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Pocket will now read the internet aloud to you

The bookmarking service wants to help you read (or listen) deeply, without distraction.

Pocket will now read the internet aloud to you

[Image: Pocket]

BY Katharine Schwab1 minute read

The internet today is so cluttered with stories, it’s hard to find–and keep track of–the really good stuff. That’s where the bookmarking platform Pocket comes in, giving you an easy way to curate articles you want to save or read later, and then providing recommendations based on what people are engaging with most deeply. But there’s still the matter of carving out time to read everything that strikes your fancy.

[Image: Pocket]
That’s why today, Pocket is announcing a redesign aimed at giving people new ways to consume good stories. Most strikingly, the Mozilla-owned service is debuting a feature that uses text-to-speech to read your saved articles aloud to you–turning a list of to-reads into a piecemeal, personalized podcast.

[Image: Pocket]
Using Amazon’s text-to-speech toolPolly, the listening feature gives you a simple way to access articles on the go or when your hands are occupied. Right now, people can listen to Pocket articles, but not easily. You save an article, open it up, and click a “listen” button. Then to listen to another article, you need to do the same thing again.

With the new design, all your saved “listen” articles will start playing automatically, one after another, when you press a prominent button on Pocket’s home screen. Any piece of content on the internet should work with the listening feature.

Of course, it doesn’t sound the same as a real human reading a story–text-to-speech voices usually sound like robots–but how else are you going to get through that 38,000-word article on code?

The rest of the app and desktop browsing experience is getting a nice refresh, too, with less visual clutter to help you get right down to what you came there for: reading.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katharine Schwab is the deputy editor of Fast Company's technology section. Email her at kschwab@fastcompany.com and follow her on Twitter @kschwabable More


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