Read and listen at the same time
Tap Listen on a PDF, article, or EPUB. Words highlight as they are spoken. Click any word to jump.
Attention has a blind spot. When two things appear one right after the other, the brain often misses the second one, and researchers call that half-second gap the attentional blink.
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Why most text-to-speech doesn't work
The problem isn't that you need audio.
It's that the voice leaves the page.
You leave the page
Most text-to-speech dumps you into a separate player. The document you were reading is gone.
You lose the sentence
Audio without a highlight means your eyes have nothing to follow. You hear words and still have to hunt.
It sounds like a GPS
Flat, robotic voices make long papers feel longer. You stop listening after a page.
Papers sound like gibberish
Equations, Greek letters, and citations get read as symbols and leftover LaTeX. The voice never learned the paper.
English-only voices
The paper is in Spanish or Hindi and the reader still only offers English. You translate in your head, or you skip it.
Listen stays on the page with you.
Follow-along highlighting, natural voices, 39 languages, and notation spoken as words.
Follow-along highlighting
Words highlight as they are spoken, pixel by pixel. Click any word to jump the voice there.
Expressive voices
Natural Chirp 3 HD voices with pacing and emotion - not a GPS reading your paper.
39 languages
The same follow-along in every locale, with regional voices for British, Indian, Brazilian, and Canadian readers.
Technical terms, spoken
ω becomes omega, R² becomes R squared, ≤ becomes less than or equal to. Citations are skipped, not counted.
Then keep reading with the rest of Nook.
Listen sits next to autopace, chunking, fonts, and themes - same view, same file.
Autopace
Moves text at your rhythm so your eyes always have a guide to follow.
Bionic reading guides the eye through text.
Bionic Text
Highlights word beginnings to help your brain recognize words faster.
Large walls of text are hard to track and easy to lose focus on. When you face a dense block of information, your brain naturally feels overwhelmed before you even begin reading.
Breaking content into bite-sized chunks improves comprehension significantly. By focusing on one piece at a time, you reduce cognitive load and absorb information more effectively.
Your brain processes information faster when it's not overwhelmed. This method keeps your momentum going, preventing the urge to skim or skip important details.
Chunking (Paragraphs)
Breaks long content into manageable paragraphs so you never feel overwhelmed.
One line at a time
keeps your focus
sharp and clear.
Chunking (Lines)
Focus on just one line at a time to prevent line-skipping and regression.
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Specialized Fonts
Choose from 7 specialized fonts including OpenDyslexic, Atkinson Hyperlegible, and Lexend.
Relax your eyes
Calm Backgrounds
Choose from 8 calm backgrounds including sepia, dark mode, and mint to reduce eye strain.
From our
community on
Here's what other users had to say about Nook.
AutoPace is a game-changer. I no longer lose my place while reading, and I've actually finished three books this month!”
Read anywhere, on any device.
Nook works right in your browser. Your reading progress syncs automatically between your phone, tablet, and laptop.
Desktop
Perfect for deep work on your laptop or external monitor.
Tablet
The ideal form factor for long reading sessions on the couch.
Phone
Pick up right where you left off when you're on the go.
Listen runs in the Nook web app on any device. Autopace, chunking, fonts, and themes also run in the Chrome extension on any page you open.
What changes when reading finally works
The struggles that disappear.
Read 2x faster
Visual guides keep your momentum high. You finish articles while others are still scrolling.
Stop re-reading
Autopace pulls you forward. No more getting stuck and reading the same line three times.
Better comprehension
Information stays in your brain because you're processing it in chunks, not walls of text.
Finish what you start
Seeing your progress hit 100% is addictive. You'll actually finish the books you start.
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Your brain, your rules
Adjust fonts, colors, speed, and spacing to match your unique brain.
Zero distractions
Ads and clutter kill focus. We stripped out everything that pulls you away.
Wondering how Nook stacks up?
Listen vs the audio apps people compare it to.
Questions about Listen
Listen reads your PDF, article, or EPUB aloud while the words highlight on the page. Click any word to jump. It is included with Nook - not a separate add-on.
Nook Listen keeps you in the document: natural voices with word-level follow-along highlighting, OCR for scans, and 39 languages, plus autopace, chunking, and reading fonts on the same plan at $5/month or $39/year. Speechify is an audio player built around celebrity voices and 5× playback, at $29/month or about $139/year for the audio layer alone.
Yes. Scanned PDFs and photos of pages are processed in the web app so you can Listen to them. Import the file, then tap Listen.
Listen runs in the Nook web app, which works on any device without a download. Extension Listen arrives in a later release. Autopace, chunking, fonts, and themes already run in the extension on any page.
Yes. Pick a natural voice and a speed between 0.75× and 2×. Click any word to start from there.
Listen reads 39 languages across 46 locales, including Arabic, Bangla, Cantonese, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese. Regional variants such as British, Australian, and Indian English, Brazilian and European Portuguese, and Canadian French each have their own voices. Follow-along highlighting works the same in every one.
Yes. Listen turns notation into words before it speaks, so ω becomes omega, R² becomes R squared, ≤ becomes less than or equal to, 120 °C becomes 120 degrees Celsius, and a LaTeX fraction becomes a over b. Superscript footnote markers and bracketed citations such as [12] are skipped instead of read out as numbers, and unfamiliar initialisms are spelled letter by letter - TGA becomes T G A - while real acronyms like NASA are left alone. In non-English voices, digits are spelled in that language, so a Spanish voice reads 2024 as dos mil veinticuatro rather than switching to English.
Yes. Import a PDF, EPUB, or web article. The same Listen control works on all of them, including scanned PDFs after OCR.
Yes. You get 7 days of full access to every feature, including Listen. No credit card required.