How Narrator works
Learn what Narrator can read, where each voice runs, and what Epilude keeps in your narration library.
Narrator turns written text into audio on your Mac. Start with selected text, a document, a web page, copied text, or an image, then listen in the voice and speed you choose.
What Narrator can read
Narrator reads text from inside Epilude or from the app already in front of you. Select text in any Mac app and press ⌥⌘N, or open Narrator → New narration to choose a source.
The source picker accepts:
- PDF, EPUB, DOCX, TXT, Markdown, HTML, and RTF files, including scanned PDFs
- Public web pages, including the page in front of you when nothing is selected
- Text you type or copy
- Images and screen captures with readable text
Narrator extracts the words before it starts playback. Images, screen captures, and scanned PDF pages use text recognition on your Mac.
What goes into your library
Files, links, typed text, and images become entries in your narration library. Each entry keeps its title, text, source, and listening progress on your Mac for as long as it is in your library, so you can stop and continue later from Continue listening.
Text you read with ⌥⌘N, the selection panel, Services → Narrate with Epilude, or Narrate clipboard becomes a library entry too, so you can resume or share it later. So does a page you read with ⌥⌘N, and text you add to Up Next with ⌥⇧⌘N or Services → Add to Up Next in Epilude. Reading the same text again straight away uses the same entry instead of adding another.
A meeting note or a dictation you narrate becomes an entry with a Notetaker or Dictation badge. It is a copy of the text: deleting the note or the dictation doesn't delete it.
A web page's entry keeps the address it came from. A pasted link keeps the address you entered, without anything after a # and without any user name or password in it, and a page read with ⌥⌘N keeps only the part of its address before any ?.
PDF, EPUB, Word, RTF, HTML, and Markdown files and web pages keep their headings and paragraphs; plain text comes in as paragraphs. A document with at least two headings also gets chapters: jump to one from the player's or the document's More menu, or pause at the end of one with the sleep timer. An EPUB book takes its chapters from its table of contents.
An EPUB book or a PDF you add shows a cover in the grid view of All narrations: the book's own cover, or the PDF's first page.
What Narrator leaves out
Narrator skips text that is rarely worth hearing. Each kind has its own switch on the Reading card in Settings → Narrator, and the switches work with every voice.
| Switch | What it leaves out | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Skip headers and footers | A PDF's running headers, footers, and page numbers | On |
| Skip footnotes | A PDF's footnotes | On |
| Skip reference lists | The reference list at the end of a PDF | On |
| Skip citations | Reference numbers such as [12] and author-year citations such as (Smith, 2020) | On |
| Skip web addresses | Addresses such as https://example.com | Off |
| Skip code blocks | Code between two lines of three backticks, in a Markdown or text file or in text you paste, type, or select | On |
| Skip asides in brackets | Text in round brackets, such as asides, list labels like (a), and short alternatives like (or two) | Off |
Footnotes and reference lists stay in the document. While Narrator reads, they show dimmed in the floating player and in the playing row under Recent narrations, and the highlight moves past them. A change to either switch applies the next time a narration starts. Skip headers and footers works as a PDF comes in, so it applies to PDFs you add after you change it.
With Skip web addresses off, Narrator reads an address as its site name, such as epilude.com. A link's own words are read either way. Skip asides in brackets still reads a bracketed not, brackets inside a word such as user(s), and brackets that hold a whole sentence or a long passage.
Footnotes, reference lists, headers and footers, and the code blocks in a Markdown file are left out in every language. Citations, web addresses, asides in brackets, and code blocks in a text file or in text you paste, type, or select are left out when the text is in English, German, Swedish, Spanish, French, Italian, or Portuguese; in other languages, a cloud voice reads the text as written.
Where the voice runs
Narrator offers two kinds of voice. The EP-1 voice runs on your Mac. Cloud voices send the narration text to Epilude to make the audio and need an internet connection. New installs start with a cloud voice; Pay Once, which has no cloud voices, starts with the EP-1 voice.
The EP-1 voice has no listening limit once its voice files are downloaded. Cloud voices use the cloud voice minutes included with your trial or Pro plan.
What leaves your Mac
Text read by the EP-1 voice stays on your Mac during playback. Text read by a cloud voice is sent to Epilude for speech generation.
With the EP-1 voice, a web page is loaded and read by your Mac, and its address stays there. With a cloud voice, a link you paste goes to Epilude's server, which loads the page for you and so receives its address, unless it points to your own network: those links are read on your Mac.
A page you read with ⌥⌘N is loaded by your Mac first, with either voice. With a cloud voice, Epilude's server receives its address only when your Mac couldn't load the page, such as when a site blocks it. Even then, an address that contains a ? (where a site can put search terms or a sign-in token), or that points to your own network (such as localhost, a .local name, or an address starting with 192.168.), never goes to the server.
Narrator never sends or keeps the part of an address after a #, or a user name and password written into it. When a narration of a web page is shared or kept on the web, its page there names only the site it came from, such as example.com, not the full address.
Adding an EPUB book loads nothing from the internet, even when the book points to online images or fonts.
Putting a narration on the web is a separate action. Share and Keep on the Web upload the narration text and audio only after you choose them. Narrator explains this before the first upload. Learn how to share a narration and control who can open it.
Notes and dictations that stayed on your Mac
A meeting note or a dictation whose text stayed on your Mac is read with the EP-1 voice, even when your chosen voice is a cloud voice, so the text isn't sent to be read. Your chosen voice doesn't change: the next narration you start uses it again.
A meeting note stayed on your Mac when Notetaker transcribed it on your Mac, its notes were written on your Mac or it has none, and Epilude sent none of it to the cloud (to name the meeting, for example). With cloud notes, the transcript went to the cloud to write them, so neither the summary nor the transcript counts. A dictation stayed on your Mac when you made it with Dictation in Local mode.
When the EP-1 voice can't read the text, Narrator asks once for that narration: Read this with a cloud voice? That happens when the voice isn't downloaded, on an Intel Mac, or when no EP-1 voice reads the text's language. The question offers:
- Cancel, the default, starts nothing. A narration that was already playing carries on.
- Use EP-1 voice, on an Apple Silicon Mac with a voice for the language, downloads that voice and reads with it. For English, Epilude offers to download the EP-1 voice instead; choose Narrate again once it's installed.
- Use cloud voice reads with your cloud voice. That answer covers this narration from then on, so Narrate, Continue listening, Replay and Up Next read it with the cloud voice without asking again. Other notes and dictations still ask.
Choosing a cloud voice in the player while one of these narrations plays gives the same answer, and the player shows This note now reads with a cloud voice. In Up Next, a narration Narrator would ask about waits until you press Play, then asks.
Export Audio…, Share and Keep on the Web follow the same rule. The audio is made with the EP-1 voice when it's installed; otherwise Narrator asks, and Cancel makes no file and uploads nothing. If the EP-1 voice can't be set up, Narrator says This note stayed on your Mac. Install the EP-1 voice to export or share it. For a dictation, the message starts Epilude made this dictation on your Mac. Sharing a note or keeping it on the web still uploads its text and audio, as it does for any narration. Automatically keep cloud narrations on the web never uploads a meeting note or a dictation.
What Narrator needs
Reading selected text from another app, or the web page in front of you, needs Accessibility permission. Grant it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.
Cloud voices, web-page imports, and narration links need an internet connection. The EP-1 voice needs an Apple Silicon Mac and a one-time download; on an Intel Mac, Narrator reads with cloud voices.