Reading with your ears.
Being able to listen to what you read is a matter of accessibility, and accessibility tools should not ask for a card. Yappy does not ask for one, has no minute counter, and works on a plane.
01
Dyslexia
Decoding letter by letter is tiring, and tiredness eats comprehension long before it eats time. Hearing the text while it lights up on screen lets you read and listen at once: your eyes follow the line, your ears do the heavy lifting. Yappy fixes nothing, but it takes the exhausting part out of the way.
02
ADHD
A silent page invites you to leave. A voice that keeps moving holds the pace and brings you back to the paragraph when your head has wandered off. And because you can listen while walking or with your hands busy, reading stops demanding that you sit still — for a lot of people, that is the whole difference.
03
Low vision and visual fatigue
When small print stops being an option, or when your eyes have already done a full day's work by seven in the evening, the text is still there through your ears. Yappy reads the whole PDF, email or article, with the screen off if you like, from the lock screen or your headphones.
04
Learning a language
Listening and reading at the same time is the oldest and most effective way to learn to pronounce. All ten voices are polyglot and read the 31 languages by their own rules, so a German text sounds German, not German with an English accent. At 0.75× you catch every syllable; at 1.5×, you train your ear.
05
Proofreading your own writing
A sentence you cannot say out loud does not hold up in writing either. Hearing your own text exposes the repetitions, the misplaced commas and the parentheticals that never close. It is what proofreaders did in print shops, and here it costs nothing: open the .docx, press play, and listen to what you actually wrote rather than what you thought you wrote.
06
Studying with your ears
The course notes, the chapter that is on the exam, the two-hundred-page paper. Send them to the press overnight and by morning they are an audiobook with chapters for the bus. Resume remembers the exact paragraph, so coming back costs no searching.
Yappy does not replace VoiceOver
They are cousin tools with different trades. A screen reader narrates the interface so you can operate it; Yappy reads the content so you can enjoy it. They work together without getting in each other's way.
Frequently asked questions
Does it work with VoiceOver or TalkBack turned on?
Yes, and they do not fight. A screen reader narrates the interface so you can operate it; Yappy reads the content so you can enjoy it. You use both: VoiceOver takes you to the play button, and from there it is Yappy's voice reading the book.
Can I use it without looking at the screen?
Yes. On the iPhone there are Siri shortcuts (“Hey Siri, read my clipboard with Yappy”), the Action button, the lock-screen controls and the ones on your headphones. On the computer, three keyboard shortcuts read the selection, read the clipboard, or pause, with the app tucked away in the tray.
Can it read my course PDFs and the books I already own?
Any PDF, EPUB, Word or ODT you can open. If the PDF is a scan with no text, the desktop version runs it through a local OCR first; on the phone that is not there yet. Books with a store's DRM cannot be read anywhere, and that includes here.
What does it cost to use every day?
Nothing. There is no counter for minutes or characters, there are no ads and no account is needed. You can listen eight hours a day for years without paying a cent, and with no connection. The paid wind-up only adds the bottomless perch, the press and the bridge, and only on iPhone and iPad.