Guide · iOS 26 and iOS 27

Text to speech on iPhone: four ways to have it read to you.

Your iPhone has text to speech built in, and it’s free. It can read a sentence you select, everything on the screen, a web page in Safari, or any app as clean, readable text. Here’s how to turn each one on, which to use when, and how to make the voice sound better.

The short version

Which one to use

1. Speak Selection: hear the text you select

1. Open Settings › Accessibility › Read & Speak and turn on Speak Selection.
2. In any app, select the text you want to hear.
3. Tap Speak in the menu that appears. If it isn’t there, tap the arrow at the end of the menu.

In the same place you can choose how the words being read are highlighted, and in which color.

2. Speak Screen: hear everything on the screen

1. Open Settings › Accessibility › Read & Speak › Speak Screen and turn it on.
2. In any app, swipe down with two fingers from the top of the screen. Or ask Siri: “Speak screen.”
3. Use the controls that appear to pause, change the speed, or skip back and forward. Speak on Touch reads just the text you tap.

Speak Screen reads all the text on the screen, which in some apps includes buttons and menus. For an article in Safari, Listen to Page sounds cleaner. To keep the controls on screen, turn on Show Controller under Speak Screen.

3. Listen to Page: hear a web page in Safari

1. Open the page in Safari.
2. Tap the Page Menu button in the address bar, then tap Listen to Page.
3. To pause, tap the Page Menu button again, then the Pause button.

Listen to Page works on the pages Safari supports, which are mostly articles. If it isn’t in the menu, the page isn’t supported: swipe down with two fingers for Speak Screen instead.

4. Accessibility Reader: any app as clean, readable text

New in iOS 26, Accessibility Reader shows the text of whatever you’re looking at full screen, in the font, size and colors you choose, and can read it aloud.

1. Open Settings › Accessibility › Read & Speak › Accessibility Reader and turn it on. Turn on Autoplay too if you want it to start reading by itself.
2. Open it from any app: from Control Center, from the Share menu, or by triple-clicking the side button once it’s in your Accessibility Shortcut.

In iOS 27, on iPhones with Apple Intelligence (iPhone 15 Pro and later), it can also summarize the text, translate it, or clean up a cluttered page.

Make the voice sound better

Your iPhone’s reading voice is set in Settings › Accessibility › Read & Speak:

• Voices: choose the voice and dialect for each language. Some voices have Enhanced or Premium versions, which sound more natural; they download when you choose them, so pick them on Wi‑Fi.
• Speaking Rate: drag the slider. Speak Screen’s controls change the speed while it reads, too.
• Detect Languages: lets your iPhone switch voices when the text changes language.
• Pronunciations: teach it how to say a name or a word it gets wrong.

Where the built-in tools stop

They read what’s open right now, and that’s all. Nothing lines up the next article, so you’re back on your phone after every one. And Listen to Page only works in Safari, while X Articles and LinkedIn posts usually open in their own apps, where you’re left with Speak Screen.

When an app is the better fit

If what you want to hear is what you save, an app made for it does better: X Articles and threads, LinkedIn posts, newsletters, long reads. That’s what Tuneread does. Share a link to it and the article joins Up Next; they play one after another with the screen off, and your lock screen and AirPods control them, like a podcast.

• Natural voices made on the iPhone itself, so anything in your library plays offline, even on a plane.
• Every word lights up as it’s read, and each paragraph is read in its own language, in 31 languages.
• No account: your library stays on your iPhone.
• Free for 30 minutes of listening a day. Pro removes the limit for $9.99, once.

Comparing apps? See how Tuneread compares with Speechify, or what to use now that Pocket is gone.

Questions