The app is very useful, making it convenient to technically turn every text into an audiobook, the practice of which I am a great fan of. Combined with the app layout and text highlighting, the controls of the voice reading speed, pitch and additional break between sentences make it convenient to follow the text reading flow. The only thing I am personally missing is something similar to the Speech setting in macOS VoiceOver with which you could specify the pronunciation of individual words. it would be marvellous if you added this type of feature. Just like in the case of the Speech setting of VoiceOver, the custom pronunciation could be determined by specifying the spelling that would reflect the desired pronunciation most (as implementing this feature on this basis seems to be the easiest way to do it), or, if possible, the custom pronunciation could be based on either the IPA, SAMPA or X-SAMPA symbols. Such custom pronunciation could be global for all the voices belonging to the particular languages, it could be attributed to all the voices, which belong to the particular languages, of a particular voice provider, or it could be set as per individual voices. Realizing that implementing this type of feature would mean some effort on your end, you could add it as an additional in-app purchase. I am sure that many users would appreciate it, and this way your app would not only gain more popularity and higher rates, but also the effort related to it that you made would put off.

One of the best text to speech apps I've used. My favorite feature is the little bar that follows the text (helps so much with concentration). My only complaints are 1) limited options for speech rate (1.5x,2x,3x etc instead of words per minute) and 2) doesn't allow you to copy and paste from the window to take notes in another app. I also wish the playback was a bit more exact. Instead of jumping to the next paragraph I wish it would have an option to replay the last sentence, or even let you click on a point in the paragraph for it to start at, rather than having to start the whole paragraph over.

I'm an IT pro (All Apple since 1982) and for the past 3 decades a novelist as well. On my previous MBP I used GhostReader Plus with high quality voices from Acapela Group. Unfortunately, that program is discontinued and the version I have does not work properly in Ventura. My question/complaint/issue is that GhostRead Pro understood the rules of punctuation, Speech Central: Text to Speech (S.C.T.S) has some issues in that area. Comma’s seem to have a bit of a pause so I think they’re passably OK. Periods, Question Marks & Exclamation Points, not so much. Periods represent a full stop: That is, a pause typically equal to the length of a full breath or a silent count of one or two. When reading aloud, that pause signals the end of a sentence. Unfortunately, S.C.T.S blows through periods faster than a teenager on a back county road.For timing, Question Marks should have a pause similar to a period. Additionally, a rise in intonation indicates to the listener that a question has been asked.Like periods, Exclamation points also indicate a pause in the reading and are sometimes accompanied by a change in tone to convey excitement or emphasis.Not having these vocal cues can, and in a longer reading will, result in confusion for the listener. Listening is, after all, the reason for text to speech in the first place.Other than those issues, the program seems pretty solid. If they get resolved, it’s a solid 5 stars in my book.

I had several bugs upon the update, and I did email the developer, but they did not receive it. This program got me through undergrad and grad school. In the interim, most of these functions have actually started working just fine. I would say that the vast majority of things are better than the previous version. One issue I’m still having is bookmarks. I am making sure my documents have proper headings, but, there are no bookmarks coming through in the software. I am also having some trouble with some very large files. However, it’s very convenient that when I add more files, the app goes directly into the previous location that I had received the last file from. Overall it is excellent and I have many friends and family using it on my request.