iPhone trick: Turn any book into an audio book with a simple swipe

Here’s a cool trick that you can use on your iPhone to turn any book into an audio book, with a simple swipe using the handy Speak Screen feature.

To enable Speak Screen, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Speech > Speak Screen and make sure it’s turned on.

Then, scroll down a bit further to Voices, and choose which voice you’d like to use, whether it’s an English speaker, or another language. Unfortunately, there is no Ryan Reynolds. However, there is Daniel, and he has a lovely British accent (though still sounds a bit computer generated).

Now that you have Speak Screen enabled, you can go into any app, like iBooks, or News, and then swipe down with two fingers (best if there’s a bit of space between them). The content on the page, whatever it may be, will now be read to you.

It’s not just a cheaper way to get an audio book (though admittedly, it might be worth the coin to hear Tina Fey read Bossypants rather than the robotic Samantha), but it’s a great way to have emails, memos, articles, pretty much anything read to you while you’re on the road, or any time you need to do a little multi-tasking.