Reader by ElevenLabs Reviews

by XtremeplayzYT

I’ve reached out the them as they said they’d fix it. I redownloaded Reader earlier today and it has the exact same bugs. When I click for Reader to read to me it simply won’t. When I click any words written Reader crashes. Reader is useless as for when I click anything it crashes.

by TheGreenGoose

One of the best apps when it was launched, but now it's full of bugs and errors to the extent that my files don't show. I keep getting "Error syncing: Legacy read errored while uploading." I have no idea what's happened, as everything was working well before 😞

by Sasrdt

Probably requires iOS 16+ which doesn't work on an iPhone 7. Other apps that require iOS 16+ check for it and display a note.

by Koolkoen

I’ve open and closed Reader , disconnected and reconnected to wifi, and even restarted my phone. Every time I try to play the audio, it says “Error starting a player” and plays no audio at all. It says this for even short messages. There also doesn’t appear to be a customer support option on the “Help” website, only articles that don’t give any information on the topic.

by Njckname123

I don’t know what the problem is for Reader or my phone but every time I try to play the audio it kicks me out Reader I have powered off my phone to see if the problems fixes I doesn’t and I have tried deleting Reader and reinstalling it and still doesn’t work so that’s why I’m leaving it as a 1 star cause I have not been able to even use Reader to its potential.

by Darekain

Reader was working great just a few days ago.. then they updated everything.. and now it constantly stops mid sentence.. waiting as if it were loading…. And it will just sit there loading.. forever loading….
I hate when they do a full overhaul on any app.. too many ways to induce problems

by Precisely777

ElevenLabs has the best quality voices on the market. However, almost nothing works properly. Linking to a document usually doesn’t work and usually butchers the layout styling. Uploading a pdf doesn’t work, and just presents the file names of images. It’s a mess right now.

However, I am hopeful for the future when they add basic functionality like a native Google Drive uploader, as all the other similar apps have.

by JustCritic

This was great while it worked —but it stopped working.

Perhaps it only works for short texts. It will begin reading longer texts, but will freeze and appear to be loading something that never arrives, even though the entire text is downloaded and visible. Are these growing pains? Are servers getting inundated with requests? Is there a hard limit on words, or time, or something else? It there a glitch that the next update will fix? There’s no warning, notice, or feedback, and there’s no way to set bookmarks to find where you were before it stopped working. For any long form content, that’s very frustrating — the user doesn’t want to sink a few hours into a text only to have Reader freeze, without even having a way to restart from the right point. Please fix these problems - the promise of Reader is great, and should not be lost to frustration with glitches.

by Balter

I have dyslexia, and use text to speech constantly. I’m used to what standard OS voices sound like and did fine until I used Reader. The quality of the voice is so high, that I suffer along with using Reader . It fails constantly. Stops in the middle of a text. Takes five minutes to load something that I’ve been reading. or never loads it and I put the content in another this app so I can continue. Or loses its place and I have to locate where I last was. But I keep coming back because of the voice quality. I so wish Reader was up to the quality of the voices.

I provide assistive technology service to school districts. I’ve determined that I cannot recommend Reader for students because it’s too inconsistent. They may spend as much time waiting for something to load, as they have to read it.

Please, please, please put the time into Reader like you have into developing the voices. Then this will be incredible.

by Shach94

It’s a great app, but any time I try to use a custom voice that I created instead of the built-in voices, it just loads forever and never plays.

by Tenney.liddon

Reader is great - so much better than paying per character on the website. However, it crashes frequently. The playback freezes at random points, corrupting the entire file and making it unplayable. There’s also no way to edit the text - you have to delete and reupload a revised version. Will be a 5 star app, once the bugs are worked out.

by Stavrosnco

I’ve been using elevenlabs voices for several months and definitely find the quality and generation speed to be among the best if not the best out there. It pains me to say that Reader does not deliver the same experience.
There are frequent bugs and issues with being able to generate speech from links or pasted text and no notification or feedback explaining what the problem is or that the service itself might be under too heavy a load. Most frequently this manifests as a session that starts off going well but then stalls out somewhere in the middle of your text refusing to advance beyond a certain point even when changing voices.

