VoicePep.

iPhone Shortcuts that read aloud.

One tap. Any text becomes speech in a real human-sounding voice. Read articles while you walk. Have your notes read back to you in the car. Cast selected text to your AirPods with a hotkey. Setup takes ninety seconds.

Start free → Build the Shortcut

Build the Shortcut, three steps.

  1. Open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone. Tap the plus icon to make a new Shortcut. Name it "Read Aloud" (or whatever you like).
  2. Add a Get Contents of URL action. Set the URL to https://api.voicepep.com/v1/audio/speech. Set method to POST. Add headers Authorization: Bearer vp_live_YOUR_KEY and Content-Type: application/json. Set the request body to JSON with these fields: model: standard, voice: am_michael, input: the Shortcut input (or Ask Each Time to prompt).
  3. Add a Play Audio action right below. The MP3 that comes back from step 2 plays through your speaker or AirPods immediately.

Exact JSON payload for the "Get Contents of URL" body:

{
  "model": "standard",
  "voice": "am_michael",
  "input": "Shortcut Input"
}

(Replace "Shortcut Input" with the variable magic — tap the field, tap the variables icon, pick "Shortcut Input" so it reads whatever text you invoke the Shortcut on.)

The iOS Shortcuts gotcha: when you add the JSON body, iOS wants you to specify File as the response type, not Automatic — otherwise it tries to parse the returned audio bytes as text and the Shortcut errors out. Set "Get Contents of URL" → "Response" → "File" and you're set.

What you can do with it.

◆ Read the article

Share sheet → Read Aloud. Highlight any text in Safari, Chrome, News, RSS reader, tap Share, run the Shortcut. It reads the whole thing in a warm voice through your AirPods. No more squinting at a screen while walking.

◆ Read a note

Add Read Aloud to your Notes app share sheet. Any note becomes an audio walk. Great for reviewing meeting notes on the drive home.

◆ Read what's on the clipboard

Configure the Shortcut to grab the clipboard instead of Shortcut input. Now any text you copy from anywhere becomes an audio play with one tap.

◆ Home Screen widget

Long-press home screen → add Shortcut widget → pick your Read Aloud. One tap from home screen reads whatever's currently on clipboard. Feels like magic once you use it once.

◆ Siri-triggered

Enable "Hey Siri, read this" — Siri passes the current context to the Shortcut. Reads emails, articles, whatever's active.

Twelve voices to choose from.

The voice field in the JSON body picks who reads to you:

Duplicate the Shortcut and change the voice field to have "Read in George" and "Read in Michael" as separate one-tap actions. It's the same underlying API call, different voice ID.

The math, if you're wondering.

Reading a typical 1,500-word article uses about 8,000 characters. On the free tier (5,000 chars/month) you get roughly half an article a day. On Walk ($9/mo, 100k chars) you get about 12 full articles a day. On Creator ($23/mo, 1,000,000 chars) you're basically unlimited for personal use.

Common questions.

Does this work on iPad and Mac?

Yes — Shortcuts syncs across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. Build the Shortcut once, it runs on all three.

Can I run it offline?

No — VoicePep is a hosted API, requires internet. If you want the voice engine on your own Mac with no internet dependency, that's ReadPep, our companion Mac app.

What if I'm on cellular and worried about data?

Each request downloads roughly 200KB per minute of audio spoken. A full article download is under 2MB. Basically negligible on any modern cell plan.

What next.

Grab a free API key on the pricing page (5,000 characters/month, no credit card, no expiry), build the Shortcut in ninety seconds, add it to your Share sheet. First time you're walking to the mailbox and your phone reads you the article you'd been meaning to get through, you'll get it.

Start freeFull API docs →