Getting Started

The controls for text-to-speech are similar to those for listening to music. You can play and pause just as you would in any music player. The marker for speech is a highlighted word called the speech cursor. Voice Dream Reader remembers the location of the speech cursor so that when you open the article or book later, you can resume from where you left off.

Gesture Tip: Tapping the text area with two finger twice (double-finger double tap) does the same thing as the Play or Pause button. This gesture works with VoiceOver turned on or off.

By default, the rewind and fast forward buttons move the speech cursor backward or forward by 30 seconds. Instead of 30 seconds, you can change that to a sentence, paragraph, page, chapter, bookmark, highlight, 15, 30 or 60 seconds. These are called Navigation Units. The current Navigation Unit is shown at the bottom right in the footer. Tap it to change it to something else.

Gesture Tip: You can press the rewind or fast forward button and hold, the list of Navigation Units would appear. Select the unit, that does two things: it changes the current Navigation Unit to what you selected and then performs a rewind or fast forward in the new Navigation Unit.

Gesture Tip: Swiping left or right with two fingers does the same thing as the rewind and fast forward buttons.

Gesture Tip: Swiping up or down with two fingers increases or decreases speaking rate.

Gesture Tip: Some documents, like PDF files, can be viewed both in the original layout and as plain text. To switch between the views, swipe right with one finger from the left edge of the screen. Swipe left from the right edge also works.

Tap anywhere in the text box to enter full screen mode. Tapping again brings back the controls at the top and bottom. By default, the app enters full screen mode a few seconds after you press Play, but you can disable auto-full screen from Advanced Settings.

While listening, you can scroll to a different part of the text freely using the text box or the slider at the bottom. You can also tap on the percentage or page number in the footer at the bottom to go to a different part of the text. You can double tap (tapping twice in quick succession) on any word, and Voice Dream Reader will start reading from that word. To scroll back to the speech cursor, tap the screen with two fingers.

Many people prefer a distraction free screen without a lot of text. Voice Dream Reader is equipped with Focused Reading Mode. To activate, pinch the screen with two fingers, and the speech text area will be reduced to about a third of the screen in the middle. In addition, the text will be scrolled automatically so that the word and line being spoken is always in the middle. To bring back the full screen, un-pinch or expand the text area with two fingers.