Waxwing Reader

Turn your reading pile into listening

Bring any book, article, PDF, newsletter or scrap of text to life with lifelike narration — all inside one quiet app.

9:41

A field guide to slow mornings

On attention, patience, and the long read · By Ines Delacroix in Essays — Mar 14, 2025

Why we stopped finishing things

Reading used to be the last unhurried thing most of us did. Then it became one more feed to clear. This piece is about winning back the middle of a chapter — the part nobody quotes and everybody skips.

Open book and reading glasses on a worn desk, photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels

68%412 words

3 of 74 minutes read

Watch the film

Find the next thing you can’t put down

Browse thousands of titles from a growing shelf of essays, classics, newsletters and reporting — every one of them narrated.

Fathom

The Long Signal

Elias Norrie

Black and white studio portrait, photo by Benoit Vacherie on Pexels

What I Kept
with Thea Brandt

Thea Brandt

Coastline Quarterly

Coastline Qtly

Pick a voice you’d actually listen to

Match each story to the right narrator. There are 340 studio-grade voices, from dry and clipped to slow and warm.

WarmScottish

Marlow

Reading time you didn’t know you had

The walk to the station, the queue, the last mile of a run, the wash-up after dinner. Waxwing fills the gaps you can’t read through.

Download iOS app Download Android app

Person listening through headphones on a tree-lined path, photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels

Good voices to start with

MarlowOlder Scottish maleNarration
JunoYoung American femaleNarration
OsricMid-thirties Irish maleNarration

Bring your own reading, in 29 languages

Drop in a link, a PDF, an ePub or a wall of pasted text and hear it back in a voice that belongs to that language.

Link

PDF

ePub

Text

Spanish Icelandic Swahili Korean

Turn any document into a two-host show

Duet spins your saved reading into a short conversation between two narrators. Out now on Waxwing Reader for iOS.

Duet episode

Nadia

So chapter three is really where the whole argument turns over.

Theo

Right, and that is exactly the bit everybody skims.

Nadia

Four pages. Four pages carrying the weight of the entire book…

Theo

Which is why we are going to take them slowly.

Your whole reading list, out loud

Send PDFs, newsletters, ePubs, notes and articles to one place and hear them in high-fidelity voices

Audiobooks without the shelf

Work through hundreds of classics and small-press titles you won’t find anywhere else

A listening habit that sticks

Save to your library, set a daily minute goal, and keep a streak you actually care about

11:11

Welcome back,
Priya

Explore the shelvesBooks, essays, newsletters and more

Small
press
picks

Add something to listen to

Import your own content PDFs, ePubs, articles, blogs and more

You’re on a run

Daily streak6 days running — keep it going

Home

Reads

Explore

Voices

Listening without a ceiling

Rowan Studio · Long-form narration

29 languages, one library

Hear your saved stories in voices from the places they came from

The 6:40 train is where my reading happens now. I used to stare out of the window for forty minutes and arrive having taken in nothing at all.

02:211 hour 44 minutes left-01:12

Words lit as they’re read

Follow along while each line highlights in time with the audio, at whatever pace suits you

Legacy voice

Portrait, photo by Jake Nackos on Unsplash

Rosalind Vane

Portrait, photo by Korede Adenola on Pexels

August Rill

Portrait, photo by Thanh Xuan Nguyen Ly on Pexels

Delia Okonkwo

Preview Save voice

Voices with a history

Stream stories read by narrators from our licensed Legacy Voice archive

Learn more

What people are saying

Waxwing’s narration app is now live in 29 markets

tidewire

The reading app that finally sounds like a person

Fathom

Waxwing launches Duet, an AI two-host reader

Waxwing signs audio rights pact with three estates

Marquee

iOS app store

Get the free iOS app

Download for iOS

Google Play store

Get the free Android app

Download for Android

Frequently asked questions

What can I import into the app?

Can I export the audio it makes?

Is there a free tier?

Which languages are supported today?

How many voices come with the app?

Listen to anything with Waxwing