Anyone who gets a lot of email and needs to stay up to date. We envisage the typical usage to be for business people, who want their work email read to them during their drive to and from work.
We think anyone who takes responsibility for their own work time will like it, such as people in leadership or management roles. Executives, self employed people, marketers, journalists, politicians, account managers, team leaders, lawyers, accountants, doctors, engineers, consultants, sales people on the road all day... lots of people who use email as a primary tool.
Inbox zero enthusiasts will particularly like the chance to use downtime to prune their inbox.
Listen to your emails while driving to work - get on top of communication and formulate a plan for the day. Many people spend the first hour every day on email - you can easily cut this in half.
During the day you can switch off your emails and concentrate on getting some work done, then catch up on emails on your drive home.
You can de-clutter your inbox and make sure there are no surprises lurking there. It feels good to know you've not missed anything.
If you use Speaking Email when driving to and from work each day, this will reduce the number of times you need to check your email.
Researchers have found that checking email less frequently reduces stress and improves our ability to get things done (see the research here).
So not only does Speaking Email give you more time in the day, it makes the rest of your day more productive.
Using your phone's voice capability to read and manage email is a logical use for voice technology. Speaking Email provides an interface to enable this by combining text-to-speech, speech-to-text and email services.
All emails are read out loud using your choice of native operating system voices. Clutter is intelligently skipped over. Voice control enables you to manage your emails using voice commands and reply by dictating using your voice to transcribe and send emails.
I get lots of email and need to be up to date. Commute time is not used as well as it could be. If I could listen to my email while driving or sitting in traffic I could think about what I need to do and formulate what I need to go back to people with.
This is what started my search for an app that would read out my email for me that was distraction free and could be used safely while driving. My search resulted in a realisation there was a big hole waiting to be filled by Speaking Email.
Mike Nelson, Beweb CEO and Speaking Email Developer
When we recieve an account deletion request, we will delete all your personal data from our servers.
To request account deletion, either:
1. In the app, use Support > Feedback to request account deletion
2. Email us on feedback@speaking.email
We take security very seriously. Data is transmitted over TLS 1.2 and stored in our secure cloud storage.
If your company uses Gmail, Microsoft 365 (aka Office 365 or Outlook) or Exchange mail servers, the connection goes directly and securely to the server. For Gmail and Microsoft 365 the login uses OAuth2 which means the login is a Google or Microsoft Sign In screen and your password is never seen by the app at all.
The mail is stored on your device and is encrypted during storage for iOS devices.
We have been audited by Google and received Google Cloud Platform/API Trust & Safety official approval. This means Speaking Email is compliant with the Google API User Data Policy and the Additional Requirements for Restricted Scopes for Gmail.
We are a Microsoft App Partner for Enterprise Mobility + Security which means we have passed Microsoft audits and will adhere to your IT department's custom security policies for organisation wide rollouts when using both Microsoft 365 and Exchange mail servers.
Our language detection algorithms are completely on-device within the app.
Our attachment text extraction sends data to our cloud servers for file conversion. This is an optional feature and can be switched off. For enterprise clients this feature can be removed completely.
Our cloud servers are also used for IMAP mail accounts, user account data, and crash logging.
For more info, see our Privacy page.
Google API Services User Data Policy
The Gmail API is used when connecting your Gmail account within Speaking Email. Speaking Email complies with the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements for resticted scopes for Gmail API.
Yes we comply with privacy laws including GDPR for our European customers.
You may request your data to be deleted or delivered to you any time.
We handle and store all data responsibly and securely. If your company uses GMail, Microsoft 365 or Exchange mail servers, the connection goes directly and securely to the server. For GMail, Microsoft 365, Yahoo and AOL the login uses OAuth2 which means the login is a Google or Microsoft or Yahoo Sign In screen and your password is never seen by the app at all. The mail is stored on your device and is encrypted during storage for iOS devices.
We request and store only the personal information (PII) that we need to operate your account. This is your name and email addreas. For analytics and error logging we may also include your IP address, geolocation, and fragments of email content which may be immediately proceeding an error which is logged.
For more info, see our Privacy page.
To help maintain and improve our app, we have implemented analytics and crash logging. This is a necessary function to provide stable and high performing software. Telemetry data including your IP address are recorded in our secure cloud database.
If you are on the 7 Day Free Premium Trial, there is no need to cancel, your plan will downgrade to the Basic Edition and there are no charges.
If you purchased a fixed term subscription (eg one year or one month) there is no need to cancel as it will not auto renew.
If you subscribed to our monthly auto renewing subscription, you can cancel from the subscriptions area in App Store or Google Play. There is no minimum term, so you can cancel at any time.
For Apple users:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202039
For Android users:
https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7018481?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en
One of our users had this problem where tapping on the payment buttons did nothing. Apparently this is an Apple bug. To fix it, he changed the iPhone language and then changed it back again.
He writes:
Speaking Email in-app payments are via your Apple account using the App Store. If Speaking Email cannot connect to the App Store, you will see an error message, similar to the following:
App Store purchases are unavailable. Either you are offline, your credit card has expired, you may have disabled in-app purchases in your settings, or something else about your setup is preventing access to in-app purchases.
Your phone needs to be online for App Store connectivity to work. Your Apple account needs to be set up correctly with a valid credit card.
You can disable purchases in your account settings, which will also result in this same error message. For example parental settings can prevent purchasing.
If you got part way through purchasing but are not sure if you completed the purchase, you can check in your account settings.
On iPhone, follow these instructions from Apple to see if you have a purchase in your purchase history:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204088
For Android, follow this Google guide:
https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2850369?hl=en
You can get transaction IDs which will help us track down a payment if it has not come through correctly. Or if you have purchased by mistake, this will enable you to request a refund.
Check your system settings for any restrictions that may be set up.
Here is a guide from Apple showing which settings can affect purchase restrictions:
People talk about becoming a digital organisation. If you're not "digital first" then you need to tackle a "digital transformation" strategy.
Speaking Email can be a part of any digital strategy. Empowering users to check their email without requiring a screen can be transformational - imagine a sales team who no longer needs to stop to check emails. We're using the latest technology to mash-up email connectivity with voice technology. We don't know what benefits this will bring to your organisation - perhaps you can imagine - or perhaps being a digital organisation is all about trying new things.
Our Enterprise Edition is ideal if you have a whole team and are innovating around improving productivity. Speaking Email is one of the pieces you need on your digital transformation.
We have a Basic Edition which has a small fee of $1. This helps to encourage users to download only if they actually want the app.
We made this so you can try Speaking Email, test it out connecting with your mail provider, a give it a go. It has fewer options, and plays little teaser promos where it should skip signatures.
The Premium Edition is now available on a monthly or yearly plan for approx US$5 per month (depending on currency). This is incredibly cheap considering how much time Speaking Email gives you back.
The Basic Edition is $1. We made this so you can try Speaking Email, test it out connecting with your mail provider, a give it a go. It has fewer options, and plays little teaser promos where it should skip signatures.
The Premium Edition is US$4.99 per month (or similar depending on currency). A fiver a month is incredibly good value considering how much time Speaking Email gives you back. How much time do you think you could save a month by using Speaking Email? A couple of hours at least, maybe even an hour a day. How much is your time worth?
Or buy a year and get it even cheaper.
We also have an Enterprise Edition which is ideal if you have a whole team and are innovating around improving productivity.
I have lots of emails. I would like to only have the speaking app download and/or read the ones that are unread.
Sure, this is no problem. There is an option for this in preferences. Go into Preferences > Sorting & Filtering.
Yes, Speaking Email can be operated using voice commands.
Providing safety while driving and accessibility for blind and dyslexic users means we have to enable a variety of input methods and not rely on sight or touch.
We've made Speaking Email support voice commands for daily usage, such as checking emails, replying and managing mail. You don't need to touch the screen at all, apart from setting up preferences.
Speaking Email can wait for your command at the start and end of emails, and you can interrupt it any time if you touch the screen anywhere.
You can say any of the labels on the buttons: "archive", "trash", "ignore", "flag", "repeat", "reply", "forward", "play". This makes it very easy to remember what you can say and when.
You can dictate replies and even edit them (say "dictation help" when dictating to find out how).
Anywhere you can say a command you can say "help" to find out what you can say, or "stop" to stop listening.
“I am a totally blind man I am so thankful for speaking email. It is help me in a way that's hard for me to describe. I thank you for creating it and I hope others will enjoy it as much as I do.”
Charles Elliott
Yes the email reading and reply dictation work in all languages supported by your phone, so long as you have downloaded the relevant voices or speech recognition languages.
Speaking Email will switch voices to a French voice when an email arrives in French and then to Spanish when a Spanish one is detected and back to English when one comes in English. We call this feature "Multilingual" and it can be switched on or off in Preferences.
Emails don't have language headers and the operating system doesn't provide language detection. We've utilised multiple open source language detection algorithms to build our own high accuracy language detector. We use this to select the correct voice on your phone's text-to-speech engine to read out each email, and when dictating replies using the speech-to-text engine - enabling you to dictate a reply in the sender's language.
Our proprietary smart content detection includes signature, disclaimer, and thread header detection algorithms. We support 12 languages including English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Afrikaans, Polish, Portuguese, and partial support for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Romanian, Russian, Thai, Hindi, Hebrew. This means it will skip over signatures and disclaimers when recognised. It even switches languages within an email thread if necessary.
We treat conversation threads a bit differently, it's not like Gmail for example where you can expand and collapse the replies in the thread because we are preparing the content as speech.
We automatically scan for your email address and stop reading out the email at the point that we know it already was sent to or from you. This way Speaking Email reads right to the point it needs to. If we simply cut off at the first reply we might miss something - for example if someone forwards you an email you don't just want to hear that person's words "see below - unbelievable". If we combined all replies from a thread together in one screen, we might be reading out old messages that you've seen before.
If you don't have this feature switched on, it's under Preferences.
PS. If you want Speaking Email to keep going beyond the thread cut off, you can just say "continue" to have it do so.
You can now have your Office365 email read out loud (spoken to you) using your phone's text-to-speech capability and Speaking Email's secure connection to Office365.
Speaking Email is a cut down email client with simple to use voice commands designed to be safe to use while driving. Speaking Email supports Microsoft Office365 on our iPhone and Android apps.
Action emails with your voice, just by speaking commands such as “mark as read”, “archive”, “next“, “forward” or “reply”. All actions are synced to your Office 365 exchange online mailbox (using our built in ActiveSync or Microsoft Graph API for Office 365 Mail connectors).
Dictate reply and forward email messages using speech-to-text dictation.
