A local-first iOS reader · built by a teacher
Timber reads any article, book, PDF, or pasted text aloud, in natural voices that live on your iPhone. A teacher built it after watching a student struggle to read a page. No account, nothing to buy to start — and not one word of it sent to us.
Timber reads any article, book, PDF, or pasted text aloud in natural voices on your iPhone. No account, nothing to buy — and not one word sent to us.
† For iOS 18 and later
Fig. 02 · The collector, on your Mac
✶ Timber Tabs · free for Mac
Timber Tabs gathers the pile of tabs you keep meaning to read, groups them by site, and pre-selects the ones that actually read like articles. Keep what you want, then send the list to your iPhone — or save a portable .timberlist file you can put anywhere.
† … and every other Chromium browser — the extension installs in all of them. Read straight from the browser on your Mac, or through the Timber Tabs extension; Firefox always needs the extension.
Your tabs are sorted on your Mac. Timber Tabs reads their titles and addresses — never the pages — and never contacts a server of ours.
Hear the voices
Five voices · four engines · provenance
“Timber reads it out loud, and follows along while it does.”
“Timber reads it out loud, and follows along while it does.”
“Timber reads it out loud, and follows along while it does.”
“There I was, a teacher visiting a classroom.”
“Then pick a voice. Hundreds and hundreds of voices, free.”
† Every one of these is a free voice, rendered by Timber itself — Piper, Kokoro, Pocket and Supertonic. The first three read the same sentence, so the only thing changing is the voice. They run on the phone: once downloaded, no network hears them.
A note from the classroom
“A young child asked me about the news — then struggled to read the article we pulled up. So I built the app I always wanted: the best free vocal reader for iOS.”
† A teacher · California
What we promised ourselves
The reader
Press play and Timber reads to you — lighting up each word as it speaks, so your eyes and ears stay in step. Switch voices whenever you like, dim the page for night reading, and let it run hands-free. It all happens on the device, so it keeps reading with no connection at all.
Fig. 01 · The reading surface
The libraries
For each language, every neural library gives you one free male voice and one free female voice — no charge, no account. Apple's own voices and any voice you record yourself are always free. The wider catalogue is there if you ever want it.
Every engine runs on the device — no cloud.
Paste a link, share from Safari or Files, open a PDF, or browse free books from Project Gutenberg. Timber pulls the whole article — clean text, not half a page of clutter.
Start with the 324+ free voices across 71 languages. Hear any of them first, then download the one that fits — it lives on your phone and keeps working offline.
Words light up as they are spoken. Switch the voice, dim the screen, and turn on dyslexia-friendly type. The reader is built for the long haul — and it keeps your place when you put it down.
Speech-out, for dictating and reading in turn, is on the way. When it ships, it follows the same rule as everything else: it stays on your device.
A look inside
Everything below is a capture of the shipping app on an iPhone — the same build that is on the App Store today.
Privacy
Your reading content and your clipboard are processed on the phone, and never sent to us — not for ads, not for analytics, not ever. Here is what we promise, in plain words.
Accessibility
Timber began as an accessibility tool, so reading-first features are not an add-on. A full dyslexia mode, VoiceOver labelling throughout, Dynamic Type, reduced-motion and high-contrast support — built in, and free.
The deal
The core reader is complete on its own. Pro is for people who want to support the project and unlock the extras — never a wall in front of reading.
Everything on the left stays free, with or without this.
