts at the end of sentences as references - after every sentence with a superscript reference, it reads “to the power of… (etc)”. Honestly that’s my main complaint but if it can’t do that I don’t trust it for anything.
To give some context, I used it to read biology papers - the pronunciation is pretty good but occasionally it skips sections that I presume it doesn’t understand but it doesn’t tell you that it’s skipping something. It’s pretty good about knowing which sections are which (abstract etc) but again it’s not great at it. Also loading papers is difficult, I had to do it on the website and then listen on my phone once it syncs.

I hope they can continue to improve Listening to a usable status in the future because the idea is great.

by HendrikJG

I thought this would be a great way to listen to papers, especially since it advertised being able to pronounce technical terms correctly. Unfortunately, it’s not there yet. For reference, I’m working in neurology and neuroscience. Thought I’d start it on some easy review articles from the most popular journals in the field (Nature journals, JAMA, and Neurology were the journals in this case). Gets about 30% of medical terms correct, less with mol. bio, genes, neuroscience specific terms. Often misinterpreted lines of justified text as individual letters, which is difficult to understand and makes flow very difficult. Is unable to read a word when it is hyphenated across two lines. I thought starting with massive journals with consistent formatting would be easiest, but it still struggled. And, as a reminder, these were topical review articles - terms overall were not particularly niche nor difficult. Overall, the idea is good, and I think it will improve with time, but right now it’s not worth the cost.

by Rebagyzmo

I uploaded 4 different pdfs, all academic papers. Entire sections were missing and I couldn’t make any sense of it. The voices sounds good but they haven’t been trained well enough to pronounce everyday science words yet and it makes the this app too far on the lumpy side of awkward. The apps seems like it’s still in alpha testing range, but I imagine it’ll get there soon. I wish it had a user-teach function, where a user could teach it the correct pronunciation (free development). I just deleted it because it wasn’t working well enough to even scrape through the papers I was trying to listen to.

by Ashen Phoenician

It’s not horrible….but it’s also not great. I wouldn’t even say it’s good, but it’s acceptable if you have really really good audio processing skills. It kind of butchers a lot of technical terms (I’m a biomedical engineer grad student) even some simpler ones like ‘hydrogel’. I commend the developers for the progress they’ve made, but I don’t think Listening is worth the price they are charging.

by Itsyanita

What is great about Listening is that I can use it on my phone or computer. However, notes that I took on my phone don’t appear when I am using a webpage. Further, I CANNOT EXPORT MY NOTES FROM ANY BROWSER - not edge, not chrome, not firefox. Now it is time for me to return to my notes for an essay, and I can’t export my notes!

I am incredibly frustrated with Listening. I have sent multiple emails to the support team and have not received any response.

by Honestly….

I don’t even know where to start with the deception. First, the voices that read the PDFs are not the ones that you “choose from” in the beginning. They sounded like traditional robotic voices, not the advertised AI enhanced voices. Then, I had the hardest time getting the voice to change. When I figured out that I had to go to a desktop to see the voices in settings, the audio still didn’t change until I uploaded another PDF. Second, everyone talks about how great Listening is because it’s different from others in how it recognizes what is relevant, but it doesn’t. It still reads some headers/footers and page numbers. Third, it skips over large chunks of text making this app irrelevant if I’m missing half of what I need to hear.

by THARegis

I have been using Listening almost two weeks now, and besides a few glitches here and there, when converting a PDFto audio, it was ok, for the most. Until the supposed logo up and branding update, which was a little bit more, because before that update, I was able to multi-task between apps, now as soon as I come out of Listening it stops. Until then, I was willing to do the full subscription, but now, not interested. I liked being able to follow along in the actual PDF, as opposed to Listening 's conversion. I was able to do better note taking then. Also, because it's AI, the conversion is not fully fullproof, so there are mistakes and such. Something I would suggest in that regard, is that you give people the option to edit the text in those cases. Sorry that this relationship didn't work out in the end. ✌🏾

by VEEsser

Pros:
-groups academic article sections
-allows you to skip a section
-very lifelike voice

Cons:
-only one voice
-grouped my text into strange chunks that then made it break up a single sentence into multiple sentences

Ultimately, the incapability of Listening to process my text correctly made it useless.

