Listening

Bindle can read any article or book aloud, with your device's own voices or a natural voice that runs entirely on your device. Nothing you listen to leaves it. Listening keeps going with the screen locked, and it moves your place as it reads, so you can switch between reading and listening at any point.

Start Listening

• In the reader: choose Listen (the headphones) in the toolbar, or press L. Bindle reads from your place, or from the top if you had finished.
• From a list or details: choose Listen from a link's menu, swipe right on it, use Listen in its details, or press L. The player opens straight away; you do not need to open the article.

Listen is offered for any link that has an offline copy, or can get one. If the copy is not on this device yet, the player says what it is waiting for ("Getting the copy from" one of your devices, "Downloading the article", or "Starting the voice"). If the download fails, it says "Couldn't download the article", with Retry and Close.

Starting Listen stops hands-free scrolling and Speed Read, and pauses a video. Press L again to pause and resume.

While Bindle reads, tap any paragraph to read from there.

The Listen Bar

In the reader, a slim bar sits under the article while Bindle reads:

Like the scroll bar, it stays when the other bars hide and shrinks itself a few seconds after you start or last touch it. In Minimal Mode it starts as the pill. With VoiceOver, the position line also steps by sentence and paragraph.

When you put the reader away, listening carries on, and the reader bar shows Play or Pause. Tap its title or swipe it up while listening to open the player.

The Player

The player is a full Now Playing screen for the article being read.

• iPhone: It fills the screen, rising from the bottom. The chevron or a swipe down puts it away.
• iPad: Mac: It is a card over the window. Close it with the X, a tap outside, or Escape. Full Screen grows it to fill the window, and Exit Full Screen returns it (Mac: Command-Control-F).

The article's picture fills the top, with the title and site over it. A book stands there instead, as it does on its shelf: turned so its pages show, worn as far as you have read, with the ribbon at your place and the seal when its audio is ready. It is never in its shrink wrap here, since you are listening to it. Under them are the position line with time gone, when you will finish at this speed ("ends about 9:42 PM"), and time left, then the controls:

Along the top are Close Player, AirPlay (iPhone and iPad), Up Next (when something is queued), Show Text, and Full Screen.

Show Text

Choose Show Text to see every sentence of the article, large, like song lyrics. The sentence being read is bright and glides into place as the voice moves on; the rest dim with distance. Tap a sentence to read from it. Scroll by hand and the list holds still for a few seconds before following the voice again. A book shows small beside the title. Choose Hide Text to go back to the picture.

Show Text and Full Screen are remembered on this device.

Each word of the sentence being read lights up as the voice gets to it. The timing is estimated from the listening pace, so it can run a little ahead of or behind a long sentence. With Reduce Motion on, the whole sentence lights up at once.

On a TV

iPhone and iPad: Choose AirPlay at the top of the player to play the voice on an AirPlay speaker or an Apple TV. An Apple TV shows its own Now Playing screen with the article's picture.

To see the player itself on the TV, turn on Screen Mirroring in Control Center. While Bindle is open, the TV shows the article's picture large, with its title and position, and the sentences beside it with each word lighting up as it is read. Your iPhone or iPad keeps its usual player and controls. While a Listen is on its way, the TV shows the article and what the player says, such as "Getting the copy from Mac". With nothing playing, the TV shows "Listen in Bindle to see it here". A book stands large on the left, as it does in the player.

At the End

When the voice reaches the end and nothing follows, the player says Finished and offers:

• Archive: archives the link and closes the reader.
• Close Player: listening is over. A reader opened only to listen goes too.
• Listen Again: reads from the start.

An archived link leads with Close instead. When something is queued in Up Next, listening moves on to it (see Up Next).

When moving on would also archive the article (with "Archive when finished" or "Articles: archive and go on by itself" on in Settings > Reading > Reader) and the player is showing, it counts down first. It says Finished and names what is up next, and Archive and Play Next fills across as the seconds run out ("Archive and Play Next in 5"), then archives the article and plays the next. Tap it to go on now, or tap Stay to keep the article and stop. "Go on after" in Settings > Reading > Reader sets the seconds.

While Driving

iPhone: Set Simple player in Settings > Listening > Driving to While Driving or Always, and the player shows six big buttons you can hit without looking closely:

The title, the time left, and the article's place in Up Next ("2 of 5") are above them. Full Player brings back speed, voice, the sleep timer, and the rest until you close the player. The Lock Screen and your car's controls work as before.

