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[Update: April 6th]

Following our recent announcement to transition Voice Dream to a subscription, we received an overwhelming response from thousands in our community. Your feedback, along with the impactful stories shared about Voice Dream being a pivotal part of your daily lives, has led us to reverse this change.

We will continue to provide access to the app’s existing features at no additional cost.

As we continue developing Voice Dream, some new features may be offered as part of a subscription, but the current capabilities will remain free to those who have already purchased Voice Dream.

For those who have already moved to a subscription, it’s no longer necessary to continue using the app. You may cancel your subscription, but we welcome you to keep it active to support ongoing development.

To those who wish to support Voice Dream, please consider a subscription, a one-time donation via our website, or simply leaving a positive review in the App Store.

We sincerely thank you for your passionate and loyal support of Voice Dream. Your voices have made a difference.

To our long-term customers,

We hope you’re enjoying everything Voice Dream has to offer. Thank you so much for your support over the past few years.

To keep improving the app, we’re switching over to subscription pricing on May 1, 2024.

This subscription includes the Mac app, all the voices, and much more. You will always have access to existing documents, but the subscription will be required to upload new ones.

We made this difficult decision to balance rising costs with our goal to keep building a better app for readers like you. Here’s why we’ve decided to make the change now —

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With the holidays right around the corner, Voice Dream apps make a great gift for your favorite reader!

Product News

New Library User Interface
In December, we will release an update with a new user interface for the Library. The update will take advantage of the larger screen sizes of iPads and will include a sidebar with Library filters and folders. Additionally, support for split screen has been improved. Finally, you will be able to drag and drop within the library to reorder, load, and export files.

New Filters
The latest updates for iOS and MacOS include two new filters: By Format and Completed. The By Format filter allows you to organize your files by their format , so you can easily see how many of each format you have in your library and search for specific titles. The Completed filter allows you to quickly access the files you have already finished. These files will also be marked with a check mark, so you can easily see which files are 100% completed.

Did You Know That…

Accessibility is one of the most important goals of Voice Dream Reader. In fact, it is so important that different user interfaces are presented depending on iOS or macOS’s accessibility settings. For example, if VoiceOver (Apple’s screen reader for people with visual impairments) is on, there will be fewer buttons on the screen to make it faster to cycle through them. The Play-Pause button also takes on additional functionality as a Rewind and Fast Forward button. The text area even supports the use of refreshable braille displays. The user interface also undergoes important but subtle changes if the user has low vision or is using a switch control because of limited motor functions.

Hot Tips

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Welcome back! We hope last month’s newsletter, our first, was informative. As we enter November, we celebrate National Assistive Technology Awareness Month.

Product News

Annual Subscription
You asked, and we listened! Voice Dream Reader for Macs now has an annual subscription option for $49.99 per year, which is equivalent to two months free per year compared to the monthly option. Best of all, you’ll support our continued efforts to bring you the very best product on the market. Existing subscribers can switch to the annual option and save: Go to App Store, Account Settings, Subscriptions – Manage, then Edit the subscription for Voice Dream Reader.

Language Translation
With version 4.15, Reader for iPhones and iPads can translate your documents or books to any language. It’s fast, accurate and free. Translation is performed on your device so that your content stays private and secure. From the Document menu, select Translate and pick your target language. It’ll first download necessary language data for the language pair, if it hasn’t been downloaded already. Then, it’ll translate the original text and place the translated text in a new file in your library.

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October is Dyslexia Awareness Month. What better time is there for the very first Voice Dream newsletter!

Product News

Acapela Voices Are Now Available on the Mac
People love Acapela voices, like Sharon for US English, and Manon for French. Acapela voices are very high quality and extremely reliable. Now, with your subscription to Reader for MacOS, you get all Acapela voices in a language of your choice, for free.

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Since Voice Dream Reader was released for iOS in 2012, I received requests for a Mac version more often than any other platform. Nearly 10 years later, I’m so excited to announce that Voice Dream Reader for macOS is now generally available.

(The actual name in the Mac App Store is “Voice Dream Reader for Desktop” because Apple does not allow the use of “macOS” or “Macs” in an app’s name.)

I started working on the Mac version in 2019. From early on I decided to create a fully native and thoroughly modern macOS app that takes full advantage of the Mac rather than migrating the iOS version with minimal change. (I will write a blog post on how I made this decision.) After 3 years of work, I’m very happy with the result, and I think you will be too.

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This decision to make Reader for macOS a subscription was not an easy one: I agonized over it for the past two years, because I know a lot of people do not like subscriptions. And some of you who are excited about this new app will be disappointed. I get it.

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Occupation
I am a Sociology Professor and department chair at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I started my career as a professor 18 years ago. Over thirty years ago I started listening to – literally – books on tape. […]

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Dr. Matthew Schneps is one of the most respected scientists in the research of dyslexia. He heads up Laboratory for Visual Learning, a joint program of Harvard University and University of Massachusetts Boston. […]

Voice Dream Reader was always about text-to-speech, so whenever I was asked to add audiobook support, my thought was, why would I do that? […]