vui for iPhone · beta
vui reads books, articles and PDFs to you in a natural voice, lighting each word as it goes. It all runs on your iPhone — nothing is uploaded, and it works offline.
Free during beta · iPhone with iOS 26+ · ~700 MB one-time voice download
Jane Austen · Chapter 1
Pride and Prejudice
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”
E→ audio
Open a book or a file, paste text, or share any page straight from Safari
0.5× speed
Anywhere from half speed to triple, with the pitch kept natural
0uploads
The voice runs on the iPhone GPU, so what you read never leaves the phone
§01 — Read
The articles in your tabs, the PDF from work, the book on the nightstand. Hand it to vui and listen on the walk, the commute, the washing-up.
01 / 04
Paste text, share a page or a selection from Safari, or open an EPUB or PDF. Articles come through as the article — not the menus and cookie banners around it.
In praise of slow reading
Slow reading is not about speed. It is about attention, staying with a sentence long enough to hear it.
share to
02 / 04
The sentence is tinted and the word lit as it is spoken, like fig. 1. Tap any word and vui reads on from there.
Herman Melville · Chapter 1
Moby-Dick
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
03 / 04
Stop halfway through a chapter and pick up mid-sentence. The library shows what you are in the middle of; swipe right when you finish.
Library
in progress
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville · EPUB
In praise of slow reading
longreads.example
Q3 board report
PDF · 14 pages
Moby-Dick picks up at 43%, mid-sentence.
04 / 04
Half speed to triple, and the voice keeps its pitch. West, reading fig. 1, is one of the voices in the library — sign in and pick yours.
1×
time ×1pitch unchanged
Half speed for a hard paragraph, triple for the parts you know. vui stretches time, not the voice: every word keeps its natural pitch, and the highlight keeps up with it, word for word, all the way down the page.
In praise of slow reading
Slow reading is not about speed. It is about attention, staying with a sentence long enough to hear it.
share to
§02 — Install the beta
About five minutes, most of it waiting on Apple’s email. Everything after the first step happens on your iPhone.
Request an invite
Give us your Apple ID email and Apple sends the TestFlight invite straight away.
Install TestFlight
Apple’s app for beta software, free on the App Store. Skip this if you have it.
Accept the invite
Open the email from TestFlight on your iPhone, tap View in TestFlight, then Accept.
Install vui
Tap Install in TestFlight. On first launch vui downloads its voice — about 700 MB, so use Wi‑Fi.
§03 — Talk
vui is a voice assistant too. Hold the mic and ask — it answers out loud, with web search, notes, a calculator, your calendar and memory. The language model runs on the phone as well, as a separate download.
§04 — Feedback
It’s a beta. If a number, a date or an abbreviation comes out strangely, or the highlight drifts from the voice, send a screenshot from TestFlight — it goes straight to the people who trained the model.