PDFs that still look like PDFs
Real pages rendered on screen so you can cite a page and a line, not a paragraph in a reflowed text blob.
Free · no account · no install
Get through the reading list with the reading list
Set readings, papers, chapters and articles, read out loud while the words are marked on screen, so listening and reading happen together instead of one replacing the other.
No account needed to start. Reading happens on your device.
For coursework
Built for the way set readings actually arrive.
Course reading turns up as PDFs, scanned chapters, EPUBs and links. Lumotext takes all of them: drop a PDF in and it reads the real pages, with figures, tables and page numbers where the author left them, and the highlight drawn on top, which matters when the citation you need is a specific line on a specific page.
It is free, with no character quota, because the speech is produced by the voices already installed on the computer rather than rented from a server. That also means a paper you have not published, or a document your department would rather stay internal, is never uploaded anywhere to be read.
Practical things: the reading position is kept per document, so a fifty-page chapter survives being closed; clicking a sentence restarts the voice there, which is how you re-read a dense paragraph; and the speed control runs fast enough to be useful on a second pass. If reading is hard rather than just long, the dyslexia page covers the highlighting and typeface options in more detail.
Set readings keep their real pages, so you can still cite a page and a line.
For coursework
The parts that earn their keep in a term.
No quota, no card
Free and unmetered. Nothing to expense, nothing to ask a department for, nothing to install on a locked-down laptop.
Your place is kept
Close a chapter halfway and come back to it. With a free account, your library and position follow you between machines.
Re-read a line instantly
Click the sentence and it reads again from there. Skip a sentence at a time rather than fifteen seconds at a time.
Code and notation stay quiet
Code blocks are shown but not spoken, which makes technical material and documentation readable rather than maddening.
Nothing is uploaded
Unpublished work stays on your machine. The speech engine is the one already in your operating system.
FAQ
Student questions, answered.
Is it actually free, or free for a trial?
Free. There is no trial period and no character quota. An optional free account adds a synced library and a saved place per document.
Can I use it on a university or school laptop?
The web app runs in an ordinary browser with nothing to install, which is usually the deciding factor on a managed device.
Will it read a scanned chapter?
Only if the scan has a text layer, if you can select the text in a normal PDF viewer, Lumotext can read it. Image-only scans need optical character recognition, which is not built in yet.
Can I speed it up for revision?
Yes, well past normal speaking pace, and the word highlight stays in step so a fast second pass is still followable.
Does it work on my phone?
Not well. Mobile browsers cannot keep speech going in the background or with the screen locked. A native iOS app is being built for that; for now, a laptop or desktop browser is the way.
Start reading in the next minute.
Paste something in and press play. No email, no account. Sign in later if you want it saved.
Free to use. An optional free account syncs your library across devices.