Speaking Email is the only app that lets you listen to your Office 365 email using speech to text, intelligently extracting speakable content from each email to read out loud to you. As well as interact by voice command with your Office365 email keeping your Outlook inbox in sync. And enable dictation of replies through text to speech, with your replies and forwarded messages visible in your Sent Items folder of Outlook Online / Office 365.
Speaking Email makes Office 365 mail not only available anywhere but actionable through the modality of speech, so you can do email without even looking, opening up other places and times for email, such as while commuting or doing the dishes.
Is your organisation undergoing a digital transformation, looking for productivity tools for workforce enablement? See our Enterprise solutions.
Speaking Email (a Microsoft App Partner) lets you listen to your Outlook email and use your voice to archive, mark as read, flag, delete, file to a folder, reply, or forward. Even compose new emails and send them all via Office 365 servers. Simple voice commands let you up your own important and ignored senders to prioritise what is read out.
You can now have your Microsoft Outlook Office 365 email read out loud (spoken to you) using your phone's text-to-speech capability and Speaking Email's secure connection to Outlook mail on Office 365.
Speaking Email is a cut down email client with simple to use voice commands designed to be safe to use while driving. Speaking Email supports Microsoft Outlook on our iPhone and Android apps.
Action emails with your voice, just by speaking commands such as “mark as read”, “archive”, “next“, “forward” or “reply”. All actions are synced to your Outlook mailbox on Office 365 exchange online. Speaking Email supports all the latest Microsoft security protocols including MFA, Authenticator, Intune, OAuth, ActiveSync, and Microsoft Graph API.
Dictate reply and forward email messages using speech-to-text dictation.
Speaking Email is the only app that lets you listen to your Outlook email using speech to text, intelligently extracting speakable content from each email to read out loud to you. As well as interact by voice command with your email keeping your Outlook inbox in sync. And enable dictation of replies through text to speech, with your replies and forwarded messages visible in your Sent Items folder of Outlook Online / Office 365.
Speaking Email makes Outlook mail not only available anywhere but actionable through the modality of speech, so you can do email without even looking, opening up other places and times for email, with our most popular use case being driving.
Is your organisation undergoing a digital transformation, looking for productivity tools for workforce enablement? See our Enterprise solutions.
Speaking Email works great with Gmail, including personal Gmail accounts, Gmail for Domains or G-Suite (Gmail for Business).
All features are supported and we have some extra special features for Gmail, which include Gmail tabs and custom Gmail search query filtering.
Gmail connections make use of Google security libraries, meaning your password is only ever sent directly to Google servers.
In regards to setup, firstly the App does not work if your device is connected as a Bluetooth Telephone device!!
Next, you need to set your car’s Bluetooth connection to Aux or Other Bluetooth device depending what options are available in the vehicle.
Next, go to settings, sounds and vibration, separate app sound and select both the App (Speaking Email) and audio device.
Then reset the media sound volume under sounds & vibrations to the maximum as the sound level through the app is too low when using the Bluetooth option.
Yes Speaking Email can also read out attachments. PDFs or Word documents will be converted to text and read aloud where possible. Note that if a PDF has been scanned, it will not be able to extract the text.
If you have a long document to read through, just email it to yourself and listen when you like.
It also reads out calendar invitations, and plays audio attachments (mp3 or wav files, which may be sent from a voice mail system for example).
There is a switch to turn this on or off in preferences under Preferences > What Content to Read Out.
Yes! We offer voice commands and dictation of replies.
When you 'tap' the screen during reading, the 'pause' screen appears and the phone starts listening for voice commands - they are simply the names of the buttons, so it is easy to know what you can say - like 'trash', 'next', 'archive', etc.
You can also set Speaking Email to pause after each email, and wait for a command - this is so you dont even need to tap the screen. That is even more safe when driving.
One of the coolest commands on the 'pause' menu is 'reply' - this allows you to dictate the entire response, check it is correct, and send it (or redo it, or cancel).
On iPhone, the pause screen also appears when you press the 'action' button on a headset, or bluetooth device, meaning you can just hit the hardware button and then say a command.
.
The mic button is always in the bottom left corner of your screen. However on most phones the screen is flat and continues beyond the actual screen to the edge of the device, so it is hard to tell where the bottom left corner is.
A user gave us this tip: you can get sticky dots to put on your screen so you can easily find button locations.
Available on Amazon: Eshanmu Self-Adhesive Clear Rubber Feet Tiny Bumpons 0.25" in Diameter x 0.079" Height PACK/100pcs (6x2mm 200pcs).
Another use for dots is to place them on the buttons you will need when you need to sign in again to Gmail or Microsoft 365 accounts. These accounts make you login again every once in a while, which is difficult for blind users, but they generally remember your password, so only a couple of button presses is actually required.
Many blind or visually impaired users tell us Speaking Email has been a "life saver" or "changed my life". The app reads out the contents of your inbox continuously (ie speaks each email in turn). It skips over email signatures, disclaimers and other email-specific clutter - making for a smooth and seamless reading experience.
Speaking Email is fully accessible with VoiceOver, the screen reader that blind people use to interact with their iPhone. VoiceOver is useful for normal apps but doesn't make sense for a speech based app that is voice controlled, so once you have completed the setup and signed into your email account, we recommend switching VoiceOver off. We’ve been reviewed as a fully accessible app on AppleVis, the online community for visually impaired iPhone users.
Here is a quote from a blind VoiceOver user Joanne Tran who helped beta test the app to ensure it is fully accessible:
I personally like having Speaking Email as an additional tool in my toolbox. I find it's nice to have the app automatically open any unread messages and having it start reading each message after it checks for new messages. I also like having the ability to skip over the information that I don't want to listen to such as the signatures. The option to automatically read the next message is a plus for me. This includes the option to skip the promotional messages. I think this app is worth it in my book.
We’ve had a lot of enthusiastic and supportive feedback from blind and visually impaired users, which makes this effort really feel worthwhile:
“I just wanted to say this app is awesome! It makes reading emails a lot easier.”
“Your app is one of a handful that could assist people with visual problems and I strongly support your efforts.”
“I want to thank you for this app because my 93 year old mother is almost blind from macular degeneration. She can now listen to her emails without needing someone to read them to her”
“Speaking Email totally rocks! The accessibility is awesome!”
If you have a stroke it may render you unable to read. This app can help you by enabling you to keep in touch with people via email, and not feel out of the loop due to your inability to read text.
Ruth Ginsburg, a Speech Language Pathologist from Boston, writes:
"one of my current clients is a woman who has had a recent severe stroke. She went from being only able to repeat words to speaking in sentences with difficulty. Due to the stroke she is unable to read, which had been a social avenue for her. Today I found your app and I put it on her phone. When we used it for the first time she cried. She is now able to listen to all the emails she has received since she had her stroke. Your app has decreased her isolation and drastically improved her quality is life."
Ruth Ginsburg, MS, CCC-SLP
Speech Language Pathologist
Boston, Ma
We have had feedback from users with dyslexia that Speaking Email helps them tremendously.
It is a positive force, enabling them to receive emails and listen instead of having to read.
If you compare this app to using a normal email app, there is no question that Speaking Email is much safer. If you are sneakily checking your email in the car, this app provides a much safer alternative.
In terms of driver distraction, anything can be a distraction including talking to passengers, hands free phone calls, kids, music. Listening to your emails is mostly passive, and Speaking Email requires minimal to zero interaction. All interactions are optional, and none take your eyes off the road for more than a second. So we think on the continuum of driver distraction, this app is much safer than texting and driving, and probably safer than making a phone call with your phone in a cradle or hands free.
We designed Speaking Email with driver safety in mind:
Your phone should be in a fixed mounting if you intend to touch it, and depending on your local regulations this is a legal requirement.
Studies show driver distraction is worse talking on the phone than listening. Some studies even suggest that talking with passengers is more of a risk than listening to voice recordings, because preparing to speak has a higher cognitive load than passive listening.
For more about distracted driving see http://www.distraction.gov/stats-research-laws/facts-and-statistics.html
Mobile phone driving laws vary by state, and a good summary map is available here.
You must only use your phone handsfree if you live in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, or West Virginia. That means you can use Speaking Email to read your inbox out to you but not archive, star or reply. You can listen to your emails, which will be read out in order of your inbox with unread first, but not swipe or tap the screen.
In most states you are able to tap your phone screen if you have it mounted as part of a handsfree setup. Tapping the screen triggers voice command listening, so it's recommended to get a phone holder.
There are a couple of settings and preferences you may like to switch on if for best handsfree usage.
You can use all features of Speaking Email in most other states. The following states do not require hands-free mobile phone usage:
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming
We believe it will be OK to use all features of Speaking Email in these states, provided it is not causing a distraction. Speaking Email does not allow you to type or require any complex interactions - its nothing like texting and driving, which is banned in many states.
(Compiled from IIHS, current as at September 2015)
In the UK you must use your phone hands-free only. That means you can use Speaking Email to read your inbox out to you but not archive, star or reply. You can listen to your emails, which will be read out in order of your inbox with unread first, but not swipe or tap the screen.
There are a couple of settings and preferences you may like to switch on.
For the official word see the gov.uk site for laws and regulations in the UK on mobile phone usage while driving (or see think campaign for advice on mobile phone road safety, driver distraction, texting and driving).
In Australia mobile phones must either be operated entirely hands-free or placed in a commercially-manufactured cradle if you want to place a call, or use the phone as a navigation or other aid. An email reader is not really an aid so we recommend Speaking Email be used in a hands-free manner in Australia.
See more info on the Australian road rules regarding mobile phones.
We've been featured in the the Australian, Daily Telegraph, NT News, SBS, Sky News.
There are a couple of settings and preferences you may like to switch on if for best handsfree usage.
When driving you can switch between different apps to get all the services you want.
Siri or Google Now can help directly with driving directions and live traffic updates, and you can ask them to open Speaking Email to help with the last. Instead of "read my email" just say "open speaking email".
You can easily switch between apps using voice commands, and other apps can interrupt your email listening as needed for driving directions, local maps, traffic news and the like.
Speaking Email is a dedicated voice app for reading emails out loud while driving. You can use Google Maps to get driving directions, announcing turn by turn instructions, while Speaking Email is reading your emails out.
You can get traffic conditions on iPhone by asking Siri "what's the traffic like" or "traffic report" or on Android by asking Google Now.
To switch apps on iPhone, use Siri and say "open speaking email" or "open google maps". Google Now provides this same functionality on Android.
You will find Speaking Email is the best email app for reading your email while driving.
How does Speaking Email fit with various laws and regulations? Many countries and states allow use of a mobile phone so long as it is in a cradle, does not require too much button pressing, has no typing needed and requires only glances at the screen.
For example in New Zealand the phone must be secured in a mounting fixed to the vehicle and the driver must manipulate or look at the phone only infrequently and briefly. Drivers are specifically banned from reading and composing text messages and emails. This standard is common worldwide, and its the standard to which we have designed Speaking Email.
