If you have been reading a book continuously for a long time, apparently that is not good for your eyes. Or, let’s assume that you want to get an app that can read text message or books on Google Play Books app. All those things can be possible with the help of these text reader apps for Android and iOS.

If you install these apps, you do not have to read anything. Instead, you can start the app and relax while listening to the text visible on the screen. It can reduce eye strain and provide a better health condition.

Best text reader app for Android

When it comes to best text reader for Android, only one thing comes to mind – the inbuilt tool that Google has made for Android users. If you have an Android mobile, you do not need to install another third-party app for reading text since there is an inbuilt option that does the same job. There are mainly three options to use the text reader app for Android.

1. You can select a text on your screen based on your preference. The app will read out loud that text.
2. You can use this option to read everything mentioned on the screen. It doesn’t require selection. Instead, it reads everything whenever you switch from one page to another.
3. Text to speech: It lets you read out loud the text while using some app like Google Play Books. This option is not available everywhere. Instead, it is available only in selected apps like Play Books for Android.

To set it up, open Settings > Accessibility. Here you should find three options called Select to Speak, TalkBack and Text-to-speech output. Open any option according to your requirements and set that up correctly.

If you select Text-to-speech output, you can choose the preferred engine, language, speech rate and pitch. Based on your requirements, you can choose proper settings. Since this option is available in some apps like Google Play Books, you should select the options minutely.

1. Voice Reading

Voice Reading is a free Android app that can read the text for you. Although this is a free and third-party app, it gets integrated into the system quite smoothly. Hence you would get a better performance from this application. This Voice Reading app can read various things including regular text, browser’s URL, text file, etc. The best thing is it reads text messages as well. In other words, you can use this text message reader app for Android to read almost anything on your screen. However, it doesn’t work like TalkBack for Android. With that said, you need to highlight the text that you want to read out loud. You can install this free app on almost any Android mobile since this is compatible with Android 2.2 and later version.

2. SMS Reader

When you need an Android text message reader app, you should install this app as well. As the name defines, SMS Reader reads all the text you got in an SMS. You can choose the settings based on your requirements so that it can read the text manually or automatically. From reading the sender name to received text – this is possible to read everything with the help of this free tool for Android. Another useful feature of this app is it can work with any Bluetooth system including headphone. That means, if you are driving a car or riding a motorcycle or bike, you can still know the text message by making use of this app. You can also select some filters so that it can start reading automatically when the given filters are checked.

3. Talk – Text to Voice

Talk is another Android app that reads the text loud according to your requirements. Although it has a free edition, that comes with some limitations and that is the reason why I would suggest you opt for the paid version, which costs only $1.99. Talking about the functionalities included in this app, you can get a standard text to voice converter. On the other hand, you can read web pages with the help of Talk – Text to Voice app. If you want to play or pause the reading in between, that is possible as well. The highlight of this app is you can save the audio in WAV format and use that further. Regarding compatibility, you need Android 4.0.3 or later version.

Best text reader app for iOS

Like Android, iOS has a text-to-speech reader tool built into the system as well. The best part is it does almost all the things an iOS user wants. From reading the text on the screen to read a long news article – everything is possible using this free tool for iOS. The pitch of this iOS tool is much better than any other third-party tools for obvious reasons. To enable this option, you need to head to Settings > General > Accessibility. On this screen, you can find Speak Selection option that you need to activate.

You can also choose the desired voice from the list. For that, tap on Voices option. Following that, you can select the SPEAKING RATE. The next option, i.e. Highlight Words can highlight the current word that is being read by the app. To start using this tool or get the speech, you need to select the select and choose Speak.

That’s all! After that, this app will start reading the text visible on your screen.

4. Voice4u Text-To-Speech ($39.99)

As the name defines, Voice4u is a text-to-speech app for iOS devices. No matter whether you are using iPhone or iPad, you can install this app and start getting the text-to-speech functionality. The user interface of this app is pretty good, neat and clean. The advantage of this tool on your iPhone or iPad is you can select any text on a webpage, PDF file or anywhere to read and it will start reading immediately. Although it doesn’t support all the languages spoken around the globe, you can get support for English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, and Traditional Chinese. Regarding availability, you can install it on iOS 8.0 or later version.

5. NaturalReader

When you need a beautiful user interface, top-notch features, comprehensive options in one app, you can opt for NaturalReader. This is a free and easy to use text-to-speech app for iPhone and iPad. You can read almost anything including PDF files, text files, Word document, non-DRM epub files, PPT, as well as web pages. Another useful feature that attracts users and saves their time is this is possible to load files from various cloud storage including Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud, Google Drive etc. Talking about the compatibility, you should have iOS 9.0 or later version.

That’s all! There are more other text reader apps for Android and iOS but these are tested apps, and they turned out very useful.