Grape reads your study cards, your notes and the AI's answers aloud with the voices your computer or phone already has. The words never leave your device, nothing needs the internet, and it works on every plan, Free included.
Listening to a card
A speaker button stands on every flashcard, in the top corner of each side, next to every quiz question, and over every fill in the blank sentence, beside Restart and Shuffle. Click or tap it to hear the card, and again to stop. The cards in Review have it too.
A fill in the blank sentence is read with a pause at each blank until you check it, so it never gives the answer away, and as a whole sentence after. A card or sentence imported from Anki with a recording of its own plays that recording instead of the voice, a sentence before you check it too, the way Anki plays it.
Reading cards as they show
Turn on Read cards aloud in Settings under Speech, and every card, question and sentence is read as it shows and its recordings play, the way Anki plays a card's audio. Moving on to the next card stops the one before.
Reading a note aloud
On desktop, open the menu at the top of the note, or right click the note in the list, and choose Read Aloud. Select some words first to hear only those. A Reading aloud pill stands at the foot of the window while it reads, with Stop Reading on it, and the menu item says Stop Reading too.
On mobile, open the menu at the top of the note and tap Read Aloud. Select some words first to hear only those. A stop button stands in the top bar while it reads, and leaving the note stops it.
The voice reads the words of the note. Pictures, files and links are passed over.
Listening to an AI answer
A speaker stands under every answer in the chat, between Copy and the flag. Click or tap it to hear the answer, and again to stop. Closing the chat stops it too.
The voice reads the words of the answer. Code blocks and web addresses are passed over.
Following the words
As the voice reads, the word it is saying is marked, in the note, on the card or in the answer, the way find marks a match, and a long note scrolls to keep it in sight. A Siri voice on a Mac does not say where each word is, so with one the mark moves a sentence at a time. A recording from Anki plays without a mark.
Choosing a voice
Open Settings and choose Speech. Only voices that sound natural are listed, grouped by language: on a Mac the Siri voices you have downloaded and Apple's Premium and Enhanced voices, on an iPhone or iPad the Premium and Enhanced ones, and on Android the high quality ones. Tap the speaker beside one to try it, and choose the one each language should use. Without a choice, the best voice for the language reads, a Siri voice first.
Speed reads slower or faster. Read in is the language for words in Latin letters, which cannot tell their language by their alphabet. Words in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi or Thai are read in their own language, and so are cards from Anki that name their language.
Getting natural voices
Natural voices are free, and download from your system's settings:
- Mac: choose Open Read & Speak under the voices in Settings > Speech, or go to System Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak > System voice, then Manage Voices. Siri voices are there too. On macOS 15 and earlier the page is called Spoken Content. Back in Grape, the new voice is in the list.
- iPhone and iPad: Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak > Voices. On iOS 18 and earlier the page is called Spoken Content. Apple keeps Siri voices on an iPhone or iPad for its own apps, so Grape reads there with the Premium and Enhanced ones.
- Android: choose Open text-to-speech settings under the voices in Settings > Speech, and install high quality voices for Speech Services by Google.
- Windows and Linux offer apps only their standard voices, so Grape reads with those.
Until a natural voice is on the device, Grape reads with the system's standard voice. The playful voices macOS and iOS include, such as Bubbles or Grandpa, never read anything.
On every device
Speech settings stay on each device, since each has voices of its own. The cards, their recordings and their languages sync with your notes.