The things we mean to read rarely arrive at a convenient time. A client sends a brief at 11pm. The report is forty pages. Three people recommend the same article. Your own draft has been open so long that you can no longer hear what is wrong with it.
We built Epilude so speaking could do the typing. Narrator reads text back to you in a voice you would choose to spend time with.
Today we're shipping Narrator. Select text in any Mac app and press ⌥⌘N. A small player appears, starts reading, and follows the words as it goes. You can listen at up to 3× speed and pick up where you stopped. For longer reading, bring in a PDF, a text or Markdown file, a web page, the clipboard, or even a picture of the words. Files, pages, and images live in your Narrator library with their listening progress.
Choose where the voice runs
The voice you choose determines where Narrator reads the text.
The EP-1 voice runs on your Mac. Download it once, about 95 MB for English, and there is no listening limit. It includes 28 English voices, plus one each for German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. The text stays on your Mac. EP-1 needs an Apple Silicon Mac.
Cloud voices give you a much larger catalogue to search and preview. They send the narration text to Epilude's cloud to make the audio and use minutes as they read. The trial comes with 5 minutes and Pro with 60 minutes each month. If those minutes run out, the player offers to carry on with EP-1 from the same word. Pay Once uses EP-1 and does not include cloud voices.
A new install starts with a cloud voice, except on Pay Once, which starts with EP-1. Once you make a choice in Settings → Narrator, Epilude remembers it. The Narrator page says where the current voice runs, so you can check before you press Play.
Start with whatever you are reading
If the text is already open in another app, select it and press ⌥⌘N. You can also choose Narrate with Epilude from the app's Services menu. The player floats over your work and highlights each word as it is read.
For a document, page, or picture, open Narrator in the sidebar. Drop in the file, paste the web address, or add the screenshot. Narrator pulls out the text and keeps the result in your library.
Playback does not have to begin at the top. Click a word to start there, or, in a Word, Markdown, or web document with headings, pick a chapter from its More menu. Close the player and come back tomorrow; Narrator remembers your place.
A lawyer can drop in a 30-page discovery response, click a word in the paragraph that matters, and let EP-1 read while the coffee brews. If a date sounds wrong, click the word before it and Narrator reads it again. The document stays on the Mac throughout.
For your own draft, set the speed to 1.5× and listen for the sentences that don't sound like you.
Reading preferences control code blocks, citations, and the pause between paragraphs. A technical document does not need the same rhythm as a novel.
Put a narration on the web
Choose Share and Narrator uploads that narration's text and audio, then gives you a link that plays in any browser. The words stay highlighted during playback. There is also a QR code when you want to open it on your phone. Every shared narration appears at app.epilude.com/narrations, where you can copy its link, make it private, or stop sharing it. Stop Sharing deletes its text and audio from Epilude's servers.
Putting a narration on the web always starts with your choice. You can share it, choose Keep on the Web, or turn on Automatically keep cloud narrations on the web. That last setting privately saves each cloud-voice narration when it finishes, ready for your phone without another trip through the Share sheet. It is off by default and never uploads anything read by EP-1.
Why on-device matters here
A voice that reads your documents hears everything you read. Contracts, medical letters, unreleased drafts, a competitor's term sheet. We did not want the private option to be the worse option, so the EP-1 voice is not a fallback. It is the voice with no limit, the one Pay Once uses, and the one we reach for ourselves when the document is not ours to share.
We spent time on the sound, too. EP-1 keeps the pauses at full stops and commas, reads numbers, dates, and units the way a person would, and follows the pace you set. It is the first on-device voice we were happy to listen to at length.
Listen in Epilude 1.1.0
Narrator ships in Epilude 1.1.0 on every plan. Open it from the sidebar, or select text anywhere and press ⌥⌘N. How Narrator works covers files, playback, and the library. Choose a Narrator voice compares EP-1 with the cloud catalogue.
If you write for a living, Narrator lets you speak a draft with dictation, then listen to it before you send it. And for anyone reading confidential work, including lawyers, EP-1 keeps the document on the Mac.