It was. As though I was reading the. Text in such. A way. That it sounded like. This paragraph. If you. We’re to read it following. The punctuation. It. Made it so chunked. Up that it. Took more time to. Mentally. Process what was being said than it. Would have taken. To just read. It.

The AI voice is so good it adds incredibly accurate infection and tone, but when this is combined with the weird chunking it just adds even more confusion.

Imagine if? Every sentence was broken. Up like the ones above but. You also used. The. Correct inflections and tone, going up and. Down. At the appropriate times in. The sentence but? The words aren’t matching so. You can’t use the tonal cues. That we. Sometimes. Rely on to. Help our brains process. Information. Faster.

If this was free I’d be incredibly pleased. Personally, I can’t justify the price with these issues. I can get a free app that will have a more robotic voice but at least read the sentences in a useful way.

by Frustrated Ex-fan

The AI voices are impressive in their ability to read fairly naturally with pauses, emphasis, and tone. However, I have found that when it scans in text, it sometimes will skip a line, especially at page breaks. It also sometimes splits up a sentence as if there was a paragraph break, causing a pause in the AI voice that can impede comprehension. In one case, the font of the PDF was readable but something caused it to frequently interpret a “y” at the end of a word as separate from the rest of the word. Finally, when uploading a large PDF it has to load the text in chunks for reading, and when loading the next chunk it consistently was skipping about a paragraph so I had to manually move it back to the top of the skipped text (on the other hand, it was 200 pages and I’m impressed it could handle that at all!). If the text scanning is improved this could be 5 stars.

by Swaerles

Currently the subscription is $10. I don't think it's worth that. Here's why

1) Audio controls don't work with Bluetooth buttons. Not in my car, not on my headphones. So no fast forward, rewind. There are screen buttons that can jump back 10 sec. Sometimes I just want to jump back 1 sentence, or 3 sec. Not smooth navigating.

2) Pronounciation: can be all over the place. It's not bad overall but common words can be off. Scientific words are more often wrong. Strings of numbers are read nonsensically. (Eg 1980s is pronounced one thousand nine hundred and eighty S) . Choppy pronounciation pulls me out of concentration instantly. And sprinkle enough in, and the this app experience becomes more work than it's worth.

3) Importing: the OCR needs work. It does an adequate job ignoring footnotes but often it will chunk words together without spaces.

Sotheeffectisanarratortryingtoreadalongstringofwordsanditsincomprehensible.

Descriptions of graphs and figures aren't always left out of narration. The flow is so hit or kiss that I can't really recommend this over using Apple Siri voice reading with the accessibility features.

by Phantomsofsublimity

As others have said, trying to listen to a research article will melt your brain, as it struggles with acronyms and science words, but I found the mispronunciation of common words even more jarring. And the voice often places emphasis on unexpected parts of sentences. Deleted Listening during the trial.

by Sadpatheticme

Listening is functional but barely. Needs polishing. Even renaming file names doesn’t work 90% of the time. The whole app feels like a student’s project and does not feel native.

by Aesaito

Why create a product that basically clones another product and not even allow a test run without volunteering to a trail that automatically converts into a sale?

Simple answer, company wants to lock in sales more than lock in proving their worth.

The voices sound decent from the initial setup, but I have 0 desire to allow access to my financials before test running the product, much less if there is already a compelling product that already gives a lite version of their product.

Hopefully you guys grow to the point that you can lock in sales based on merit instead of based on forgetfulness of unsubscribing from a trail.

I can’t give less of a rating because I wasn’t able to test the product behind the in-app purchase, but by principle any company that can’t prove it’s worth before demanding an automated subscription doesn’t deserve a perfect rating.