It is a shame to pair voices of this quality with an app that seems not quite ready for prime time.

by Theschoolpsych

I love Reader and the voices are the most realistic of any speech to text this app I’ve found so far. Hopefully they will keep updating it because it is very glitchy and will often stop reading in the middle of an article shared from the link. This is a very user-friendly app and if it was more consistent would be number one by far!

by Chinyere_o

I love using it but some of my books fail to sync and I have to start all over
Also, the Ai this app repeats a section often times and it gets annoying

by Ethanforai

I do like how simple Reader is to understand , however Reader crashes every time i attempt to get the ai to read my text?

by ScotiaGirl26

I absolutely love Reader. There are no hidden fees, no ads, and no microtransactions, which is a refreshing change. The voices are also high-quality, as you’d expect from 11 Labs. However, a few minor issues prevent me from giving it a full five-star rating.

One issue I’ve encountered is that when I try to quickly switch from one document to another while it’s reading, Reader sometimes reverts back to the previous document mid-reading, which can be frustrating. Another problem is that Reader tends to crash frequently. Recently, I’ve noticed it crashing even more often, though I’m unsure if it’s due to the number of documents I have or because of the version of iOS 18 I’m currently running.

Despite these problems, which I believe can be fixed, Reader has a lot of potential. I would love to see future updates that allow for sharing and saving readings, as well as a more straightforward way to clear the history. I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.

Overall, Reader is great, and I genuinely enjoy using it when it works properly. I hope the developers can address these minor issues soon, and once they do, I will happily update my review to five stars.

by Aviel.P

As others have said, Reader is excellent when it works doing exactly what you want it to with a nice interface. You can have any article or file read to you at the speed of your choice in an AI generated voice of your choice. Eleven labs AI readers sounds completely natural and high quality. If you leave off midway through and article you can simply return later and pick up where you left off while reading along if you like.

The problem is, it simply fails too often at present. I’ve used Reader 7 times and it has not worked 3 of them. The text loads and the AI this app loads for the first 1-2 minutes then halts. Probably the server can’t handle the request, sometimes you get an error message sometimes you don’t but you’ll just have to try again in a few hours because it will not proceed.

If this issue gets fixed I would absolutely love Reader and use it all the time. As is, I can’t use it because the convenience of having the article read to me as opposed to reading it is outweighed by the inconvenience of the unreliability that it will work. I’ve stopped using for now but will try again in a few months to see if the issue is handled.

by Wwe Fan215

Hey guys, I just wanted to say that Reader is amazing and it’s super helpful for me. I am completely blind so having something like this is super useful. The new voice is that were added, though I’m not able to access them when I upload something to read. They’re all really good and I would love to use them for my textbook and other stuff but i’m unable to access them.

by Eric Goetz

The voices sounded pretty good, especially the “narrator” ones.

It’s not handling smart quotes correctly. It converted the apostrophe in “I’m” into a weird character and completely botched the pronunciation of that word.

The UI could be optimized more in order to be truly useful as an assistive speaking device. Folders, ability to edit existing “text” items, better predictive text, translation, etc.

by Jadondrew

The voice is quite natural and pleasant to listen to, and there’s plenty of options. Sadly the stability has been in free fall since the launch. Now it often does not continue loading as you listen, and you’ll be stuck with long pauses of silence (usually between 30 seconds and several minutes), which is a shame because I really want to use this but it is not quite usable in its current state.

by Theo_Grace

"We've been notified, and are investing the issue." I tested and the voices do work once you choose one and it did read the sample books but when I tried importing two separate epub files I ran into this issue. I'm sure Reader is great just fix this bug I've ran into.

by Theputer

Reader would be my favorite for text to speech if it only had two things:

Better audio player that can bookmark /save position.