Our app enables the driver to glance at and listen to emails, which we believe is acceptable. Our reply function is fully voice operated and doesn't allow you to type a message. Every function is a swipe or at most two taps, so this is minimal manipulation. Every function can be operated by voice command with spoken responses. We've taken care to ensure there are no complex gestures, small hit areas, keyboard input or demanding processes.
You obviously need to use this app only as permitted in your area (if using while driving). We cannot provide any guarantee about whether your use of this app while driving would be considered unlawful in any jurisdiction.
Here are some resources for driver safety information, thanks to Lisa Marshall at aussiewell.net.
There a lot of things that distract us in our cars these days. Mobile phones get a lot of the blame, but truthfully there are a lot of other factors that can take our focus off the road, such as feeling fatigued or even talking with a mate riding with us.
In fact drinking and tiredness are by far the most common causes of accidents. Take a look at these accident statistics from Monash University Accident Research Centre in Australia.
| MUARC study of 340 casualty crashes in VIC and NSW 2000-2011 | |
| 13.50% | Intoxication |
| 11.80% | Fell asleep |
| 10.90% | Fatigued |
| 3.20% | Failed to look |
| 3.20% | Passenger interaction |
| 2.60% | Felt ill |
| 2.6% | Blacked out |
| 1.80% | Feeling stressed |
| 1.5% | Looked but failed to see |
| 1.4% | Animal or insect in vehicle |
| 0.9% | Using a mobile phone |
| 0.90% | Changing CD/cassette/radio |
| 0.90% | Adjusting vehicle systems |
| 0.90% | Looking at vehicle systems |
| 0.3% | Searching for object |
You may get this error message if you have two Microsoft accounts under the same email address. A few years ago Microsoft made an attempt at unifying their account types but didn't quite figure it out and seem to think this error message to end users was a solution. Luckily it's not too hard to solve.
You can get this error in Speaking Email when logging in using "Office 365 Direct". You have two options to solve this:
1. Change to "Office 365 ActiveSync Modern Auth" if you want to use your work account only. This login method doesn't support personal Microsoft account, so you won't get this problem. However, this uses ActiveSync, which is an older technology and not quite as good. (It's slightly slower and slightly less robust, sometimes needing a resync.)
2. Follow the Microsoft recommendation and change the email address of your personal account to an alias so the Microsoft security system doesn't get confused and keep popping up prompts. This is simple to do and will prevent this prompt popping up on any application that uses your Microsoft account.
Click here to follow the Microsoft instructions to create an alias and make it your primary account.
The screenshot below shows doing this:
We have 3 app IDs for the various different protocols and scope requirements ;)
Here are the relevant App IDs which your IT department may need for setting up and granting access to corporate email.
Microsoft Identity V1 EAS + InTune
c1c8d5f7-f73e-4857-a22f-e6ac1fce7150
Microsoft Identity V1 EAS only
7c5a92a2-b000-4c93-a0d7-c51252984db4
Microsoft Identity V2 MSGraph
af56e8fb-8042-48aa-b89d-3199d6a58f0b
Speaking Email is listed in the Azure and Intune app catalogs, so you should also be able to find the app by name.
If you get the error:
AADSTS500201: We are unable to issue tokens from this API version for a Microsoft account
This means you need to sign in using our "Office 365 Direct" sign in option. To do this go to Preferences > you account > change protocol.
This is normally temporary and it will attempt to reconnect so you may find next time you launch speaking email it will come right. It will probably require you to enter your email password again. If not then you can try “refresh all mail” under the “support” menu. If that doesn’t fix it, then remove your account and add it back again (that will definitely work).
Most email providers have their settings available on their website, so google is your friend.
For example search for "vodafone email settings"
Or look in your phone mail settings.
You need to get your email settings, which you can find in your Settings in your phone or on your computer (eg in Outlook).
First thing is what kind of email server is it?
If you are setting up Speaking Email with Xtra (New Zealand email addresses), you need to use the IMAP account set up. Speaking Email should bring up these settings automatically, but if not, you can enter them in IMAP account settings.
Some Xtra accounts may have migrated to Yahoo and not come back to NZ. If you have one of these, then click 'Add Yahoo Mail' account.
If Speaking Email says your account is disabled for ActiveSync, you will need to see your Exchange system administrator.
If you are managing the mail server, you will need to look for the setting to enable ActiveSync either on an individual account or a wider group. The screenshot below shows where this setting is in Office 365.
Or you can look in the Office Admin Center under Users:
If you have multi factor authentication (MFA) turned on, you will need to use a one time "app password" for Speaking Email - see these instructions from Microsoft.
Yes :)
If your account is protected by AOL 2 Step Verification, see the below information to set up an "application-specific password" for Speaking Email. This is the most secure way to connect apps to your AOL account, and it is likely that your account will require this.
You need to set up the "app password" on the AOL website, which you can either do inside Speaking Email (it launches in a pop up window enabling you to copy and paste) or do it on your computer (a bit easier on a bigger screen) and type in the generated password.
https://help.aol.com/articles/2-step-verification-stronger-than-your-password-alone
You can tell whether you have 2 Step Verification by looking on your account screen in AOL's portal:
Yes! Speaking Email is now available for any of these services:
Microsoft Exchange
Email us: feedback@speaking.email if you have any issues connecting to your mail server.
Speaking Email does not support IBM Lotus Notes directly.
But if your server administrator has set up the "IMAP service" option then it will work (use "add IMAP/other account").
Here is some info from IBM about IMAP on Lotus Notes/Domino servers:
Configuring IMAP client software
Yes! If you use Outlook in an enterprise environment you are probably using Exchange server (don't be confused with "Outlook.com" - that is Microsoft's new name for Hotmail and is not the same at all).
We use ActiveSync to connect to Exchange server, which is the same protocol as your iPhone or Android mail uses. If you connect to your mail on your phone already, check your phone mail settings, which will show if you are connecting to Exchange. It will also show your server name and username.
Your server name should be just the host and domain name (eg mobile.myserver.com).
Your username will be either:
If you are having trouble connecting, Microsoft has a tool which helps you check if you have the right credentials. To use the tool, select "ActiveSync" (the default option). You can use this tool to check your connection:
If it passes the checks and you can't connect to Speaking Email, copy the detailed report and send it to us at feedback@speaking.email (it doesn't contain any private details).
Yes we do! Office 365 is fully supported. We provide secure login directly to Microsoft or your own organisation sign-in page, including MFA (multi-factor authentication), for example via text message or authenticator app.
Speaking Email uses ActiveSync to connect to Exchange Server. It appears with the User Agent name “Speaking Email SE” so you can clearly identify clients.
Speaking Email supports most ActiveSync features, including autodiscover, provisioning and remote wipe. It supports Basic Authentication and Modern Authentication.
Exchange Online MDM (mobile device management) is supported. You can disable individual clients and an appropriate error message will display in Speaking Email.
If it has been locked down your IT team may need to locate the app Speaking Email in the Azure portal and grant the following permission:
When entering your email address and password to connect to an email service, you may get this error message:
Ooops! Email address not a valid mailbox
This means the email address you entered is probably not correct.
Speaking Email attempts to connect to your mail server using IMAP protocol. If an error is returned we then check whether your email address appears to be valid by using an email validation system (SMTP lookup and deliverability test). Only if our test reports that this email address is not a valid mailbox then we show this error.
This means the Gmail API that Speaking Email uses to communicate with Gmail is not able to be used for your account.
Most likely your email address is not a Gmail account. It is possible to be a Google Account but not a Gmail account (for example if you use the account for YouTube but have never enabled Gmail).
Otherwise, if you have G Suite (aka Google Apps for Work) your organisation administrator may need to enable the Gmail feature or Gmail API access.
Speaking Email has special features to enable support for Microsoft Intune (Enterprise Mobility + Security).
Depending on your Conditional Access (CA) policies you may need to have Azure tenant admins provide permission to access corporate email. In this case a Microsoft screen will appear saying "Need admin approval".
To do this, your Azure admin can either add the app in your Company Portal, or grant permission via consent links.
Click here to grant required permissions to Speaking Email.
The permissions it needs are:
- Intune MAM
- Exchange Online
- Sign in
You should be directed to sign in to the Azure portal under the correct user account and then see a prompt similar to the following.
For more information about consenting app permissions, see this Microsoft article.
Speaking Email has special features to enable support for Microsoft Office 365, via several connectors. The primary we call Office 365 Direct.
Depending on your Azure AD policies you may need to have Azure tenant admins provide permission to access corporate email. In this case a Microsoft screen will appear saying "Need admin approval".
To do this, your Azure admin can either add from the Azure App Gallery under Enterprise Apps, or grant permission via consent links.
Click here to grant required permissions to Speaking Email.
The permissions it needs are:
- Exchange Online
- Sign in
You should be directed to sign in to the Azure portal under the correct user account and then see a prompt similar to the following.
For more information about consenting app permissions, see this Microsoft article.
Speaking Email will appear in the Azure portal, allowing you to see what permissions it is using. If you mail is not coming through, you can check to make sure these permissions are available.
If your Office 365 is under default settings, you shouldn't need to worry about this.
In some cases you will need to manually check and grant this permission.
If it has been locked down your IT team may need to locate the app Speaking Email in the Azure portal and grant the following permission:
This is the only permission needed and it covers ActiveSync as well as Exchange Web Services. (Note that Speaking Email does not require EWS to be enabled but does require ActiveSync enabled)
The screenshots below show you where to do this.
If you are not using our Office 365 Direct sign-in, you may strike problems with ActiveSync. We recommend using the Office 365 Direct sign-in when possible as it is more reliable.
Speaking Email can use the ActiveSync protocol to communicate with Microsoft Exchange server, Office 365, and Amazon WorkMail.
This is a fairly complex protocol and supports a range of server versions, security policies, and administration features. Due to the wide range of different configurations, some issues may be encountered.
Could not connect to Exchange server using ActiveSync using the supplied credentials.
When you enter your credentials to connect your account, Speaking Email validates and provides appropriate error messages to help you fix what is wrong.
Here are the various issues that can be identified:
If unsure what to do, you should verify that you can connect using ActiveSync in another email client (eg iPhone or Android mail), or use the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer.
Some enterprises use an MDM system, such as Microsoft Intune, to manage employee access to apps via a "corporate app store".
If your enterprise uses an MDM system and your connection is not working, first try using a "app password" if you are able to use this.
Otherwise, please contact us on feedback@speaking.email to ask if we can support your system.
Speaking Email uses the ActiveSync protocol to communicate with Microsoft Exchange server, Office 365, and Amazon WorkMail. It's the protocol used by all Android and iPhone built-in mail apps, and it is designed for optimal mobile data usage.