All the best 🫡

by Rugwithlegs

Listening is simple to use. It does pretty much extractor as advertised. I work in radiation oncology, and so I listen to papers on my long commute to work. It fills the time well. But, there are gaps n the computer’s reading ability. Roman numerals are a particularly noticeable problem (“World War Aye Aye.” “Phase Aye Aye Aye study.” There are some words that are unexpectedly read quite poorly, but overall it is a humerus gaff that doesn’t interfere with my ability to understand. I’m looking forward to improvements, but I am very happy I bought this.

by Noel Palm

Pretty great. Good voice. Works way better than the iPhone or mac this app. It does skip around sometimes in the papers which can get frustrating if you're busy and can’t figure out the sentences you missed by looking at the actual paper. Also, I wish there was an option to leave the figures out or put them at the end. I love the note feature.

by Jbonevan

Excellent app, would give 5 stars if I could still see the amount of total time this app to each audio file takes like in pervious versions. That feature is key!

by Jaya08aug

I absolutely hate reading and so having an app that can convert all of my reading into voice is just so convenient and amazing.

I would highly recommend Listening !

by CedricAndRowena

It’s a good app. It could be great with a few tweaks. The process for downloading on the phone is cumbersome. It would be super-helpful to have easily accessible FAQ’s & tutorials IN Listening , not just in the marketing materials & sign-up process.

Easiest procedure: download a pdf to your computer, upload to your account via the web page (app.this app.io) on your computer, and listen on your phone.

Wish list:
-Easy to find login link at this app.io. I know it’s a marketing page, but please add a login button at the top; when you purchase Listening through appstore, finding the login url on a browser is needlessly difficult.
-Variable reading speeds
-No autoplay! Clicking a title should open an article & let the reader control when it starts playing. OR provide that option in a real settings page.
-Access to help/FAQ & documentation & contact info (for sending feedback) on both smartphone app & web app.
-“Settings” on the web app just tells me my membership status. It should actually lead to settings.

But don’t get me wrong! These are tweaks, and the core functionality is really good.

by Temporubato

Just started on a trial and loving it so far. My only question is if there’ll be more types of voices later? I tried another similar app before and my favorite was a child’s voice - it made some research papers less boring!

by Jasper816j

As a grad student I love Listening. I’ve had it about 6 months now, but the most recent update fixed a lot of my issues with it. I do wish the mobile version allowed me to see the document’s cover bc there’s so many sometimes I get them mixed up. I also wish it allowed me to build a filing system for readings for certain things. Hopefully they work on that when they finish out the little bugs. I love it though! It is a serious time saver.

by Anna91630

I am really picky about AI voices, but this one was amazing! Even at 1.5 speed it was engaging and audible to listen. It’s game changer to be able to listen to written text while walking and moving.

by Infinitejulian

I’ve recently been feeling pretty overwhelmed keeping up with the latest research in AI but now I can learn on the go as well! Listening works really well and saves me a ton of time, well worth the price

by Breatheyourbeing

Listening legit turns anything into a podcast you can listen to in seconds. I can finally listen to all the newsletters and essays I’m subscribed to without spending hours in my email inbox! In particular I appreciate using Listening for long walks, chores around the house, and exercise. this app also hooks up directly into any podcasting app so you don’t need to manage more apps or sources of content which is pretty nice.

by DaveFromEarlier

This has made reading articles and papers for school so much easier. Would love to see new features like grouping audio files into folders, a search feature to check through files, and the ability to take voice notes as you listen (and better note taking in general)

Highly recommend Listening!

by GratefulScholar

Any serious student knows they have many hundreds of articles to read in order to catch up on the field. Listening has made my life and study far more efficient. this app to PDFs allows me to binge new publications as I do mindless contract work, dishes, or take a walk. All PDFs do not load perfectly and there are improvements to be made, but the developers are committed to doing that. Step in and support their work asap so this amazing and helpful product can get even better.

by Woodystar(;

I thought the voice would sound mechanical, but it actually sounds natural! I even listen at 1.5x speed and it sounds great. Excited to keep using this

by AlexP1799

I’ve only had it for a couple of weeks and I’m already sold. I’m in grad school at the moment and almost all of our reading are academic articles. It takes me ages to get through them every week and by the end it feels like my eyes are going to fall out of my head.

