Read this to me!

Reads any text to you so you can do other things.

Description

Reads almost anything to you. Inputs include:

Share from Browsers: Brave, Chrome, Edge, Firefox
Share from Apple News (✨ new!)
Share from Google News
share from Microsoft News
Share from NY Times
Share from Washington Post
Clipboard
Selected text in any app

This Shortcut reads anything you feed to it so you can listen to an article from the Washington Post, a Facebook post, or any text hands free.

If this Shortcut doesn’t work as expected, you have suggestions, or an idea to improve it, let me know!

Privacy update. Note, there is now an option to disable using the Microsoft Translation Service if you feel that is too intrusive. Configure this when you install the Shortcut or change it at anytime.

This shortcut includes Embed-a-Update, so it requires no external shortcuts or resources like UpdateKit. Embed-a-Update is also very fast. Enjoy.

Note: This version isn't being tested anymore with iOS < 13.0. Upgrade older devices with caution. All that means is back up your shortcut first. :)

How to use the Shortcut

Selected text in any app

How to use: Select text > Choose Share > Read this to me!

The shortcut will:

Read the text to you.

From a web browser, Apple News...

How to use: Choose Share > Read this to me!

The shortcut will:

Automatically take the URL.
Fetch the article (not the whole web page).
Translate it for you using Microsoft translation service.
Estimate how long it will take to read the article to you.
After it reads it to you, you can opt to post the link to Facebook or bookmark on diigo.com.

You can also select part of a web page and Share from there to read just a portion of the web page.

From any selected text (email, text editor...)

How to use: Select text, choose Share > Shortcuts > Read this!

The shortcut will:

Examine the selected text. If it is a URL (if it is, see above, if not, the text itself is the target).
Translate it for you using Microsoft translation service.
Estimate how long it will take to read the article to you.

From clipboard

If you don’t provide a URL or select text, the shortcut will check the clipboard and see if it is a URL or text and follow the flows above. I use this for Facebook posts because Facebook doesn’t have an easy way to share the link to an article. You can easily copy it however.

Latest Release Notes

2.10.1 - July 31, 2020, 3:20 p.m.

Bugfix

Past versions

Feedback

@RicksCloud Member

Hi there. Works great from the safari share sheet. I’m trying to read urls from an RSS feed action into your your shortcut but getting the error “the operation couldn’t be completed com.apple.safariservices.readerExtractorErrorDomain error 2. Any ideas to remedy or does your shortcut always need to be triggered by the share sheet in safari
Reply · 9 months, 1 week ago

@Mbierman Author

Can you provide an example URL?
Reply · 9 months, 1 week ago

@RicksCloud Member

Here’s what I’m trying to do... https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/b72f55f76c5c4c83a67bf8786feff8d0
Reply · 9 months, 1 week ago

@Mbierman Author

So I’m still not sure what you goal is, but, there are definitely better ways to do it. ;) Is your goal to read the headlines from an RSS feed? Or an entire article? Or to get a list of headlines ad read a specified article?
Reply · 9 months, 1 week ago

@RicksCloud Member

Sorry I wasn't clear. What Im really trying to do is to find a shortcut that reads me the full body of articles from an RSS feed. Since ios13 the get body of article command has been unreliable for me. I know it in your shortcut as well, but it looks like you use a different implementation. I'll keep hacking around and thanks for this and your other shortcuts. BTW Im getting “the operation couldn’t be completed com.apple.safariservices.readerExtractorErrorDomain error 2" with CNN links.
Reply · 9 months, 1 week ago

@Mbierman Author

Here’s how I would do it. https://ibb.co/kJtDZHv Here’s a link, but I don’t y know if I will keep it around permanently. https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d9b08316910c4515a3507a9affd79829 Note there was a more elegant method but when I tried it Shortcuts crashed. I believe that is a bug on their end so this is a workaround. It is slightly slower than it should be because of that but I don’t know how else to work around the problem for now.
Reply · 9 months, 1 week ago

@RicksCloud Member

Thanks so much for your work and your response. Agree its a bug on their end which I hope they address. Back in the day Shortcuts used to read my Pocket Feed and other RSS feeds without error now it usually crashes, or takes forever to load and asks me to approve access to the site every time.
Reply · 9 months, 1 week ago

@Mbierman Author

I agree. The requirement to approve the URL is unlikely to go away as a concession to security. But they must fix it so that after approval the Shortcut executes. Now it often fails. Also, I don’t know how you edit the list of whitelisted URLs. WhT if you accidentally approve a URL and want to unapproved it? I’m also curious if the URL access is global or shortcut specific. I can of course test this, but haven’t gotten around to it.
Reply · 9 months ago

@nignups

Lovely shortcut! Thanks so much. One query: Can I change the accent?
Reply · 5 months, 2 weeks ago

@Mbierman Author

sure. Go near the bottom and find an action called Documents. It has a command "Speak" and it reads a variable "To Read". if you open that, you can change the voice, language, rate, and Pitch.
Reply · 5 months, 2 weeks ago