Voice Dream Mail
| Category | Price | Seller | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Productivity | $1.99 | Voice Dream LLC | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
How It Works
The app reads your email out loud using text-to-speech. You control it using the entire screen of your iPhone or iPad as a touchpad. For example, swipe right anywhere to advance to the next email, and swipe down to trash. In fact, here is no option to see the email message body.
Why It's Efficient
Once you learn the handful of gestures, you will be able to triage your inbox very quickly. You know what to do with most emails after hearing the sender and subject. Because all commands can interrupt reading, it only takes a few seconds to handle each email. Plus, you can gradually increase speech rate: most people can listen at a higher speed than they can read visually.
Is It Safe to Use While Driving?
No. Although you don't have to look at your phone when using this app, using it while driving could be dangerous to others and to yourself, and may cause accidents. Also, it may be illegal.
Detailed Features
We support Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, iCloud, AOL, Outlook.com, and any IMAP-based email service. You can perform the following actions eyes-free: Previous, Next, Latest, Flag, Trash, Reply, Reply All, Unread, Rewind, and Download.
This app is for quickly triaging your inbox. It supplements your current email tool and does not replace it. Composing new email and forwarding are not supported right now.
Reviews
Stopped working with iOS 12
SerenityRock
This would work well. It no longer functions on Iphone with iOS 12. Please update.
Totally unusable
mister zed
You can't understand what's going on because there NO PAUSES. It reads emails as if everything is connected sequentially the way the text of a novel or essay is. But it doesn't work. Maybe it would it there were momentary pauses between sections, but there are none, and it's horribly unnatural and disorienting.
Much potential, but sad
Druce
First, I’m a big fan of Voice Dream, and I had high expectations for this. I wish I had checked the version history more, and I may have realized they haven’t updated this app in a year, other than to belatedly update their GDPR privacy policy. The app feels half finished. As an email app, it is far from full featured, but I was prepared to give it a pass. My company standardized on Exhange (rather than Outlook) and I again didn’t look carefully enough, so the email account I wanted to use is unsupported. Even some of the Voice Dream feature I was hoping for weren’t there. I have made a small investment in some additional Voices that I expected to be there. Not only were purchased voices not there, there wasn’t even an option to purchase anything other than the pre-canned IOS, and two premium voices. Normally I would have had a “wait and see” approach, but it looks like Voice Dreams has moved on from this product and won’t be enhancing it much anymore.
Sound seems to be messed up
glandryiris
Whenever I open the app with my iPhone, I have to hold it up to my ear in order for me to hear the voice properly. I'm not sure if it's a glitch or not because this does not happen on my iPad. Also, I think if anybody has the voice dream reader app, restore your purchases and download any voices you have and then open the Mail app. You should be able to access any of those voices you purchased.
Love this app!
Jose Lomeli
I love this app! Thank you for making it VoiceOver friendly! It makes checking emails so much faster! ☺️
Subscription?!?!
Prov23:23
Looks like a great app but why would I pay a subscription to view my free email? If I swipe two fingers down, apple will read my emails to me for free. I'd pay a few bucks for superior audio and functionality but a subscription is pushing it. Please reconsider.
Seems like a good app
Bomonkee
Subscription is too high for what this app does. I gave it 5 stars, because I have it long enough to find things I don't like, and I trust the developer. What can I do with this app that I cannot do with the regular email iPhone app? It is a bit more difficult to set up, for accounts that don't fit into the categories.
Subscription too ambitious for a half baked product
-MZK-
I actually own the voice dream reader app and thoroughly enjoy it, not just for its functions but also the excellent quality of development that distinguishes it above similar apps and makes it a pleasure to use. Sadly this is not the case with the voice dream mail app which seems to have been pushed out to the AppStore in a hurry with similar core features but not much thought on email app basic requirements. To make matters worse, subscription payments are always a risky proposal but even more so on the AppStore where the perceived value of paying periodically must be more than the cost itself. So with that prologue, let me say that I regularly use rules and folders for all my email accounts and for good reason. Not every email is worth reading and yet many are too important to miss. In all cases though IMHO- unless you are visually impaired -only the most important emails merit a word for word analysis vs skimming through them and getting on with the rest of your day. When I downloaded the app and connected to outlook online I found only my inbox and no options in settings to go into any folder. This is the basic expectation I would have for any email program (reader or no) because I'm certainly not about to rearrange my settings to have everything in my inbox. It would perhaps be ok if the app could somehow even cull emails from all folders in that account and/or provide a search function to pull emails but that is MIA as well. So I am left to believe that the dev with the best of intentions to provide a quality product and earn quality $ (monthly subs x n app purchases) somehow glaringly forgot such basics and pushed out the app half-baked. This is not an app I can recommend for now unless you are sure the emails you read all come into your inbox and nowhere else. I hope some users do subscribe anyway though because I have no doubt that it will help push the need for such basics and may even financially incentivize the effort for the dev. I am going to wait for a finished product before using it and a really great product before subscribing to it.
Waste of time!!
GC in USA
I'm legally blind and really wanted this to work!! It doesn't!! I wish Apple would screen these apps better to make sure they work before allowing them to be part of the app group.
Limited access.
Digital yukio
This app does not work with the email account register with the iOS app. If your company uses airwatch to secure your email account then it is unable to read your emails. The app also did not allow me to see the email it was reading. Siri is a better options since it can read all emails associate with the apple email app including airwatch. If you have a car power adapter for ur iPhone/iPad, then you can ask Siri to read back ur emails without ever touching ur phone/tablet.
