Turn AI-assisted reading notes into audio you can pick up later on your iPhone
ChatGPT can help organize your reading notes in minutes. Finding time to read the finished text is another matter. A few thousand words still need your attention, even when the hard work of organizing them is done.
I developed 「自听」MyListen, an iPhone text-to-speech app, for people who want to listen to writing they already have. You can turn notes, stories, or explainers into audio for a commute, a walk, or household chores. Here is a practical way to take a set of reading notes from text to something you can listen to and return to later.
Start with notes that make sense when spoken
Reading notes often contain tables, abbreviations, parentheses, and links. They can be easy to scan on a screen and surprisingly hard to follow aloud. A table tells you how two ideas compare at a glance; a voice needs to explain that relationship in sentences.
Before generating audio, turn comparisons into complete sentences, explain unfamiliar abbreviations, and keep reference links separate from the narration. Check names, dates, figures, and quotations against your original sources. An AI tool can help reorganize the material, but its rewrite still needs checking.
Here is a prompt you can adapt:
“Turn these reading notes into an explanation that is easy to follow by listening. Preserve the original meaning and important information. Do not add facts or invent quotations from the book. Convert tables into complete sentences and organize the text by topic. Put reference links in a separate section at the end. If something is uncertain in the source, keep that uncertainty clear.”
Read the result before using it. Text-to-speech reads what you give it; it does not establish whether the notes are accurate. Using an online AI service to prepare the text is also a separate step from generating speech locally on your phone.
Bring the text into 「自听」MyListen
Paste the finished text into the app, or import a TXT or Markdown file. Choose a voice and start generation. After a short wait, you can begin listening while the rest of the audio is being generated.
Try a short opening passage first. Listening can reveal sentences that run too long, headings that interrupt the explanation, or abbreviations that need spelling out. A small edit at this stage can make a longer piece much easier to follow.
「自听」MyListen includes English and Chinese voices, with the speech models installed as part of the app. Speech is generated on your iPhone without sending the text to a cloud text-to-speech service, so you can generate audio from text you already have while offline. Generation time depends on your device, the length of the text, and its content.
Make room for listening in your day
Generated episodes stay on your device. The app supports playback with the screen locked, remembers your listening position, and offers adjustable playback speed and a sleep timer. You can listen to part of a set of notes on one journey and pick up where you left off later. Completed audio can also be exported as M4A files.
When an idea deserves more attention, return to the original notes and mark it. Audio gives the text another place in your day; the written version remains useful for checking details and following references.
Some material works better on a screen. Complex diagrams, code, formulas, and passages that depend on precise figures may need the original in front of you. You do not have to turn every part of a document into narration.
A few things to check before choosing a tool
Start with the files you have. 「自听」MyListen accepts pasted text, TXT, and Markdown. It does not directly import PDF or EPUB files, read text from images, or extract articles from web pages.
Consider where you want the text processed. Speech generation happens locally on the iPhone, but any online service you use to prepare the notes handles that earlier step separately.
Listen to the voice samples on the product website. Voice preference is personal, and hearing an example is more useful than relying on a feature list alone.
「自听」MyListen has no subscription, ads, or in-app purchases, and it does not require an account. No subscription does not mean the app is a free download.
If you already have reading notes or an explainer you want to revisit, start with that one piece. Make the wording comfortable to follow, generate the audio, and save it for a time when listening fits better than reading.
Disclosure: I am the developer of 「自听」MyListen. This article was prepared with AI assistance and describes features documented in the current official product information; it is not an independent review.
Try the free listening draft checker for long paragraphs, links and tables. Checks run locally in your browser without uploading your text.