Oration (iOS) turns pdfs into audiobooks
Hello HN community! I'm excited to introduce a project I've recently launched: Oration, an iOS app designed to convert PDFs into audiobooks. This idea was inspired by my experiences as an engineering student with ADHD, struggling to engage with dense academic papers. Relying on Text-to-Speech tools, despite their robotic quality, was a workaround for me and others with similar learning preferences or challenges, such as Dyslexia. Recognizing the limitations of existing tools—difficulty with complex formats, inability to skip over citations or footnotes, and inadequate handling of tables,…
In plain words
Oration is an iOS app that converts PDFs into audiobooks, addressing limitations of standard text-to-speech tools. It's designed for students, auditory learners, and people with ADHD or dyslexia who struggle with dense written documents. The app intelligently handles complex PDF formatting, allows skipping citations and footnotes, and properly processes tables and graphs. It offers both summarized and full-length versions of PDFs for a more accessible reading experience.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hello HN community! I'm excited to introduce a project I've recently launched: Oration, an iOS app designed to convert PDFs into audiobooks. This idea was inspired by my experiences as an engineering student with ADHD, struggling to engage with dense academic papers. Relying on Text-to-Speech tools, despite their robotic quality, was a workaround for me and others with similar learning preferences or challenges, such as Dyslexia. Recognizing the limitations of existing tools—difficulty with complex formats, inability to skip over citations or footnotes, and inadequate handling of tables, graphs, and figures—I developed Oration. Our goal is to refine these areas continuously, offering both summarized and full versions of PDFs for a more accessible learning experience. Oration aims to serve as a high-quality, user-friendly platform for auditory learners and those who find traditional reading methods challenging, with features akin to popular audiobook apps like Audible or Spotify. How Oration Works: 1. Download the app and sign up using either a username and password or through Google, with a 2-week free trial that doesn't require a payment method. 2. Upload a PDF document. 3. Within about 5-10 minutes, you'll receive a notification that your Audiobook is ready. 4. Listen to your Audiobook directly in the app or through a browser-based web player, which also facilitates easy sharing with friends and family. Also, to emphasize - all audio generated by the user is yours to own! We're working on some updates to easily export .MP3 files of Oration Audiobooks you create For an example of how the web player looks and functions, check out this link: https://player.oration.app/75e079c1-bd7e-4a16-8e02-23636837a... I believe Oration can significantly benefit those who prefer or require alternative learning formats. We're committed to enhancing the app's functionality and user experience, so feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome. Thank you for considering Oration, and I hope it proves to be a valuable tool for you or someone you know.
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- OOOrate – On-device neural text-to-speech queue for MacJul 2026 · orate.to · ▲17
Hey friends! Brad here - long time HN user, founder, engineer (Coinbase, Soothe, Jeevz, Release, Hired, GrowthX, etc)... I have been struggling recently with too many tabs, emails, articles, etc sitting unread while I swap between Claude code sessions all day. So I decided to build Orate to help me work through the backlog by listening to it all like I would a podcast. Orate allows you to select any text on your screen and keyboard shortcut it to a listening queue where it gets processed using the latest + greatest TTS AI models, and then read back to you in a mostly-natural sounding voice.…
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