This is a fairly complex protocol and supports a range of server versions, security policies, and administration features. Due to the wide range of different configurations, some issues may be encountered.
Could not connect to Exchange server using ActiveSync using the supplied credentials.
When you enter your credentials to connect your account, Speaking Email validates and provides appropriate error messages to help you fix what is wrong.
Here are the various issues that can be identified:
If unsure what to do, you should verify that you can connect using ActiveSync in another email client (eg iPhone or Android mail), or use the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer.
Unable to connect to your Exchange mailbox. Your user account has been disabled for ActiveSync. Please see your system admin to get ActiveSync enabled for your account. Code: UserDisabledForSync
See our FAQ here.
Unable to connect to your Exchange mailbox. You have reached the maximum limit of number of devices connected to this email account. Please see your system admin to get your limit increased, or you can delete old partnerships using OWA (Outlook Web Access). Code: MaximumDevicesReached
By default Exchange Server 2010 only allows you to use 10 email clients at a time. To use Speaking Email you need to delete any partnerships with devices or mail clients that you are no longer. More recent versions have a limit of 100 partnerships, but you could still encounter this limit if you add and remove accounts a lot.
For more information on how to resolve this, see this article from Apple.
Unable to connect to your Exchange mailbox. Your user account has been temporarily blocked. Please see your system admin to get your account unblocked. Code: DevicelsBlockedForThisUser
When a new device is activated for the first time, it may be blocked or quarantined by default or according to policies set up by the sysadmin. You may be sent an email about it, you may just need to wait, or you may need to contact your sysadmin to get Speaking Email unblocked. There are many ways to block access according to Allow/Block/Quarantine (ABQ) rules.
Here is a guide to this topic from Microsoft.
Access to your mailbox has been prevented. Your Exchange mail server has request a remote wipe of your account so Speaking Email has removed the account. You can add it again if it becomes available. Code:
RemoteWipeRequested
This means a "remote wipe" has been requested by the server. This would normally happen when someone loses their phone or an employee leaves. In this case we remove all email and personal details from the phone.
You have over 2000 messages in [period]. Speaking Email will re-sync with Exchange Server and download only One Day Back. Code: TooManyMessages
You can specify the number of days back to sync under Account Settings. But if this results in more than 20 pages of headers (or 2000) messages, Speaking Email will automatically reduce reduce its time window for latest messages. We do this in order to operate efficiently and avoid throttling limits. We also automatically extend the number of days back when there are too few messages.
ActiveSync: The policy data on the Exchange server is corrupt. Please contact your mail system administrator. Code: policyStatus4
This might be due to network interference, so try again, or some network configuration (eg a proxy server or firewall).
Cannot connect to Exchange. Perhaps your password is incorrect or you are offline. Go to Account Settings to reconnect.
This is a generic error that occurs when Speaking Email tries to connect to Exchange and fails. This can actually indicate that the server rejects your credentials or that it cannot be reached. Check that you are connected to the internet, and whether your password has expired.
ActiveSync: Looks like your ActiveSync account has been disabled. Please see your Exchange server admin. Code: 403 Forbidden
Talk to your system admin to check if your email account is enabled and has ActiveSync enabled. Otherwise ActiveSync could be incorrectly configured or disabled. Try accessing your account from another mail client, eg iPhone or Android mail.
ActiveSync: Perhaps your password has changed. Access is denied due to invalid credentials. Code: 401 Unauthorized. Go to Account Settings to reconnect.
By default Exchange Server requires users to change their passwords on a regular basis. Your password may have expired since you last used Speaking Email.
Just go to Account Settings > Exchange Server Settings, type in your new password, and click Connect Account.
Exchange Server too busy. Connection will be unavailable for 20 minutes. Code: ASThrottle
By default Exchange server restricts connections in a variety of ways. We try to avoid hitting the default limits by slowing down requests and performing batched actions, but it depends on the server version, configuration, throttling policies and what other devices are connecting. Office 365 is particularly restrictive, so you may hit this error more often that you would like.
If you are typing the correct password but Speaking Email is saying it is wrong, then it is very likely to be Apple's security not allowing the connection.
For almost all iCloud and me.com accounts, you need to use an "App Specific Password". This will be the case if you have 2-factor authentication or 2-step authentication turned on. App-specific passwords are a security measure designed to keep your Apple password safe so are a very secure way to connect to Speaking Email (full details here from Apple).
You need to set up the "app password" on the iCloud website, which you can either do inside Speaking Email (it launches in a pop up window enabling you to copy and paste) or do it on your computer (a bit easier on a bigger screen) and type in the generated password.
It is easy to create an app-specific password.
2. If you have 2-factor authentication turned on you will see an "app specific passwords" section. Click on that link. (If you don't have it you can turn it on here)
3. Follow the instructions and type the generated password in the password field in Speaking Email.
Another possibility is your account may have been locked for security reasons by Apple. This is easy to unlock, just go to iCloud online and try to sign in there. If your account is locked you will be forwarded to iForgot and given instructions.
If you have the older BigPond email service:
- choose the POP option
- enter the server mail.bigpond.com
- stick with the default SSL and port
- enter your full email address as the username
If you have the newer Outlook.com service from Telstra:
- choose the Hotmail/Outlook.com option
- enter your full email address as the username
Full details are on Telstra's website here.
You can now use your regular Yahoo password with Speaking Email. We have been approved by Yahoo to provide direct Yahoo Sign In. This means we don't see your password, but only an encrypted token given by Yahoo servers, which makes this connection very secure.
This also works for mail providers that use Yahoo, such as Verizon, AT&T, and Xtra.
You no longer need to set up the "app password" on the Yahoo website, which was the previous method of connecting (which Yahoo has discontinued).
Speaking Email uses IMAP to connect to Yahoo, which is the industry standard. IMAP has a secure mode, which Speaking Email uses, meaning all data including your security token is encrypted over the network.
You can now use your regular AOL password with Speaking Email. We have been approved by Yahoo/AOL to provide direct AOL Sign In. This means we don't see your password, but only an encrypted token given by Yahoo servers, which makes this connection very secure.
This also works for mail providers that use AOL, such as Verizon.
You no longer need to set up the "app password" on the AOL website, which was the previous method of connecting (which AOL has discontinued).
Speaking Email uses IMAP to connect to AOL, which is the industry standard. IMAP has a secure mode, which Speaking Email uses, meaning all data including your security token is encrypted over the network.
You can add any number of any type of accounts.
When you click add Gmail account the second time, your first account is preloaded in the "google" connection screen.
If you have entered your email and password correctly but it says it is wrong, it could be additional security from Microsoft kicking in.
You can set up couple of different ways to secure your Outlook.com account, and you may have one of these set up (possibly without realising).
Check your email to see if your account has detected you trying to sign in and rejected it. There should be instructions on how to allow a new app to access your email.
Sometimes just signing into your account can "unblock" it and you don't need to do this next step at all.
If your account has two-step verification enabled, you will need to sign in to Outlook.com on your web browser, and click on 'App passwords' to generate a one-off password. This password can then be used for Speaking Email, keeping your normal password secure.
To find these settings, go to the Security page on Outlook.com:
https://account.live.com/proofs/Manage
Scroll down a bit to see these settings:
We take bug reports and usability issues very seriously, and would like to hear from you with as much detail as possible to help us sort out the issue. If there is a problem, quite often Speaking Email will send us an error report. Sometimes a screen shot from your phone can be helpful in diagnosing the problem. To take a screen shot you can (in Android), press (and hold for 3 secs) the power and volume down buttons at the same time. This will add a photo of the screen to your photos app, and you can email us that. In iPhone, you can take a screen shot by following these instructions:
Speaking Email supports an IMAP account type, and also uses secure IMAP to access most cloud providers (eg Yahoo, AOL, iCloud).
This error is shown when your login to the IMAP server was successful but an error was returned when we try to read the contents of the mailbox. This is an unusual situation and may indicate a problem with your mailbox.
Possible issues:
No such mailbox, can't access mailbox, or cannot find Inbox.
Try accessing your mailbox using IMAP from another mail client or use Microsoft's Connection Tester.
Many people have been asking this question, so: Yes, Speaking Email will read your emails to you. You can also reply via dictation and speak commands to you do not need to touch your phone which interacting with Speaking Email. Works on Android Phones, Android Tablets, Apple iPhone and Apple iPad.
Not at present - only Android Phones, Tablets, and Apple iPhones and iPad. Please contact us about this on feedback@speaking.email if this is important to you.
Sure, we can set that up in Speaking Email.
I had it working but now it seems to have stopped downloading emails. I know I have more mail in my inbox but it is not showing all the mail. Why?
A number of things can cause this issue.
1. If you have set up filtering under preferences, you may be filtering out everything by mistake. Have a look under preferences Sorting & Filtering. You can override this per account, so also check under Account-Specific Settings. Turn off all the filters to check if that was the problem.
2. If your email has got out of sync with the server you can fix it by tapping the "Refresh All Mail" button. This will fix the issue if it is related to the email client using out of sync in some way.
3. Another possibility is a security token or password issue. For example if your password has expired or you've changed your password. Speaking Email relies on security tokens that are revoked and refreshed on a periodic basis. If the token is unable to be refreshed, you will need to login again. In most cases Speaking Email will detect this and display a login prompt. If for some reason Speaking Email does not detect this, you would need to delete the account from Speaking Email and then add it again afresh.
4. If you have tried all these things and it still doesn't work, you could try deleting the app and reinstalling it from the App Store / Google Play. This means the program will be up to date, any auto updates will be reapplied, any settings you might have inadvertently configured will be reset, and your account will be re-connected. Your purchase will automatically be restored when you add your primary email account (if not, there is an option under the Plan screen to restore your purchase).
5. If none of the above work, you can contact us on feedback@speaking.email. We can check if anyone else has reported the issue (for example it could be a newly discovered fault). We can review error logs, and run diagnostics on your login.
I accidentally hit Ignore Sender when viewing a friend’s email. I did not see a Pref to make modifictions, nor did I find a FAQ on the subject. How can I undo the ignore for my friend’s address?
Yep, no problem, tap while the message is on screen (you may need to swipe back as it will skip over it) and then say "ignore" to toggle it off.
The ActiveSync protocol has a notion of a sync window, which is the number of days back of email to fetch from the server.
By default Speaking Email will set this to One Day Back initially. Whenever there are fewer than 100 emails Speaking Email will automatically extend the sync window. You can set the window yourself and turn off the automatic growing feature.
Go into Preferences > Account Specific Settings > You account
If you are on Office 365 you will also see the Mail Protocol switch which enables you to change to Office 365 Direct. We recommend changing to this if it's available and works with your account type. It does use a number of days back sync window, but will instead download all your latest emails (up to the maximum set in preferences, usually 250).
