We have a reading list problem. Not a small one — the kind where a browser holds forty open tabs, a read-later app holds four hundred saved articles, and the honest answer is that almost none of them will ever be read.
The articles were good. The time was not there. So we built ArticleFM: an iPhone and iPad app that turns an article into a natural-sounding audio version you can listen to while you commute, cook, walk, or train.
It is coming to the Apple App Store. It has not launched yet — there is nothing to download today, and we are not running a waitlist. This post is here so that when it does arrive, you already know exactly what it is.
The idea, in one sentence
Paste an article, pick a voice, press play.
That is the whole product. Everything below is detail on how those three steps work and where they stop working. If you want the walkthrough with screenshots of each step, that lives on how it works.
What it actually does
- Convert from a URL, pasted text, or the share sheet. Drop in a link, paste the text directly, or send a page to ArticleFM from Safari — or any app with a share sheet — using the iOS Share Extension.
- 25 AI voices. Nine standard voices — Alloy, Ash, Coral, Echo, Fable, Nova, Onyx, Sage and Shimmer — and sixteen premium ones: Brian, Daniel, Sarah, Lily, George, Bill, Roger, Charlie, River, Alice, Matilda, Will, Jessica, Eric, Bella and Chris. Preview any of them before you commit an article to one.
- Speed control. 0.75×, 1×, 1.25×, 1.5×, 1.75× and 2×, changeable mid-playback.
- A live synced transcript. The text scrolls with the audio, so you can glance down and find your place, or read a paragraph properly when it matters.
- A personal library with offline downloads. Save an article to the device and it plays with no connection at all.
- Background audio. Playback keeps going with the screen locked and the phone in your pocket, like any podcast.
Why we built it
We built the first version for ourselves, which is the least glamorous origin story there is and also the most reliable one.
The existing options did not fit. Screen readers are built for accessibility rather than for pleasure, and they sound like it — fine for a paragraph, punishing for a 4,000-word essay. Podcast apps are wonderful, but they play what somebody else decided to record, not the specific piece you saved on Tuesday. And "read later" apps solve the saving problem while leaving the reading problem completely untouched.
What we wanted was narrower: take the thing I already chose to save, and make it listenable. Not summarised. Not turned into a two-host AI chat show. Just read out, properly, in a voice that does not make me want to stop after ninety seconds.
That is the bet the whole app rests on — that voice quality is not a feature, it is the product. A narration you can tolerate for three minutes is a demo. A narration you can listen to for forty is a habit. More about who we are and what we are optimising for is on the about page.
What it costs
Every account gets 2 free articles. That is a lifetime total for the account, not a monthly allowance — two conversions, then you decide.
They are genuinely yours. Articles you converted on the free tier stay in your library and stay playable, including offline, whether or not you ever subscribe. Nothing gets locked behind a paywall retroactively.
After that there is one paid product: ArticleFM Monthly, at £4.99 per month (US$4.99 in the US; local pricing varies by App Store territory). It renews automatically each month until you cancel. There is no annual plan, no lifetime tier and no bundle. Payment is charged to your Apple Account, and because Apple manages the subscription, cancelling happens in your Apple Account settings rather than inside the app.
You can also open the app without an account and play the built-in sample articles, purely to hear what the voices sound like before you sign up for anything.
The parts that do not work
Every article-to-audio tool has a failure mode, and the ones that pretend otherwise are the ones that annoy you later. Here is ours.
Conversion can fail when:
- The page sits behind a login or a subscription wall, so there is no article text for us to reach.
- The content is mostly video, audio or images rather than text.
- The page is generated entirely by scripts, or blocks automated readers outright.
- The article is extremely long and exceeds our per-article limit.
- It is a PDF or a document rather than a web page.
The workaround is dull and effective: paste the article text directly instead of the URL. That handles most of the cases above, because the text no longer has to be fetched — you have already given it to us.
And the part we think matters most: a failed conversion does not count against your free articles. You should not lose one of your two because a publisher's paywall did its job. If something still refuses to convert, send us the URL from the support page and we will look at it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ArticleFM available to download?
Not yet. It is coming to the Apple App Store. Until it appears there, every "Coming to the App Store" badge on this site is exactly what it says — a status, not a link.
Which devices does it run on?
iPhone and iPad.
How many voices are there?
25 — nine standard and sixteen premium.
Are the 2 free articles per month?
No. Two is a lifetime total per account. It is a way to try the app properly, not a recurring allowance.
Can I listen offline?
Yes. Save an article to your library and it plays without a connection. Downloading it needs a connection; playing it afterwards does not.
Can I cancel easily?
Yes, and not through us — the subscription is managed by Apple, so you cancel it in your Apple Account settings. It runs to the end of the paid month.
Does it summarise articles?
No. It reads them. If you want the whole piece, you get the whole piece.
Where this goes next
We would rather ship a small app that does one thing well than a large one that does six things adequately. So the near-term work is unglamorous: better extraction on stubborn pages, fewer failed conversions, and narration that holds up across a long read.
We will use this blog for the honest version of that — what we shipped, what broke, and what we decided not to build. No launch dates we cannot keep.
Until then: how it works covers the three steps in detail, about covers who is building it, and support answers the practical questions. ArticleFM is made by AM Partners LTD in London.