Always shows them every time you open the player. While Driving shows them only while your iPhone senses you are in a car, and the full player comes back once you've stopped for two minutes, so a red light doesn't switch it. When your iPhone senses a car while Bindle is reading aloud, the player comes up by itself with the big buttons. Leaving the car never puts the player away. Bindle reads motion only while it is reading aloud or the player is open, and it stays on your iPhone.

Speed, Voice, and Sleep Timer

The speed changes the pace without changing the pitch. Bindle remembers your speed. The voice is chosen per language, so an English voice and a French voice can each be your choice.

While a sleep timer runs, the time left counts down. The timer stops at the end of a sentence.

The Voice menu ends with Get the Natural Voice... (before you have it) or Manage Voices..., both opening Voices.

Following Along

The sentence being read is highlighted in the page, and the page scrolls to keep it in view. Listening moves your place as it goes, so if you stop and open the reader on another device, it opens where the voice stopped. Footnotes and their little numbers are skipped. A saved PDF or picture follows along by page instead: the page being read comes into view. See Listen to a File.

The minutes left assume 180 words a minute at 1x, adjusted for your speed.

The Lock Screen and Now Playing

Listening carries on with the screen locked or Bindle in the background. The Lock Screen and Control Center show the article's title and picture. For a book they show the book standing on its cover's colors, as the player does, and it shows your progress as you listen. There:

• Play and Pause work as usual.
• The skip buttons step back or ahead a sentence; the track buttons step a paragraph.
• Drag the position line to move through the article.
• Choosing a speed picks the nearest of Bindle's speeds.

In a book, Now Playing names the chapter and the book.

Pairing devices by sound pauses Listen.

Voices

Open Voices from Settings > Listening > Voices, or from Manage Voices in the Voice menu. It shows the voices you have and lets you download better ones.

Natural Voice

Kokoro is a natural AI voice that runs entirely on your device. It reads English; other languages use your device's own voices.

Standard and Full Precision sound the same to most ears; Full Precision is a larger download. Downloads wait for Wi-Fi unless offline copies may use cellular data, and never run in Low Data Mode.

Natural Voices

Kokoro comes with many voices, American and British, each with a grade from Kokoro's own authors (Heart, graded A, leads the list). Tap a downloaded voice to read with it, preview one with its play button, and download or remove each one.

Try Supertonic

Supertonic is a second on-device voice to try beside Kokoro, built to use less power. It is experimental, and its makers have stopped updating it, so this version is the last. One download brings all ten of its voices, from Calm to Warm; tap one to read with it. Its voices then join the Voice menu, after Kokoro's. Supertonic's download is offered only here.

How Natural Voices Say Words

Kokoro and Supertonic use a list of words that are easy to get wrong: brand names like Macintosh and Porsche, names from the Bible and from well-known fiction, King James English, Latin and French phrases, and places spelled one way and said another. Supertonic also says read, live, wind, tear, and wound the way the sentence means them.

A second, larger list adds about 41,000 words from Wiktionary and Kokoro's own dictionary: names of people and places from around the world, and rare words. Kokoro learns words its dictionary lacks, such as Kierkegaard and Saoirse, and Supertonic learns names and rare words whose spelling would mislead it, such as Nicaragua and quinoa.

Common abbreviations are read in full: Ch. 3 is chapter 3, v. 16 is verse 16, pp. 23 ff. is pages 23 and following, cf. is compare, and St. is Saint before a name ("St. Paul") and Street after one ("Main St."). Mt. and Ft. before a name are Mount and Fort.

The words on screen stay as written; only what you hear changes. Audio made ahead is made again only for sentences with a word whose pronunciation changed.

Fix a Word

When a natural voice says a word wrong, fix it yourself. Your fix is used on all your devices, ahead of every list.

• In the reader: select the word and tap the speaker in the bar over the page. Select several words to choose among them.
• While listening: open the Voice menu and choose Fix a Word in This Sentence, then tap the word.
• In Settings: go to Listening, then Pronunciations, and tap Add Word.

Bindle shows the ways it knows to say the word: your fix, Bindle's lists, the dictionary, and a guess from the spelling. The way it is read now is marked. Tap one to hear it in the voice you listen with, then tap Use This Reading. If none is right, tap Something Else and spell it the way it sounds, with syllables joined by hyphens and the loud one in capitals: mel-KIZ-uh-dek. Advanced shows the sounds Kokoro reads, for fine-tuning.