Sure. You can change this under Preferences > Email Filtering & Sorting.
This error message is from the Outlook app, using the Play My Email feature. It does not appear to work correctly and says this message instead of reading out perfectly valid content.
Speaking Email does not have this issue, and will read out both HTML and plain text emails with or without images no problem. So the solution is to download Speaking Email instead of using Outlook :)
Speaking Email is easy to use, but can take a bit of getting your head around.
You don't need to know them all but there are a lot of voice commands you can use to make your use of Speaking Email more enjoyable and efficient.
We have prepared a cheat sheet which lists all the commands, designed so you can print it out on a double sided sheet of paper. If you use Speaking Email while driving, you can keep this in your car and refer to it before starting your journey or at the lights, to help you remember to try out all the commands.
Download our cheat sheet to get a full list of all the commands, including dictation commands.
Sorry no, you need to switch accounts to hear emails in the other account. To do this say "account" any time.
It can’t be done entirely by voice but there is a way. You can create their address in your “favourites”, is under preferences > reply, forward, compose.
To choose from favourites when composing a new email, say “favourites” when it asks “who to?”. And this will give you a pick list to choose from your favourites. Say “list“ to have the pick list spoken, and select by saying the number of the item.
Yes you can set that up in Speaking Email.
All recipients on an incoming email whether "to" or "cc" are converted to cc apart from the sender which becomes “to” in a reply (assuming reply all is switched on - this can be toggled on the dictation command screen).
When you use the “recipient” command (available on dictation command screen) you can add more recipients from your phone contacts, or say “favourites” to pick them from the list you can set up in preferences. The additional recipients are always put as cc. (This is just to make the process as simple as possible)
When composing a new email, the first recipient becomes “to” and the others become “cc”. With any email (including reply and forward) you can clear recipients and then add them back and this will likewise consider the first one “to” and the others “cc”.
There is no way to choose BCC recipients when using Speaking Email.
No. There is no way to choose BCC recipients when using Speaking Email.
This means emails that Speaking Email has not read out before. So in other words, if you launch the app the next day, it will pick up where it left off, rather than reading out an email that it has already read out the previous day.
If you are sending an email using Speaking Email with the reply, forward or compose commands, and they are not being received, here is how to troubleshoot.
Firstly, what email platform or protocol are you using? If you are using Gmail, Office 365 Direct, or Exchange ActiveSync, all sent emails will appear in your Sent Items folder, so check there and your most likely issue will be an incorrect recipient address. For other platforms, Speaking Email does not create emails in your Sent Items folder. (This is because we send via SMTP and this does not create sent items)
How to forward email with full headers:
GMAIL
OFFICE 365
or
OUTLOOK
For older versions of Outlook:
OUTLOOK EXPRESS
MOZILLA THUNDERBIRD
APPLE MAIL
Emails sent from Speaking Email may have a 'sender' of noreply@speaking.email with 'reply-to' address of your email address.
For accounts using Gmail, Microsoft 365 Direct, or Exchange ActiveSync, all email is sent from your email address via your mail provider using provider-specific protocols (Gmail API, Office 365 API or ActiveSync commands). You will also see all sent emails appearing in your Sent Items folder.
For all other account types, we send using SMTP, the standard internet protocol for sending email.
Some mail servers will allow third party apps such as Speaking Email to send email, but others do not allow this. So we send email using our own mail server.
We have found sending from our own mail server using our own address noreply@speaking.email (rather than asking your mail server to send on your behalf) generally provides better sender authority, as we can digitally sign mail using DKIM and provide authority using SPF. This makes it less likely to be marked as spam, but depending on your mail system and content of your email, this is not a guarantee. We are improving our sending deliverablity all the time, and you can help us by sending us examples of any emails that have been incorrectly marked as spam - see this FAQ to find out how.
Update May 2023: Yahoo and AOL now allow us to send via their mail servers, so the sender will be your email address.
Q: There are times when I want to have speaking email read a message that might be at the very end of the inbox, but I have to read ahead to the end of the inbox for example, but to get to that message, I have to read all the preceding emails, which on a given day, can be more than 50, creating a tedious task. Is there a way I can "cherry pick" a known message by providing a speaking email with relevant information?
A: Yes you can say "important" to have emails from the particular sender read out first.
Another thing you can do is say "inbox" to go to the list of emails in your inbox, then say a number such as "fifty" and that will jump to email number 50 in your inbox.
A third approach is to use the "search" command if you know the subject or sender.
Many people ask this question. This is not the main purpose of the app (which is listening to your inbox), but it is possible to configure Speaking Email to read out email when it arrives.
However, it is important to note that this is only possible when the app is open in the foreground (ie on screen). If this functionality continued after the app went into the background, there would be no way to stop it happening when you didn't want it. We have made it so the phone will not go to sleep while the app is active, so if you leave the app open in reading mode it will not go into the background automatically.
When dictating emails, Speaking Email uses the operating system speech-to-text system (tech from Apple or Google), and then layers its own algorithms over the top of this.
We have a first name correction algorithm that matches with your own name and names of people on the email you are replying to (sender and recipients). This is intended to correct the name if there a multiple spellings possible - for example Catherine and Kathryn. This only works based on the current email and your first name. We guess your name based on the recipient of emails you have received. If this is incorrect, you can reset it by clearing all settings, under the Support menu.
On iPhone the speech-to-text system has a learning algorithm which often gets the right spelling of names in context, but sometimes can get it quite wrong. If you notice a consistent misspelling, it is worth resetting the speech-to-text system history to freshen it up. This can be done by clearing Siri conversation history under Apple settings for Siri.
The problem could be solved by deleting the Siri conversation history under Apple settings for Siri.
On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, go to Settings, go to Siri & Search, and tap Siri & Dictation History. Then tap Delete Siri & Dictation History.
Yes, you can customise the speech rate to your personal preference.
The default speaking speed is intentionally on the slow side. It is intended to be slow enough to avoid cognitive overload for people learning to use it, people driving, and older people with vision issues.
Once you are comfortable using Speaking Email, you will probably want to adjust the speed to make it a bit faster. Look under Preferences > Speech.
You can also use the voice commands "slower" and "faster" to adjust any time.
Hi, yes this fast gibberish being spoken is an issue with ios 16. It will hopefully be fixed with the latest update (not sure if it has been yet). You can fix it by selecting a different voice in speaking email preferences - voices - choose a different 'announcer' and 'english reader' voice.
Alternatively if re-download the voices in system settings - accessibility - voices, this will also fix the issue.
Speaking Email is drop dead simple to hook up to your Gmail account. Just download the app and click on "Sign in with Gmail". You can then hear your Gmail read out loud to you.
You can manage your mail by voice command, including reply, forward and composing new emails. Emails are sent using Gmail servers so it comes from you. There is no email server configuration needed, and no chance of emails being classified as spam due to being sent via non-Gmail servers.
Speaking Email is designed to be safe to use while driving and fully operable by voice for blind, low vision and disabled users. Other solutions such as Gmail read out loud plugins for desktop Gmail (eg Speechify) don't have the full functionality or the portability and ease of use offered by a native mobile app.
Yes you can add recipients when composing, forwarding or replying. To do this say “recipients”. This then lists the recipients and allows you to add another by saying “add”.
The app does not directly support account contacts from email systems such as Gmail/Google Contacts or Outlook/Office365/Microsoft365.
However it does support Phone Contacts. This uses your Contacts (addressbook) on your phone. In many cases you can set these accounts up to be included on your phone as a contacts source.
For example on iPhone, under system settings you can add Gmail as an account and select to include it in your Contacts.
In Speaking Email set up Phone Contacts under Preferences > Reply, Compose, etc.
Tap "Commands & Buttons Setup" to see all the commands. Every command on this screen can be used as a voice commands. You can also choose whichever commands you want as buttons to appear in the button overlay.
What if you are driving and want to know the commands? Say "help" and Speaking Email will read out the list of commands.
Here is a complete list of commands. You must have the Premium Edition to activate commands with a *
Play – resume playing (also tap on command area background)
Stop – stop listening and speaking *
Read – mark as read on your mail server *
Unread – mark as unread on your mail server *
Flag – add a flag or star on your server
Ignore Sender – easily filter out mail you don’t want to hear *
Important – mark a sender as important so they will be read out first in future *
Dictate Reply – reply by voice dictation *
Instant Reply – reply by selecting from a list of preset replies *
Forward – forward the email to a colleague *
Previous – play previous email (you can also swipe)
Next – play next email (you can also swipe)
Rewind – jump back 4 sentences (you can also scroll up) *
Repeat – re-start playing current email *
Skip – skip forward 4 sentences (you can also scroll down) *
Archive – move to 'archive' folder on your server
Done – perform the same action as double-tap, such as archive or mark-as-read on your server *
Trash – move to trash / deleted items folder on your server *
Inbox – browse list of the most recent emails in your inbox *
Preferences – change options using the Preferences Wizard *
Menu – show the home / menu screen *
Slower – slow down the speech rate *
Faster – speed up the speech rate *
Unsubscribe – unsubscribe from a promotional email *
Quit – close Speaking Email *
Help – list commands you can say
Voice – change reading voice
Download our cheat sheet to see all the commands including dictation commands.
You may need to tweak your system settings for an optimal experience. Here are some tips for setting up Android for speech and voice recognition. This includes troubleshooting issues you may encounter.
Speaking Email uses the Google TTS engine feature known as "Google Voice Typing" for dictation and commands. It works using the offline engine, so you need to download the offline voice (even if you are always online - as we have found the offline engine to be more accurate).
When you have done this, you need to make sure the same language (eg en-US, en-GB, fr-FR, pt-BR) is used in various settings so that everything works.
Check the following in your system settings:
If you see "Faster Voice Typing", switch that on.
Still not working?
You may have some system setting inadvertently disabled. The best way to check is to open Google Voice Assistant. If something is disabled it will detect and prompt you guide you how to turn it on.
Speech Services by Google may also be a source of issues. Look in system settings > apps > Speech Services by Google. This needs to be enabled, and it has been known to auto update and cause speech system issues. Find the 'uninstall' button which may be under the dots menu, which will factory reset it.
Bluetooth
See also our tips about Bluetooth:
https://speaking.email/FAQ/38/bluetooth-support
Android Auto
See here for info on Android Auto:
https://speaking.email/FAQ/118/can-i-use-speaking-email-with-android-auto
Not talking
If you can't hear any speech output, check out the possible reasons here:
https://speaking.email/FAQ/11/speaking-email-does-not-speak-why-not
Sometimes when dictating Speaking Email inserts the wrong word. If this happens just tap the screen to activate voice commands.
