iPhone text to speech: Speak Selection and Speak Screen
An iPhone can read almost anything aloud, an article, a message, a book page, without any app: two accessibility features do it, Speak Selection for highlighted text and Speak Screen for the whole screen.
This guide shows where to turn them on, how to use them and change the voice, and what to do when you want the speech as an audio file to send or put in a video.
Turn on Speak Selection and Speak Screen
Open Settings, then Accessibility, then Spoken Content; in iOS 26 the same switches are under Read & Speak, and very old versions put them under General, Accessibility, Speech. Turn on Speak Selection to get a Speak button when you select text, and Speak Screen to read the whole screen. Highlight Content marks each word or sentence as it is read.
Use it
For a few lines, select the text and tap Speak in the menu that appears; in some apps it hides behind the arrow at the end of the menu. For a whole page, swipe down from the top of the screen with two fingers: Speak Screen starts and a small controller lets you pause, skip and change the speed. In the same settings, Voices lets you download other voices and choose the one iPhone uses.
When you need an audio file
Speak Screen only plays the speech; it does not save it. To get a clip you can send, post or put in a video, open a voice in the SuperClonica catalog in Safari, type a line of 30 to 100 characters, press the voice button and download the recording, free and without an account. For long texts, the free SuperClonica engine runs on a Windows, Mac or Linux computer and saves whole texts as MP3, and the speech API serves apps.