To go back to how the voices said it before, open the word again and tap Remove My Fix, or swipe it away in Pronunciations. Pronunciations lists your fixes by letter, each with its spelling and a button to hear it.

System Voices

Your device's own voices, best first. Tap one to read with it. Premium and Enhanced voices sound better than Standard ones; download them in the Settings app under Accessibility, Spoken Content, Voices.

Removing Voices

At the bottom, On This Device shows how much space the voices use. Remove Kokoro and Remove Supertonic delete them from this device; Listen then uses the system's voices until you download one again. Voices never sync.

Up Next Audio shows the space taken by sentences the natural voice read ahead while charging, and Remove Up Next Audio deletes them. See Up Next Audio.

Book Audio shows the space taken by books' audio, and Delete All Book Audio deletes it. Saved Audio lists each book and article with its audio. See See and Delete Saved Audio. Above it, Book Audio has Prepare audio for every book and the space book audio may use. See Prepare a Book's Audio and Automatic Book Audio.

The Natural Voice Offer

The first time you listen to an English article in the reader without the natural voice, Bindle asks once: "A natural voice is available", with Download and Not Now. You can download it later from Voices.

If you choose Download, a note says it started, and the capsule at the bottom of the library shows how far along it is. It keeps going if you close the reader. A note says "Natural voice ready" when it's done, or why it couldn't finish.

If the natural voice stops working while it reads, Bindle reads on with the system's voice and says so once: "Reading with the system voice". A page with no text to read says "Nothing to read aloud".

Prepare an Article's Audio

With a natural voice, the player works out the sound of each sentence as it plays, and that uses battery. You can have an article's audio made ahead and kept, so listening to it later plays what was made.

• Prepare Audio. Choose Prepare Audio from an article's or saved file's menu: in the library (under More on iPhone and iPad), in its details, or in the reader's More menu. Bindle makes all of its audio right away, even on battery, because you asked, and keeps it until you choose Remove Audio. While it works, the menu offers Stop Preparing Audio with how far along it is. Article audio, in Settings > Listening > Audio ahead of time, can keep it to the charger instead. See Audio Ahead of Time.
• As you listen. When you start listening to an article, Bindle makes the rest of its audio ahead of the voice, a little at a time so the voice never waits, and keeps it until you archive the article. Listening to it again plays what was made. Save audio while listening, in Voices, turns this off.
• Prepare Audio needs a natural voice and an offline copy of the article; until then the menu says what's missing.
• The article's row shows the same ring and waveform as Up Next audio. In the grid, a waveform joins the star at the corner once all of it is ready. See Up Next Audio.
• On iPhone and iPad with iOS 26, Prepare Audio keeps going after you leave Bindle, with its progress shown by the system.
• It is made for your voice and speed, and shares the 500 MB that Up Next audio uses. Voices, Storage shows the space as Article Audio.

The audio stays on the device it was made on. It never syncs.

See and Delete Saved Audio

Saved Audio lists every article and book with natural-voice audio on this device. Open it from Settings > Listening > Saved Audio, which shows the space it all takes. It's also at the top of Storage in Voices.

• Articles and books each have their own section, with the space each takes beside its name.
• Each row says why the audio is kept: Asked for (you chose Prepare Audio), Up Next, Saved while listening, or Automatic. When space runs short, audio saved while listening goes first, then Up Next's, then what you asked for.
• It also says how far along it is: Ready, Preparing with a percent, waiting with the reason (such as Waiting to charge), Stopped, how much is made, or In another voice when you have since chosen a different voice. The ring or waveform on the right matches the one in the library.
• Swipe a row, or right-click or touch and hold it, to Delete its audio. While audio is being made, Stop keeps what is made so far; Resume carries on.
• The trash button at the top offers Delete All Article Audio and Delete All Book Audio. It asks first.
• Tap a row to open the article or book.

Deleting an Up Next article's audio frees the space for now; Bindle makes it again while the article stays in Up Next.

Books and Up Next

In a book, Listen reads on from one chapter into the next. With links queued in Up Next, listening moves on to the next one when an article ends (see Up Next).

Both go on with the screen locked. While you listen with Bindle open, it reads ahead the text of the book's next chapters, or of the next few articles in Up Next, so it has the words when the screen is locked. If you lock the screen right after starting, before that text is read, listening may stop at the end of the chapter or article until you open Bindle again. With the screen locked, the end card's countdown is skipped and listening goes on at once.