When dictation voice commands are active you can say any of these commands:
"Read back" - to hear the email read back to you
"Send" - to send the email
"Add" - to add more text by starting a new sentence
"Continue" - to continue dictation mid sentence
"Subject" - to change the subject
"Recipient" - to add or change recipients
"Replace" - to change a word
“Delete word” - to delete the last word
“Delete sentence” - to delete the last sentence
“Redo” - start dictation again from scratch
“Language” - to dictate a reply in another language
“Discard” - to cancel dictation and go back to email reading
Punctuation
During dictation you can say punctuation, such as:
“Full stop” (avoid “period” since this is also a common word)
“Comma”
“Dash”
“Question mark”
“Exclamation mark” or “exclamation point”
“Smiley face”
Control
During dictation you can also say any of these commands without first having to tap for the voice command menu (note these may not work during dictation in languages other than English):
“Dictation done” - brings up the voice commands menu
“Dictation help” - gives you context sensitive explanations or a list of commands you can say
"Delete word" or "delete sentence"
“Cancel” - to cancel dictation and go back to email reading (only if first word said)
Speaking Email adds automatic capital letters and a full stop at the end.
Download our cheat sheet to see all the commands including dictation commands.
Speaking Email uses the default system voice. In the premium edition, you can also select a voice. If you download new voices under system settings you can then select them in Speaking Email.
In Settings go to General > Accessibility > Speech > Voices.
Tap "Voice". If you don't see a "Voice" button, turn on one of the accessibility options eg "Speak Selection". Choose English (or your phone language).
You will see a number of regional voice options. Speaking Email will pick up your region from regional settings.
If your region's voice is set to "Default" it may have that Siri-with-a-cold effect. If it is, try setting it to any of the "Enhanced Quality" options. For the voice to take effect restart Speaking Email.
You can now select which voice to use in Speaking Email Premium Edition, under Preferences.
Yes, you can compose new emails, replies and forwards. To compose a new email, just say "compose" at any command listening trigger point.
Speaking Email asks you "who to?". Say the first and last name of anyone in your phone contacts (sometimes known as your phone address book). Speaking Email will ask for permission to access your contacts the first time, and you have to tap OK to give your permission.
Speaking Email searches your contacts for the name you said and any similar sounding names. If there is more than one choice it shows a list of possibilities. If you can't remember the last name, say just the first name and see all the options. And if a contact has more than one email address, the alternatives are displayed. In all cases of picking from a list, you can say "list" to have the options read out to you, and say the option or its number to select.
If you don't want to use your phone contacts this can be switched off in the preferences, and we allow you to set up your own list of favourite recipients (in preferences > replies, forwarding, compose). If you switch off phone contacts, Speaking Email will instead display the favourite recipients list for you to pick from. Say the number or first part of the email address to select it. If you are using phone contacts you can still use the favourites list as well, by saying "favourites".
After choosing the recipient, you are asked to say the subject. Speaking Email then asks you to compose the message. Here you can dictate your message, including punctuation.
Tap the screen any time to trigger the command popup, enabling you to say a dictation command or choose a button. You can say "subject" to change the subject, or "recipients" to change or add additional recipients to your message. Say "help" for a list of command you can say here. Or look in the Command Quick Reference under the Support menu.
You may be confronted with this dialog on some Android devices.
This means that your phone came with a normal voice, but it is low quality to save space on your phone. You can download a better sounding voice if you like - and if you have space on your phone. You should click the 'Do not show again' check box, as it will keep asking if you hit cancel. It is not required that you download a higher quality voice. Note that you can also change voices - see here
Yes, you can choose your preferred voices to read with, when you upgrade to Premium. You can choose any installed voice to be your email reader, and a second voice to be your "announcer". If you understand more than one language, turn on the "multilingual" switch to have your email run through language detection and spoken in the correct voice for the language.
In the Basic edition, Speaking Email will automatically select an appropriate voice based on the language selected in your system preferences.
We use built-in system voices, so your phone is processing all text-to-speech locally, and your system preferences are obeyed.
In iOS, you can download Apple voices in system settings. In iPhone Settings, select General > Accessibility > Speech > Voices.
In Android, you can also change voices in Settings:
then go to Language and Input. (Note in some phones go to Accessibility instead)
then go to Text-to-Speech output:
You will notice that I have the defaul option, and another 3rd party option. In this case I used IVONA - a free speech engine you can get on the app store.
Now tap the cog next to the TTS engine, then tap “install voice data” to download a high quality voice.
Do you ever subscribe to email newsletters and then unsubscribe because you don't have time to read them? With Speaking Email you will have time, so you can subscribe to your favourite news services and get news that’s relevant to you.
Apple does not allow 3rd party apps to use the Siri voices. Speaking Email will however use any 'Enhanced' voices that you have available on your phone. You can check and download extra 'Enhanced' voices under System Settings > General > Accessibility > Voices.
To select a voice to use in Speaking Email, go into Preferences > Voices and choose the voice you like for each language. Note there are two 'English' selections - one for the 'announcer' and one for English email reading.
Even though there is a 'skip promotions' feature, I find it best not to use “skip promotions” and instead double tap when they appear so they are cleaned out of my inbox.
I also use “ignore sender”, but again that doesn’t mark as done. Other people might not be after an inbox clean but more an email scan so it would be useful for their case.
If you do switch on "mark as read when speaking" (under Account Settings), it will 'mark as read' every email as it goes past including promotional emails that it skips.
See also "It is skipping too much or not enough"
Speaking Email uses the Apple voices installed on your iPhone. You can easily download more enhanced quality voices.
In iPhone Settings, select General > Accessibility > Speech > Voices
There you can download voices for any language. You need to be on wifi to download voices since they are quite big files.
Back in Speaking Email you can now select those voices you've just downloaded.
When you upgrade to Premium, you can choose any voice to be your email reader, and a second voice to be your "announcer".
We detect and skip email signatures, disclaimers, phone number, web addresses and email addresses. You will hear "skipping signature" to let you know when this happens. Our detection is based on heuristics and is not always perfect, but is we think it is pretty damn good. We are continually improving it, and you are welcome to forward us any emails that are not being detected very well (eg a signature not being skipped or some text being skipped when it isn't a signature).
There are several settings under Preferences to customise what is spoken:
We have created Speaking Email with safe driving in mind. Therefore, it is not designed for typing email responses. There is an instant reply feature for sending a basic 'thanks' etc to an email. For any emails needing detailed reply, your email can be flagged for later.
You can set up your own instant reply options - up to 10 - which can be up to 200 characters.
Update 2018: you can now dictate replies using speech recognition.
Update 2019: we've recently enabled editing your dictated reply by typing. Tap on the reply text to edit it using the keyboard. This feature should not be used when driving, but it was requested by users who are visually impaired. We may lock this down in future.
Yes, of course! You can also customise this so it puts all mail archived by Speaking Email into a folder of your choice. By default it will create a new folder called “Speaking Email Archived” but you can change this to any folder you like or turn this feature off.
You can change the options so that the "archive" command (or double-tap) doesn't move the email but instead just marks as read. This is the way many people manage their email (but we recommend archiving email to make your life less cluttered!).
Note that this does not work on POP servers, so we recommend using IMAP if available.
Speaking Email is primarily an inbox helper. It reads out all emails in your inbox to give you an overview of what's current, and lets you archive emails to keep your inbox tidy.
If you have a Gmail account, we have support for checking folders other than "inbox". Under Account Settings there is a switch "check all folders" which will simply gather all new and recent email across the inbox and any user folders (folders or labels that you have set up - excludes system folders such as Sent Items, Trash and All Mail).
For complete customisation of what emails you want read out by Speaking Email, we have another switch "use gmail search pattern" which allows you to add or exclude any folders or even any search terms you wish. To set this up, simply create a search in Gmail that shows all the mail you want, then copy the search query into the Speaking Email Account Settings.
For example you could set up this:
in:inbox OR label:clients OR label:personal-stuff
If you want to read out just one subfolder, here is an example how to do that:
Yes, we have a new command "file" which lets you file the current email in a folder.
Saying "file" brings up a pick list of the top 20 folders in your account. You can tap one of these or say the name of the folder. If you have subfolders underneath, it will then let you pick from those subfolders. On your final choice it moves the email to the folder you selected.
If you move it into the wrong folder by mistake, just say "undo" at the next listening prompt.
Speaking Email dictation keeps listening for 10 seconds to allow you to pause for breath, and then asks if you are finished. It gives you the opportunity to say "more" and add more text.
However, this feature relies on the operating system dictation and some versions of Android operating system will not allow silence this long and unfortunately a pause of a couple of seconds will stop the dictation.
Is there a workaround? Basically, you need to speak without pausing. This is a skill you can learn and master with a little practise, although it can certainly be frustrating.
Yes but only while Speaking Email is in the foreground playing emails. In other words, while you are listening to your inbox, any new emails are inserted in the next available slot, so when you move to the next email it will be one that has just come in.
You can also configure it to only read new incoming email.
Note that while the app is in the background it will not start speaking. Why not? See more about how to configure new email only and why background mode is not supported.
Volume/Silent
First, check your volume (press the + button to turn volume up). There are several volume settings for different types of apps, so it is easy to think the volume is up if you don't check it within the app itself. Then check the "silent" switch. If the phone is on silent mode it may not speak (depending on device).
Corrupt voices
If you don't hear any speaking, try changing the voice. If you hear the sender and time being spoken but not the email content (or the other way around), this is very likely the problem. Go to Preferences > Voices and choose a different voice. There are two voices you can select - the first one is the Announcer, then English Email Reader. Try choosing different voices and see if that fixes it. We have seen this problem on both iPhone and Android.
Non-Google voices
If you are on Android, it is possible there are no Google voices installed on your phone (depending on your provider, device and customisations). If so, you can download them under system settings. Speaking Email does not work with non-Google voices such as Samsung voices.
Bluetooth
https://speaking.email/FAQ/38/bluetooth-support
Android Auto
https://speaking.email/FAQ/118/can-i-use-speaking-email-with-android-auto
You need to open Speaking Email and click Account Settings to add your email account. It does not hook into the email app in the phone. (This is because Apple does not allow this)
Yes. If you are not happy with the app for any reason, we don't mind giving you a refund.
For Apple users, go to https://reportaproblem.apple.com and login with your Apple ID. You will see a list of all apps you have bought and buttons to report a problem and request a refund.
For Android users, if the purchase is within 48 hours, you can get a refund on the Play Store following this process. If it is after 48 hours or if you prefer, contact us directly on feedback@speaking.email and we will arrange a refund for you. Please tell us the reason so we can record this for our feedback, and the Google Play receipt number (starts with GPA) so we can locate the transaction.