Ability to convert and save offline. I suspect that will reduce the issues with the emreqder randomly stopping after some sentences.

by Hsnndnsllal

Maybe Reader is so new that they are still working out bugs, but Reader keeps freezing after about 5 minutes of reading. Otherwise this would be among my favorite apps of all time.

by DADGBE

This is the best this app app ever bar none. I absolutely love Reader. That said, I’m not loving the new speed selection slider. Please bring back some tap based speed selection, make it more granular or add up and down buttons if you have to. But please bring back a tap speed selection and ideally make it persist across sessions and books, please. Otherwise very nearly the perfect this app app. ❤️

by JoZarem

Before my audio could go for a good few hours without any issue. But with this recent update my audio just keeps pausing every few paragraphs!! And an error pops up at the top of the screen saying something like error audio could not load or along those lines..not sure what happened but I hope it gets fixed soon.

by Autobahns

I’ve been using Reader extensively. The range of voices are amazing and while I love audiobooks on their own, being able to follow the text in real time has helped me digest some harder reads by both seeing and hearing in tandem. Can’t recommend Reader enough, and I only have two suggestions that would make this a 5 star.

1. Sleep timer!

2. Manual bookmarks. I know Reader in theory saves where you left off, and that’s reflected and updated in the percentage complete in the list of files - however (maybe it’s due to weird formatted epubs? either way) a way to just manually set a bookmark for peace of mind would be great

Apple Books and their infinite iCloud syncing wisdom offers this, and I use it extensively for the same reason. When the auto-spot-save works, it’s great. But when it fails once and you have to figure out where you were, you never trust it again. I’ve had a few epubs in Eleven this app completely start from the top after being nearly 50% through a book. Don’t even mind if that happens, but if I could jump right back to where I manually left a bookmark, that would be soooo clutch.

Anyway, keep up the amazing work.

by EternalJoy144

I wish I was over-exaggerating. The voices sound real which is a plus. But as I continue on my document, there’s times in the audio where the woman’s voice makes weird noises such as screams at the end of a paragraph. I brushed that off but then I ran into a long stretch of audio where there was loud churning (industrial? Mechanical? EERIE!) noises in the background of the audio. All the while, the usually calm and conversational tone of the woman’s voice became rushed, light and breathless, like if you made someone read something when they were scared and tried to hurry along with the dialogue. Her voice even turned into a man’s voice for a sentence. It’s literally the stuff you see in horror movies. Other than that, there is more buffering the further you get along. But the haunted voice creeps me out and is probably the main problem. It’s not even October yet 💀🙃. Other than that, Reader is nice.

by Frances_22

Hi, thank you for developing this software, it's good, but can I add some Chinese real female voice after it? and also, i don't quite understand why there's a half blank area on the home page

by Zach Ferris

Got Reader for listening to academic articles. Parses the text exceptionally well for URLs, but very buggy for PDFs. Very exciting app!

by Patrick Niddrie

Excellent way to listen to articles

by UnityEagle

I always love to read along while listening to an audiobook. Reader turns any ebook into an audiobook and read along at the same time. If they solve the stability issues it deserves 5 stars but unfortunately Reader is useless at the moment because the voice simply do not load and if they do it stops after a few sentences.
I would love to pay for Reader if that would guarantee Reader working correctly

by Conraddemasi

I’ve tried a lot of text to soeech apps… they usually sound robot-like and I quickly get turned off by them.

Reader blows everything else out of the water. It just sounds so natural, no matter what voice/language it’s in.

