RottenPDF
Text to speech with lyrics
Only for iPhone
Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPhone. Not verified for macOS.
iPhone
Your documents are read aloud on your iPhone and never leave it. No cloud, no account — and reading works in airplane mode.
RottenPDF reads your documents out loud and shows the words while it speaks them: the current sentence large and centred, each word lighting up exactly as it is pronounced, the lines around it dimmed. You follow with your ears and your eyes at once.
Reading and listening are free, paid for by ads. If you would rather not see them, RottenPDF Plus is an optional monthly subscription that removes them. No account to create.
YOUR DOCUMENTS STAY ON YOUR IPHONE
Your documents are never uploaded anywhere. They are opened, turned into speech and read aloud on the device, with the voices already installed on it. We run no server and no cloud, so there is nowhere for them to go. Reading works in airplane mode.
The app goes online for two things only: to download a web page when you paste its link, and to show ads.
ADS NEVER INTERRUPT THE READING
Ads are what pays for the app, and they stay out of the way: a banner at the bottom of the library and under the player controls, and now and then a full-screen ad before a document opens or after you have closed it. Never while something is being read to you. Ads are served by Google AdMob, and you decide whether they may be personalised.
WHAT IT DOES
• Opens PDF, DOCX, RTF and TXT files, from Files, Mail, or any app that can share a document
• Reads web pages too: paste a link and it reads the article
• Reads them aloud with the voices already installed on your device
• Karaoke subtitles: the word being spoken is highlighted in real time, with a scale pop and a saturated colour
• Speed from 0.5x to 3.0x with the pitch preserved — fast, without the chipmunk voice
• Tables, figures, code and formulas are read too, and shown in views built for them
• Picks up where you stopped, in every document
• Interface in twelve languages, and it reads in every language your device has a voice for
WHAT IT DOES NOT DO YET
Being straight about this is cheaper than a bad review:
• Scanned PDFs — pages that are only images — are not read yet. The app tells you the document is a scan instead of reading you nothing.
• EPUB is not supported yet.
• Playback stops when you leave the app. Background listening is next.
WHO IT IS FOR
Anyone who reads a lot and would rather listen. Students with a stack of course notes, anyone with a long report to get through, people who take text in faster by ear, and anyone who finds a wall of text easier to follow when the words move.
ROTTENPDF PLUS
An optional subscription that removes every ad — the banners and the full-screen ones — and changes nothing else: no feature is reserved for subscribers. It is billed monthly and renews automatically until you cancel. The price is shown in the app before you subscribe, and you can cancel at any time from your App Store account. Payment is handled by Apple: we never see your payment details.
NOTHING IS LOCKED
Every feature works without paying: no trial that expires, no feature behind a paywall, no account. The ads are what keeps it that way, and Plus is only for those who would rather pay than see them. RottenPDF itself collects nothing about you or your documents; the ad provider collects what its own policy describes, within the choices you make.
Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Privacy Policy: https://fedeinfe.github.io/rottenpdf-privacy/
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
Moving between the library and the reader is smoother: the banner at the bottom now stays put instead of reloading on every screen.
The developer, Federico Infelici, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Used to Track You
The following data may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies:
- Identifiers
Data Linked to You
The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:
- Purchases
- Location
- Identifiers
- Usage Data
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Diagnostics
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Federico Infelici
- Size
- 12.6 MB
- Category
- Productivity
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 18.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 18.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 15.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 2.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
English and 11 more
- English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Contains
Advertising
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- RottenPDF Plus $1.99
- Copyright
- © 2026 Federico Infelici