When dictating a reply or forward message, you can speak the message and say punctuation to be included.
We recommend saying "full stop" instead of "period".
Speaking Email provides dictation by using the operating system voice recognition APIs. It also depends on the language you are dictating in, which defaults to the language of the email you are replying to, and the locale of your device. For example if the email is English and you are in the US, you should be able to say "period" to get a dot - this is built into the voice recognition system on your device. If you are in the UK you can say "full stop" instead. In non-English languages you can say the appropriate word.
If "period" is not working for you, instead try "full stop". As its more likely you might actually use the word 'period' in a message, we added "full stop" as a synonym that isn't dependent on operating system, language or locale.
Yes! Just single tap anywhere on the email screen and say "stop".
If you have multiple accounts, a unified inbox would show all accounts combined into a single view. We don't support this feature, but it is on our development roadmap. Email us if you want this feature.
If you want to play one account (say your work account) and then another (say your personal account), you can do this easily by saying the voice command "account" when you want to switch accounts. You can also add "account" to your onscreen buttons (under Preferences > Buttons).
As a workaround, you could create your own unified inbox by, for example, forwarding your accounts to a new gmail account that you create. You can even use gmail to check other IMAP and POP accounts directly, just look under Gmail Settings > Accounts > Check email from other accounts.
You can now dictate new emails to contacts in your address book. To do this, say the voice command “compose” at any listening trigger point.
Yiu our need to provide permission to access your contacts and then you will be asked to say the recipient first and last name. You can select from contacts with similar names if the name spoken is not an exact single match. Then you are asked for the subject and then dictation mode begins. During dictation you can speak your email including punctuation. Tap the screen or wait 5 seconds for the dictation commands, which let you read back, add, delete, redo, or replace words. Here you can add or change recipients too.
You can also dictate email replies and forwards when you are listening to an email being spoken. To do this, say the “reply” or “forward” command. The dictation mode works the same as for composing a new email.
Your iPhone can read emails out loud using native text-to-speech technology when you download Speaking Email voice reader.
This app provides the missing functionality you need to hook up your email to voice technology.
Just download Speaking Email to give your phone the ability to read your email out loud. No more having to sit down and peer at the screen - you can listen too email while active, driving, doing dishes or anything else.
"Play My Emails" is a new Microsoft Cortana feature in Outlook for iOS. Both apps play your email inbox out loud, enabling you to archive, flag, and reply to emails.
Just like Speaking Email, Outlook Play My Emails integrates directly with Office 365, Outlook.com, Hotmail and Gmail accounts meaning your email is always in sync.
But it's not quite as full featured as Speaking Email which provides the following additional features over Outlook "Play My Emails":
Most importantly, it is about the experience. Which one has the nicest, smoothest, fastest, least cluttered and most focussed reading and command experience?
Speaking Email also supports secure enterprise email access through Microsoft Intune and on-premises Exchange (as a Microsoft product you might assume Outlook would support these but in fact Speaking Email has better support for these enterprise level Microsoft technologies).
Are we worried? Yes and no. We welcome this competition which we expect will propel market growth in email text-to-speech. It should get more people thinking about email text-to-speech and trying Speaking Email vs Outlook Play My Emails.
We hope to position our app in the top end of this growing market as users recognize Speaking Email as the best way to play their emails. While Outlook enables general "productivity", we go further to focus on two primary use cases - visually impaired users and safe driving.
We also hope that there's still room for little startups like Speaking Email now that the Microsoft gorilla has entered the fray. We count on support from our thousands of enthusiastic users to recommend Speaking Email to friends.
See Geekwire review of Outlook Play My Emails by @toddbishop
Speaking Email is available on Android in the Play Store here, or search for Speaking Email.
"At last, an app that reads my emails to me. Perfect when driving" - Brian Sutton, Lawyer, UK
"I wanted an app to read my emails to me" is the main reason most people download Speaking Email. They often think email reading will be built into the phone, only to discover, like most things, it's a whole specialty area and a dedicated app is the way to go.
Speaking Email's core function is "read my emails". It reads out each email one by one continuously and you can navigate next and back (sort of like a Spotify playlist).
No time to read emails? Let Speaking Email read aloud to you on the move.
Sorry, Speaking Email only reads out email. It does not read out SMS text messages.
While this would be technically possible on Android, developers are not given access to intercept SMS messages on the Apple platform. We want to provide parity of features between iOS and Android as much as possible.
We have been asked about supporting other message types, such as iMessage, WhatsApp, Viber and Facebook Messenger. These are proprietary formats and so are not likely to be accessible by third party developers such as ourselves.
In any case, we believe it is sensible to stick to a core proposition, and it our case that is to focus on being the best possible talking email app available on any platform.
Yes! Speaking Email does just that. It reads your email aloud, so you can listen to email on the move on your iPhone or Android phone in the car or anywhere. It reads out loud all emails in your inbox, continuously, one by one, and new emails that arrive while you are listening are slotted in next.
If you are so busy and get so much email you don't have time to read it during your working day, use Speaking Email to hear email read aloud to you.
"At last, an app that reads my email to me. Perfect when driving" - Brian Sutton, Lawyer, UK
Speaking Email uses your phone's native TTS (Text-To-Speech) engine to read your emails to you in a clear voice. It uses your phone's regional settings so it speaks your emails aloud in your language and accent.
We first extract the content from each email in your inbox, using our proprietary algorithms to turn emails into spoken language, and use the TTS engine to provide the speech synthesis of this email content.
If you have the premium edition, there's a "multilingual" option too. This option switches voices based on language. It detects the language of the email contents and selects the highest quality voice installed on your phone of that language. You can also select your preferred voice for your local language as well as English.
Yes - you are looking for Speaking Email. It's the app that reads your emails out loud to you.
With the help of Speaking Email your phone can read your emails to you, with intelligent clutter detection to read out only the relevant email content. It also lets you reply and manage your mail with voice commands.
Speaking Email is developed and published by Beweb Limited in New Zealand.
Beweb is a locally owned web and mobile development company of 10 developers in central Auckland, who have been using web technology to make business applications, mobile apps and websites for 19 years. See our website for more.
If you really like Speaking Email we would love it if you could help us promote the app by telling people about it.
Here are some ways you could help us:
We really appreciate all the positive support and recommendations we've had so far from users. Every one helps!
We'd love to hear from you. Please send us an email on feedback@speaking.email, and we'll get in touch.
Yes! As of January 2020 we've just released our new app for Apple CarPlay.
After we got the green light from Apple to develop Speaking Email for CarPlay in mid 2019, we have been hard at work to create the email app CarPlay users would want and expect.
It's called Speaking Email CarPlay and you can download it here.
We had been working on a version for Android Auto but unfortunately due to Google restrictions, this is not going to be possible. This means Speaking Email will not show up as an app on the Android Auto screen.
However, you may still be able to use Speaking Email with your car speakers and microphone, by using either Bluetooth or a cable. We have found this is inconsistent among devices so we suggest you try it out on your setup. You can use the free version to test it out - there is no need to purchase as there is no difference in connectivity between the free and paid versions.
See also our tips about Bluetooth:
https://speaking.email/FAQ/38/bluetooth-support
No, Speaking Email does not support Alexa. It works on Android Phones, Tablets, and Apple iPhones and iPad.
We tried building a version for Amazon Alexa, but there are some limitations with Alexa, and the way it interacts, and remembers where it is up to, with interactions with humans. We decided to pause work on this feature, as it was not working well enough for us to release. Subsequently Amazon built this feature themselves in 2018, and it suffered many of these limitations, and then they ditched it in 2021.
You can see our comparison of Alexa and Speaking Email features here.
Speaking Email is a great alternative replacement for Alexa email. It is more powerful but nice and easy to use.
Not at present - only Android Phones, Tablets, and Apple iPhones and iPad. Please contact us about Google Home integration on feedback@speaking.email if this is important to you.
You can use Speaking Email in conjunction with Google Assistant by long-pressing the action button on your headset, or equivalent bluetooth action button on your steering wheel if your car is linked to your phone via bluetooth. If you are using other audio apps, like Spotify, you need to pause the audio (click action button on headset), then launch Speaking Email (can use Google Assistant to do this), and then start listening to emails and interacting with Speaking email using your voice only. When driving, you can talk to your phone, as your would talk to a passenger in the car with you, but don't look at it or touch your phone if you can avoid it, as that could distract you while driving. Here is a scenario:
While I'm driving, I quite often press and hold the 'action' button on my headset to launch Google assistant, then say 'open Spotify', since my phone is in a car phone cradle on the dash board, I can then press the 'play' icon once Spotify is open, to get some music playing. I also do this for audiobooks (using MortPlayer).
If you want to interact with Speaking Email while the audio is playing from any source, you need to pause the audio (Speaking Email will not pause currently playing audio), so you can click (short press) the 'action' button on the headset to pause whatever is playing, then press and hold (long press) the 'action' button on the headset, and say 'open Speaking Email'. This will launch Speaking Email, and then start auto-playing new emails if you have auto-play setup in the settings. When you are done listening to email, or say 'quit' or 'stop' while the actions screen is open in Speaking Email, between messages, you can then click (short press) the 'action' button on the headset to resume music playing from the previous audio source, such as Spotify or an audio book reader like MortPlayer.
It sounds a bit complicated, but it is easy to get used to - again, make sure you try it before you start driving, so you are not experimenting while in traffic!
Dictation for Gmail is a great tool enabling text to speech on Gmail on the desktop. Speaking Email connects to your Gmail account in the same way but using an app on Android and iPhone. Some of our users are using both these tools to help them achieve productivity gains.
We have a separate app for CarPlay users which is called "Speaking Email CarPlay". You can get that from the App Store.
We were asked whether Speechify iPhone app is a more fully featured and more expensive alternative to Speaking Email.
Speechify iPhone app does a remarkable job of reading out pages of books or scanned documents, by using the camera. It can also read out web pages.
Speaking Email does not have those features but rather is dedicated to email reading and managing your email by voice, including replies, forwarding and composing new emails.
Speechify can read email using Gmail or Outlook, but this appears to be on their Chrome extension. Speechify iPhone app does not provide an email reading feature, and their Android app does not appear to either.
Speaking Email is designed from the ground up to be an email reader. It connects to all email platforms, and it also lets you manage your email by voice control.
The two apps are therefore both useful in reading different types of content, and have a very different focus. Speaking Email is a best of breed solution for email speech technology. Speaking Email is only available on iPhone and Android. We do not have a Chrome extension.
Speaking Email has a free 7 day trial which does not automatically charge you at the end. We believe Speechify is worth the price but Speaking Email is easy to justify at fraction of the cost.
It is ideal if you are looking to improve your productivity, save time, or have a condition such as dyslexia, blindness, or other visual impairment.