Reader has helped me a ton with reading / listening faster. And the import capabilities are awesome. Highly reccomend!

by Zachglabman

Always found it impossible to read academic papers on a screen. Really enjoy the audiobook experience and it translates well to the papers I’m reading. Thanks ElevenLabs Devs ❤️

by Bruno8777

I feel like more people should know about this. The voices are perfect, it is exactly like a person reading. I wish Reader was able to display images on epubs or pdfs, or allow us to customize the font, its size, maybe to rotate the screen. Nonetheless, it is perfect.

by Farotech

This has quickly become one of my favorite apps. For years, I tried their competitors and they were always meh. Today, I am literally catching up on the news tt I never have time to read and it’s been read by Burt Reynolds. .. Who’s been dead for three years now? Talk about living in the future.

by In The Name Of Cubans

I love Reader ! It's been incredibly useful. However, I hope they add the feature to export audios. I really don't want them to follow Evernote's path of holding content hostage unless I pay. Currently, on Evernote, I have to navigate through three screens just to access one of my oldest notes without upgrading. This is a bad practice that turned my appreciation for Evernote into a real disappointment. If you offer a paid feature, just please don’t hold what people already created hostage unless they pay. Keep the free features generally accessible.

by Hemingwaysmith

Simple and also glad there’s well funded competition that will finally take out speechify that appears according to reviews to be employing dark patterns to allegedly scam their own customers who cancel subscriptions but still get charged and support doesn’t do to solve this

by Powerfon4u

When I tried to upload something big file like a PDF or EPUB format book,there is always doesn’t work and pops up error message

by Jquintanilla4.us

Great app for listeners. If you like to multitask or have a long journey to work and back home, this will save your eyes after starting at a screen all day.

Can’t believe it’s free to be honest and runs smoothly on device.

by Nadniel

I think Reader is great. I’ve used it so much in the last few weeks since I downloaded it.
There had been a problem which many reviewers (including me) discussed, but it was solved yesterday.
Five stars. You’ll love it.

by Toe Knoee

As a legally blind user this is a dream come true. Elevenlabs has by far the most natural sounding computer voices and to be able to paste in any text and have it read by my favorite voices is beyond compare. I interpret the phrase “any length of text” and “import epubs” as “be able to read books you couldn’t before.”
I’m still half in disbelief that this is some sort of bug and my usage limit will update in a few more hours but right now it seems like elevenlabs are going in on the side of valuing accessibility and I am in the target audience for that so I really really appreciate it ❤️

by Alelasantillan

The this app is the best I’ve tried. It only lcks what others have:
The name of the uploaded files is odd, a puece of random chars and not even the original name and cannot be changed.
This fix is a must. I’ve uploaded a bunch of files and I don’t lnow which is which.
It also need a search tool for files and an “recently opened” option, as well as search by author, title, subject. And/or the posibility of group them by labels or folders.

by Fisher81101

Unbelievably good and keeps getting better! I originally gave 4 stars but they improved it and then some so I changed to 5 stars. Don’t believe the bad reviews, I suspect they are from jealous competitors who have been blown out of the water. This is the best test to speech this app by far! It is much better than speechify and VoiceDream or even NaturalReader. The voice Brian is especially great. It’s actually better than many audible audiobooks. I forget that it’s not a human. Sadly in comparison my old favorite TTS app Voice Dream now sounds like a robot. I hope they add a repeat function to play the audio over and over. The only thing I don’t like is the bright white play/pause button in dark mode. It’s too bright, so I just listen to the audio with the screen off rather than read along. If you gave less than five stars you may want to try Reader again and post a new review because they keep updating it and have fixed all the issues I could find. For example in dark mode the play/pause button was too bright but they fixed that.

by Vdrumpro999

Certainly the best quality txt to voice on Reader Store, and free for now. Can’t go wrong..

Buuuuuuut cloning. Isn’t that… what you specialize in is voice cloning? I’d pay.

I don’t want a corporate or sanitized voice. They do sound good, like in a commercial or professional production. But I hate voices like that because they’re soulless feeling and I can’t listen for very long. Removing the imperfections I suppose it’s sort of like vinyl vs CD. CDs are better… but our ears prefer vinyl due to the imperfections. The wow and flutter of a cassette tape also.

