Three ways to have a Kindle book read aloud on iPhone or iPad, what each one costs, and which to pick.
Updated
Turn on Speak Screen in Settings › Accessibility › Spoken Content and swipe down with two fingers in the Kindle app for a free, basic read-aloud. Use Audible narration if you bought the audiobook. For natural voices, sentence highlighting and a saved place in every book, use a text-to-speech app such as Readible, which reads your Kindle library directly.
Speak Screen is free and already on your iPhone. It reads with the iPhone's built-in voices. In the Kindle app it should move to the next page by itself, but many people report that it sometimes stops or loses its place at a page turn, so it works best for short sessions.
If you also bought the Audible audiobook of a Kindle book, the Kindle app can play the professional narration and keep your place in sync between reading and listening. It's the best-sounding option, but you pay for each audiobook, and many Kindle books have no audiobook at all.
Readible works with Kindle books you can open in Amazon's Kindle web reader. You choose ultra-realistic cloud voices or free on-device voices that work offline, set the speed up to 3x, and Readible saves your place in every book. The free plan includes one Kindle import a month. More about Kindle listening in Readible.
| Way | Cost | Voices | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speak Screen | Free, built in | iPhone's built-in voices | A quick listen to a few pages |
| Audible narration | The price of each audiobook | Human narrators | Books you also own on Audible |
| Readible | Free plan; Pro from $2.99 a month | Natural AI voices, plus offline voices | Listening to your whole Kindle library like audiobooks |
Yes. Turn on Speak Screen in Settings › Accessibility › Spoken Content, open the book in the Kindle app, and swipe down from the top with two fingers. For natural voices and highlighting, use an app such as Readible.
It's a known limitation: Speak Screen reads what's on screen and relies on the Kindle app to turn the page, which doesn't always work. Updating iOS and the Kindle app can help. Apps that read the book's text directly, such as Readible, don't depend on page turns.
Speak Screen is free. Readible's free plan also includes one Kindle import a month, 10 hours of cloud voices every 30 days and unlimited offline voices.
Yes. Speak Screen, the Kindle app and Readible all work on iPad.
Readible