No. Speaking Email is not a notification speaking app. There are a number of apps on Android that do this, such as PingLoud, Out Loud App, ReadLOUD, ReadItToMe. These apps activate on a notification of a new email or message and speak the notification.
This is only possible on Android, not on iPhone, and we are wanting to avoid features that only work on one platform.
Speaking Email is designed with a different use case in mind. It is designed for reviewing your inbox, listening to emails with smart content extraction, replying and managing mail by voice. When new email arrives, Speaking Email will read it out, but this is only when the app is active in playing mode.
If you don't want Speaking Email to read your inbox and would rather it only waited for new incoming email, you can do this by saying the command "incoming". This displays the "waiting for incoming mail" screen. The app will avoid going to sleep so that it can stay active and monitor for email as long as you don't switch to another app. However, this is not designed to work in the background.
When Speaking Email is the background it is not monitoring for new emails, meaning it does not use any bandwidth or battery, and will not wake up and spontaneously start speaking. It does not hook into the Android mail notifications. If you are looking for this feature, please download one of the apps mentioned above that speak Android notifications.
My mother relied on an Echo Dot/Alexa to read her gmail. Amazon just announced this feature will no longer be available. I'm desperate to find an alternative. She can't manipulate an iPhone. Can your product help her?
“Alexa, read my email.” no longer works.
Speaking Email is a great alternative to replace the discontinued Amazon Alexa email. Speaking Email supports Gmail, Microsoft 365, and most other account types.
Amazon gave users just a week's notice they are pulling the service with an email giving no reason but just saying "email access will no longer be supported for Alexa customers".
So what are the differences?
After each email, Alexa asks what you want to do. Here are the Alexa commands and equivalent Speaking Email commands:
"Read it." => "play" (or "repeat" when at the end)
"Skip." => "next"
"Delete." => "delete"
"Reply." => "reply"
"Mark as unread." => "unread"
"Flag." => "flag"
"Archive." => "archive"
By default Speaking Email gives you 5 seconds after reading the headers to decide what to do and then defaults to playing the email in full. These defaults can be configured in preferences to either wait indefintely for you to decide, and/or to default to going on to the next email.
Amazon announced the discontinuation with only a week's notice in the following email:
“We’re writing to inform you that beginning on November 8th, 2021, email access will no longer be supported for Alexa customers. This means you will no longer be able to link your Gmail or Microsoft email account with Alexa to browse or manage your email, and any linked email account(s) will automatically be unlinked.”
For a full list of commands, check our cheat sheet:
Siri can read emails but has rudimentary email reading skills. Ask Siri "read me my emails" to hear your first 25 email subjects and senders. To get the full text of the email you need to ask "read my last email", but you have to repeatedly push the listen button and ask for emails to be read out one at a time - using the same format, such as "read my second email". There's no way to have Siri speak emails continuously or read the next email or to interact in the context of the current email (eg archive or flag).
Speaking Email on the other hand is specifically designed for reading out emails. Unlike Siri, it does not distract you with voice control or require your attention, but intead provides a great email client using your phone's native text-to-speech capability and a focus on safety while driving.
We tailor the experience to the medium and the context. For example with email we detect legalese disclaimers, email signatures and other common email clutter and skip over them. Siri won't do this because it needs to handle a wide range of tasks.
A quick comparison of other apps you might think would read your email out loud in a driving safe manner:
* Talker was the only other app in the app store that did the same thing when we launched Speaking Email, and we think Speaking Email is better because:
Speaking Email reads HTML email whereas Talker reads plain text versions only (and some emails have no plain version)
Talker's voice recognition is always on, so it often hears itself or interprets noises like moving the phone as commands
Talker keeps listening in the background after you switch away from it
Speaking Email can reply as email text but Talkler replies by attaching an MP3.
Speaking Email can play attachments (including attached MP3 files, PDFs and Word docs), but Talkler can't play attachments.
Speaking Email's gesture recognition is more reliable (eg swipe to next works better)
** Voice Dream Mail was new in 2015, and it provides a similar feature set to Speaking Email, but it has some shortcomings including no Exchange support, no email display and no signature detection. As with every other app here you will spend more time listening to email signatures and disclaimers than content.
But don’t take our word for it, you should try Talker and Voice Dream Mail as well and see which you prefer. They all have free versions to try.
We hope to be included in the 2020 list of best email apps.
We were notably absent in 2019, but we hope this year will be the one where we get noticed by TechCrunch, The Verge, Lifewire, TechRadar, iMore and the other big tech news sites who put out these reviews.
While it's more a specialised email app, we still would like to be included in some of the magazine and review sites roundups of the best email apps of the year.
2019 saw the launch of Outlook Play My Emails, a new feature for the Outlook iOS app combining Cortana speech tech with Outlook. We hope this puts email voice assistants on the map on the best email apps lists.
2019 also saw several of the best email apps of 2018 now being defunct, including Newton, Google Inbox, and Astro (which also had voice commands like Speaking Email).
There have been some good reviews of Out Loud, an Android app that reads your notifications out loud. Out Loud speaks email notifications, but not the email content itself.
Speaking Email is just for email and it lets you listen to the full contents of your email messages (while skipping disclaimers and signatures). It also continuously plays all emails in your inbox, making it a great tool to get up to speed on your latest emails hands free. Speaking Email lets you reply, and forward, as well as archiving or moving mail into another folder. You can even listen to mail in any of your folders or compose new mail.
Talker was the only other talking mail app in the App Store that when we launched Speaking Email back in 2015. In fact the limitations of Talkler were what inspired us to create a better app in this same category. We think Speaking Email is the best email app that reads your mail to you because:
Speaking Email reads HTML email whereas Talker reads plain text versions only (and some emails have no plain version)
Talker's voice recognition is always on, so it often hears itself or interprets noises like moving the phone as commands
Talker keeps listening in the background after you switch away from it
Speaking Email can reply as email text (using dictation) but Talkler replies by attaching an MP3.
Speaking Email can play attachments (including attached MP3 files, PDFs and Word docs), but Talkler can't play attachments.
Speaking Email's gesture recognition is more reliable (eg swipe to next works better)
Talkler does not skip email signatures and disclaimers, making email speech very verbose
Speaking Email has "ignored senders" allowing you to curate a list of who you want to hear from
Talkler and Speaking Email are priced about the same, and they both have free versions so you can try them both and see which you think is the best email app for listening to mail. They are both good apps but we (of course!) think Speaking Email is the best app in this category.
Voice Dream Mail was launched about the same time as Speaking Email, and it provides a similar feature set to Speaking Email, but it has some shortcomings including:
Both Voice Dream Mail and Speaking Email have free versions and are priced about the same for the full versions, so try them both.
AOL has discontinued their AOLbyPhone service, which read your email out loud to you via a phone service similar to voice mail.
Speaking Email provides this service and is lower cost than AOLbyPhone.
We do not offer the ability to reply by taking a voice recording, but instead take dictation of your reply which turns it into a proper text email rather than being attached as a WAV file. By the way, we support playing WAV file attachments, so that if you use an email system that does take voice recordings (such as voicemail or other assistive technology) we can play it to you. We also have several other features that AOLbyPhone lacked, such as attachment speaking, disclaimer and signature skipping, reply thread skipping.
We have had AOL by Phone users switch over to Speaking Email and be very happy with the change. You can use your existing AOL account and easily compare the difference.
We think Speaking Email is the best text-to-speech email app that you will find for reading your emails to you in 2020.
We've tried all the iPhone email apps, voice reader apps, voice assistants and talking mail apps on the App Store and Google Play. We realised the need for a great app with a clear focus on simply being the best email reading app, rather than trying to do everything.
People often ask Siri or Google Now to "read my email" or "read me my emails" but you need a dedicated app to read them properly.
Gmail doesn't provide text to speech capability. In November 2019 Outlook has just released voice control, which may become the new market trailblazer.
We created this app to read email on iPhone or Android while driving, but it also works for listening to your email anywhere.
Unlike Siri or Google Now, it does not distract you with needing a response within 2 seconds, but instead provides a great email client using your phone's native text-to-speech capability and a focus on safety while driving.
Try it out and see if Speaking Email becomes your favourite new email app.
iLane was a system for BlackBerry that allowed you to read and write emails by voice. This has now been discontinued, along with BlackBerry handsets.
Speaking Email is a great replacement for iLane, if you have an Android or iPhone.
It does not do all the stuff iLane used to do (such as voice dialing contacts, text messages, calendar, news, sports and weather) but it does read your email out loud much better than iLane.
iLane also enabled reply by voice, which would send an audio attachment, which we don't support - but we do support customised single sentence canned replies.
OK Google is a great tool but it is a jack of all trades. Speaking Email is designed with one purpose - to read your email. We can compete with Google and Apple by being more focused on this task.
For example, Google Assistant does not have the intelligent content detection of Speaking Email, which results in a lot of headers, disclaimers, footers and signatures being read out. Speaking Email also has a much clearer concept of context - you can take actions on the current email such as mark as read, archive, delete, reply or forward.
Instead of "OK Google read my email" say "OK Google open Speaking Email".
Yes. They work great together. Because both apps use your Gmail account directly, you can use them both to help take control of your inbox.
There are a number of folders you can customise in Speaking Email and you can set these to Mailbox folders if you wish - for example set your ‘star folder’ to be "[Mailbox]/To Read" or "[Mailbox]/Later".
No, we don't use any of these online services. We use the text-to-speech voice synthesis that is built into your phone. We use the default system voice. You can change your system voice in your phone settings.
Speaking Email has voice command recognition and a dictation system which enables you to dictate a reply, forward an email to a colleague or compose a new email.
We are not using Dragon Dictation for this purpose, but instead use the native technology provided by your device - from Apple or Google.
Apple recently made available new technology that enables use of the native speech-to-text (speech recognition) system that Siri uses. This makes Speaking Email very good at recognising most accents.
On Android we are using Google for voice recognition. This technology is somewhat variable on the different hardware platforms but has the advantage of working offline and requiring no third party installations.
Dragon Naturally Speaking is a Nuance product which enables text-to-speech on the desktop. It is very advanced with more than 25 years of legacy code behind it but it mostly assumes the user can see the screen and has lots of detailed editing commands like "move cursor to the left" or "select that word". On a mobile device we can't assume the user is looking at the screen, so Speaking Email attempts to simplify the dictation experience in a way suitable for the mobile era.
Many of our users use both Dragon Naturally Speaking on the desktop and Speaking Email on the mobile, as both cater for their respective platforms very well.
Download now and get our Premium Edition (all the features) free for 7 days.
If you don't think the time you'd save is worth the US$5/month price tag, you can continue to use and it will downgrade to the free basic version after 7 days.
Speaking Email
