Speaking Email alternative: listen without giving up your inbox

Speaking Email is a long-running app for hearing your email read out loud. It signs in to your Gmail, Outlook or other account, plays your inbox like a playlist, and lets you archive, flag and reply by voice. This page explains what the Speaking Email app does well, what it costs, how it works on CarPlay, and when a different kind of app, one that never touches your mailbox, might suit you better.

What is Speaking Email?

Speaking Email is an app for iPhone, iPad and Android made by Beweb, a company in New Zealand. It has been around since 2015 and is built with drivers and people who are blind or have low vision in mind. You sign in to your email account inside the app, and it reads your latest emails out loud, one after another.

Its real strengths:

• Full voice control. Say commands like next, back, archive, flag, trash, faster or slower. It can pause for a command when you tap the screen, at set times, or at the start or end of each email.
• Reply by voice. Dictate a reply, forward or new email, and it reads your message back before sending. You can pick people from your phone's contacts by voice.
• It works on your real inbox. Archiving or flagging in the app changes your actual mailbox, so it doubles as a hands-free way to clean up.
• Clutter skipping. It skips signatures, disclaimers and reply headers, and shortens long links.
• Attachments. It can read PDF and Word files and calendar invites.
• Many languages. Speech and dictation in 27 languages, switching voices to match each email.
• Works with most providers: Gmail, Microsoft 365, Outlook.com, Exchange, iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, and any IMAP or POP account.

It reads with the voices built into your phone (Apple's on iPhone, Google's on Android), and you can pick different voices for different languages.

Speaking Email vs Spokeninbox

The two apps solve the same problem in different ways. Speaking Email is a full email app you control by voice. Spokeninbox is a listening app for email you choose to send it.

Speaking Email prices are from its own pricing page and the App Store in the US. They may differ in other countries and can change.

The big difference: account access

To read your inbox, Speaking Email needs access to your email account. For Gmail and Microsoft accounts you sign in on Google's or Microsoft's own page, so the app never sees your password. Speaking Email says it stores your mail encrypted on your iPhone, has passed Google's yearly security review for apps that read Gmail, and describes itself as AI-free: your email is not sent to AI services. For IMAP accounts, it says mail may be cached on its servers.

That is a careful setup. But it still means an app can read, move and delete anything in your mailbox, including bank alerts, medical results and work email. Some people are fine with that. Others, or their employer's IT team, would rather not grant it.

Spokeninbox works the other way round:

• You get a private address, like you@in.spokeninbox.com.
• You decide what goes there. Forward everything with Gmail, Outlook or iCloud auto-forwarding, set a filter for just your newsletters or a few senders, or forward one email by hand.
• It never logs in to your mailbox. It cannot see, move or delete anything you did not send it, and you can stop forwarding any time in your email settings.

To be clear about the trade-off: Spokeninbox does see the full text of what you forward, and it uses AI to clean up each email and to make the voice. If you want no AI involved at all, Speaking Email is the better fit.

Speaking Email on CarPlay

Speaking Email does work with CarPlay, but through a separate app called Speaking Email CP. The main Speaking Email app points CarPlay users to it. At the time of writing, here is what its App Store listing says:

• It is for iPhone only and free to download.
• It reads your inbox one email after another on the car's screen, with next and back buttons.
• CarPlay buttons let you mark an email done (archive or mark as read), flag it, or move it to the trash.
• Voice commands, replying by dictation, multiple accounts and attachment reading are add-ons, each listed at US$4.99 in the US App Store.
• It supports Microsoft 365, Outlook.com, Exchange, Yahoo, iCloud, AOL, IMAP and POP. A note on the listing, dated July 2024, says Gmail connections for new users are currently unavailable. If you use Gmail, check the listing before you rely on it.

Listening in the car with Spokeninbox

Spokeninbox has no CarPlay app, so you won't see its icon on your car's screen and it has no voice commands. What it does in the car is simpler:

• Start before you drive. Pick an email or newsletter on your phone and press Play.
• It plays through the car. Over CarPlay or Bluetooth, the audio comes out of your car's speakers the same way a podcast from any app would.
• It keeps going with your phone locked, with play and pause on the lock screen.
• It remembers where you stopped in every email, so you can pick up a long newsletter on the drive home.

If you want to archive, flag and reply from the driver's seat, Speaking Email CP does more here. If you just want to listen while you drive, Spokeninbox covers that.

Which one should you pick?

Speaking Email is the better choice if you

• want to reply to, archive and flag email by voice;
• need an app that works with no screen at all, for example if you are blind or have low vision;
• want a real CarPlay app for email;
• need attachments read, or a language other than English, Spanish or Russian;
• use an iPad, or prefer no AI involved.

Spokeninbox is the better choice if you

• would rather not give any app access to your email account;
• mostly want to listen, especially to long newsletters (see how to listen to newsletters);
• want a natural-sounding voice for long reads;
• want ads, sponsor blocks and legal footers left out;
• want the app to remember exactly where you stopped in each email.

Other ways to hear your email

You may not need a separate app at all:

• Siri. Say “Read me my emails” and Siri reads from Apple's Mail app. It is handy for a quick check. See what Siri reads and what it skips.
• Speak Screen on iPhone. Swipe down with two fingers to hear whatever is on screen, in any email app. See how to set up Speak Screen.
• Built-in tools in Gmail and Outlook. Our guide to having your emails read aloud covers every option on iPhone, Android, Gmail and Outlook.

Questions