This solves all of that. The UI is simple and easy to use, and the voice is great. My apartment is actually clean for the first time in ages cause I can tidy up while working. I can also play games while this app, or commute while this app.

If you’re a student and you feel overwhelmed like you don’t have enough time for everything in your life PLEASE at least try the free trial. This thing is a real game changer

by Napper Nick

Incredibly pricey, I’ve got to say. I was a bit frustrated after the trial ran out, and I spent $139 for a year’s subscription. But, a few months into using it, I’ve found it’s totally worth it. I love Listening . The voices are incredible, and the ease of uploading various documents or anything you want to listen to is astonishing. So far, it’s been flawless - simple but effectively easy to use. I couldn’t recommend it more.

by Green Carot

The voice quality is much better than anything else I have tried. Unfortunately, the cost currently listed is more than I’m willing to spend. I understand that this may be close to the break even point for the developer, so this is not a complaint… just feedback to the developer. When it possible to offer this service for a fraction of the current rates, I’ll be interested.

by Littletwosuns

Very handy tool for this app to interesting articles I’ve been saving but have no time to read. Now I can listen to them in between longer podcasts when I am driving. Will recommen!

by Robin28syp

I am a PhD student who just tried multiple similar apps for the first time and I feel like “this app” is the best for my purpose and would significantly improve my workflow. Unlike Speechify, this app allows me to bookmark sentences with one click for future references while this app. This is essential cause I listen to articles while working out and cooking to save time — It is inconvenient if I have to pause audio and take highlights/notes using separate apps, or if I have to sit down later and go back through the article to re-find what sounded useful for me. Also, this app takes time to render pdfs in the beginning, which actually leads to cleaner audio outputs that don’t include random marginal watermarks from journals that repeat after every page with Speechify. For the this app team tho: I wanted to compare reddit reviews of various apps that do similar things and it was hard to locate posts about “this app” because your name is really generic. I ended up just trying multiple apps and I do like this one. Hope you stay in business cause the subscription is yearly lol

by MS485937

This is a game changer for keeping up with papers. It’s not quite good enough to follow every detail, but it’s definitely good enough to get a sense of the what the authors are studying, how they do it, and their conclusions. I highly recommend endorse it!

by Perpetual Student319

I have been looking for an app like this for a while! Often, I’m traveling or on the go and it is difficult to get all the reading for my doctoral program completed. This helps a great deal! It is easy to upload and start right away. The notes feature is helpful but a little clunky getting back to the document itself, especially if you’re trying to read along. I end up having to pause when I do the notes so that I don’t miss what is next— especially since I listen at slightly higher speeds.

by Davehuish

It really delivered for me. It’s about as happy as I’ve been about an app in a very long time. It doesn’t disappoint!

by Maxzilla90

I am a biology student with dyslexia, which has made it very difficult to read through research papers. Listening has given me the ability to “read” far more effectively. I have have read 20x the number of research papers now with this app.io. I can listen while I am driving or on a walk, its very liberating. The price is low enough to alow individuals to utilize the service compared to other text conversion programs that are not financially available to not rich individuals.

by Amarolover88

Listening has changed my life in the past year. Worth the subscription & it only continues to improve, especially across languages (I listen in Spanish & English).
My unique complaint— for whatever reason Listening doesn’t recognize words that start a sentence with th— and it spells it out as TH- whatever the ending is (-e, -is, -em). Would love someone to take a glance at that, seems like an important contribution, lol.
Keep up the good work! Love to knock out other tasks while I am prepping for class, conferences, or otherwise!

by Manish1974

I thought robot voices would sound bad, but it’s actually really understand! Plus the podcast format is great

by Jri89

I definitely like this app to blog posts when I’m driving instead of sitting in front of my computer. Great, useful, and easy to use app!

by Bsenesi

As an avid news junky who also happens to suffer a long daily commute, this tool has changed the game: I can now add that print news directly to my podcast rotation on my daily drive. Killer idea