Would lop of my right arm for an app that could read to me with cloned voices as good as characterai voice clone (not available in this region, so VPN required.) go check out the voices on there, they’re all community clones. Maybe they should just add a txt to voice feature, lol. I went as far as trying to create a txt to speech chat bot but it didn’t cooperate.

by Aborguy10

Turns any article into an audiobook. So cool!

by Matbram

Just when I thought ElevenLabs couldn’t get any better, they release a this app app. This allows me to save so much time because now I can listen to all my news and tech articles instead of reading everything!

by Reviewer.2024

the voices are so realistic!!

by Scandallover321

Reader has been useful for me to get my readings done for school while also knocking out physical tasks. The voices sound realistic. I think adding voices that represent other groups of people would make Reader even better

by Bsmooo

Had been hoping Elevenlabs would launch an app for this but this exceeds expectations. It’s sleek and works well, and to have the exceptional Elevenlabs voices brings convenience to an already awesome service. Their voices are arguably the most lifelike around right now.

by Waders1987

This works well. The buffer needs to be fixed, it takes too long to start reading. Also, the iconic voices for some unexplained reason say the word um when it comes to curse words. so to recap, the buffering needs to be faster when opening up a file, or nonexistent. And the iconic voices need to stop replacing words with the word um in the text. This happens with certain text files, Harry Potter fan files that I read that have cussing in the stories. That's what I'm talking about.

by The Marshal Mathers

I am a lazy this app and Reader made my life easier.

by Keon16253

Great app! It’s been really interesting and fun to use!

by Toto Vasquez

This is a great app, but if they make Reader better is to add like subscriptions for the ai cloning tool.

by 1sahand

YAYYYYYY!!! ELEVEN LABS HAS THE BEST VOICES EVER!!!!!!

by Stonkman2

I previously had a review stating that Reader did not work for me without much detail as to why. The company looked into it and quickly fixed the issue. Great customer support!

by 😝Eli W.😝

Thanks for fixing problems

by Young Prefect

Been waiting for an app like this for years 🙏🙏

by Mapples9

Seamless and the best, most realistic sounding voices. I’ll definitely be using this for all my on-the-go reading!

by TCESQ1

Very user friendly. The voices are quite realistic. Particularly enjoy Alice for listening to news articles.

by Sussy One

Free, perfect voices, easy to use, the list goes on, IVE HAD IT FOR A DAY AND IT’S ALREASY MY FACORITE PDF this app EVER. From what iv’e seen it’s super fast and doesn’t even have ads, it can pronounce even some more difficult or none existing words

by Funky Phresh Bruh

Had some import issues downloading epubs from Apple Books. They seem to get corrupted but I found a blog post that explained a fix.

by DSBwrites

Truly the perfect app to listen to great content without having to stare at a screen and read. Makes consuming stories and articles so much more dynamic. Reader makes me smarter.

by JohnGalt01

I love Reader ! It's been incredibly useful. However, I hope they add the feature to export audios. I really don't want them to follow Evernote's path of holding content hostage unless I pay. Currently, on Evernote, I have to navigate through three screens just to access one of my oldest notes without upgrading. This is a bad practice that turned my appreciation for Evernote into a real disappointment. If you offer a paid feature, just please don’t hold what people already created hostage unless they pay. Keep the free features generally accessible.

by IRobV2.0

The latest version will not make it passed the voice selection screen. Please fix, I love Reader! I downloaded Reader again. This time I made it passed selecting a voice. Then I loaded a document, and it only reads a paragraph, then stops. Or it only reads a random amount of words, then stops. Also, there are no apparent options for highlighting spoken words. Please fix!!!

by Ambeent

I have tried many apps looking for an AI to read websites to me. Nothing ever sounded good, too robotic.
Found Reader through Reddit. And it is a game changer, the voices sound so realistic, they even have inflictions! Very natural sounding narration.

by Takeoutchick

Edited review: The problem I had earlier seems to be fixed. Thank you! This is an excellent app that I’m using every day to help me understand what I’m reading. The voices are so realistic that it’s like someone’s in the room with me.

by Picsarama

My husband has vision issues and can no longer read on his iPad, and Reader has been amazing! He also writes, and listening to his own written content without having to resort to Siri has been incredible for him!

by DK Slimmz

Incredible work.