How to listen to web novels with text to speech on iPhone

Web novels and fanfiction are long, serialized and published as web pages, one chapter at a time. That makes them awkward to listen to. Most text to speech apps want a file, and copying chapters into one by hand gets old by chapter three.

Narratorr has a web browser built in for exactly this. Here is how to set it up so chapters keep playing while you commute, cook or fall asleep.

Open the chapter in Narratorr's browser

Tap Browse to open the built-in browser. Search, or type an address as you would in Safari, and go to the first chapter you want to hear.

On a fanfic or web novel chapter, an article, a Wikipedia page or a blog post, tap the button that opens the page in Narratorr's reader. It only appears on pages Narratorr can read. Then tap play.

Already reading in Safari? Share the chapter's link to Narratorr from the share sheet and it opens in Browse, ready to read. If Narratorr isn't in the row of apps, tap More at the end of it.

The reader keeps the story and drops the rest. Chapters from AO3, Royal Road, Wattpad, ScribbleHub, FanFiction.net, Wuxiaworld, RandomTranslator and more are read without share buttons, comments or navigation. A built-in ad blocker removes ads, pop-ups and tracking scripts, and links to other apps only open when you tap them, so an ad can't bounce you out of the page.

The browser has the controls you'd expect, too: back and forward with history, Desktop Website or Mobile Website, text size per site, and Find on Page.

The support FAQ shows where the reader button is in the current version, under "How do I read web articles".

Let the next chapter play itself

This is what makes a web novel listenable. When a chapter ends, Narratorr moves to the next chapter and keeps reading, so an evening of chapters plays without you picking up the phone. The next chapter slides in without closing the reader.

To stop at a natural break, set the sleep timer to the end of the chapter. It works for web chapters as well as books. You can also set it by the minute.

You can line pages up yourself, too. From the browser's ⋯ menu, choose Play Next or Add to Up Next. When one item ends, the next starts by itself, even with the screen locked, and pages are saved with their text so they play offline. That makes Up Next a good way to queue a few chapters before a flight.

The home page lists what keeps playing in the background, including Up Next and CarPlay.

Pick a voice for long sessions

A long web novel can run to hundreds of chapters. At that length, cost and comfort matter more than anything else.

Offline AI is the one to start with. It runs natural AI voices on your iPhone, free with no time limit and without internet, and keeps reading with the screen locked. It needs an iPhone or iPad with an A15 or M1 chip or newer (iPhone 13 and later), and a one-time download of about 111 MB that covers all 7 languages.

Device voices are the voices built into iOS. They're free and unlimited too, and they work offline in dozens of languages.

Online AI has 45+ premium voices and goes up to 4x speed, against 2x for the other two. It needs a connection, and comes with 1 free hour, then $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year.

To switch, tap the waveform button at the left of the playback bar to open Speech Settings. There you can also set a pause between paragraphs, from none up to 3 seconds, if a voice runs paragraphs together.

Translated novels often mix languages. Narratorr reads English words inside Chinese text in English, and Chinese inside English in Chinese. If a page is in a different language from your voice, a small banner offers to switch. Mandarin is in Beta, and highlights a paragraph at a time rather than word by word.

What each engine costs is in the pricing section.

Teach it the character names

Web novels are full of words no voice has seen before: sect names, invented places, romanized Chinese, Korean and Japanese names. A voice that gets the main character's name wrong a hundred times a chapter will put you off the book.

Fix it once. In the reader, select the word, tap Pronounce, type how it should sound, and save. A preview button lets you hear it in your current voice before you save. Each entry can be case-sensitive or whole-word only, so a name that is also an ordinary word doesn't change the ordinary word.

The fix works on every voice, AI and built-in, and syncs across your devices through iCloud, so you only teach it once.

The pronunciation dictionary's history, and the rest of the app's, is in the changelog.

Pick up where you left off

Pages you read or listen to in the browser show up in Continue Reading in the Library, and reopen at the paragraph you left, even offline. The same pages appear in CarPlay and in the Continue Listening widget on your Home Screen and Lock Screen.

To keep a chapter for later, save the page to your library. And when a site offers the whole story as a file, take it: Download EPUB on AO3 puts the book straight into your library, where it plays like any other book, with chapters that follow its table of contents.

With iCloud Sync on, your books, saved pages, progress and bookmarks follow you between your iPhone and iPad. If you're also turning ebooks and PDFs into audio, the PDF and EPUB guide covers that side.

What it can't do

Narratorr reads what the page shows you. It doesn't get around paywalls: if a site needs you to sign in to read a chapter, sign in within Narratorr's browser first.

The reader button doesn't appear on pages Narratorr can't read, and a chapter posted as pictures rather than text has nothing to read aloud.

If a site you read often doesn't come out cleanly, email the address on the support page with a link to a chapter. Narratorr is free on the App Store, and Offline AI and device voices cost nothing however many chapters you listen to.