Start listening in three steps.
Add your PDF
Download Recito, open it and drag a PDF into your library. A PDF with selectable text is ready to read; a scan first goes through automatic text recognition.
Choose a voice and a starting point
Let the voice download on first use, then choose a reading speed. Open the document and click a sentence to start there, rather than listening from the cover page.
Listen and follow along
Press Play. The current sentence is highlighted as you listen. Pause, bookmark a passage or close the book; Recito keeps your place so you can return to it later.
A PDF reader that reads aloud
PDF text to speech, sometimes shortened to PDF TTS, turns a document's text into spoken audio. Recito combines that speech with the page itself: you can follow the highlighted sentence, jump to another passage and keep bookmarks and highlights in your library.
This is useful for a long research paper or a chapter you want to listen to while following the original document. Recito skips running headers, page numbers and margin notes. You can choose to hear footnotes after their paragraph, at the end of the page, or skip them.
Reading a scanned PDF aloud
A scanned PDF can contain pictures of pages rather than selectable text. A text-to-speech voice cannot read those pictures directly: text recognition, or OCR, has to extract the words first.
Recito runs Apple Vision text recognition automatically when you import a scan, with support for English and Polish. Two-page book scans can be split into individual pages. Finding a scan's table of contents additionally needs Apple Intelligence.
OCR quality depends on the original scan. Crooked pages, faint print and complex layouts can produce mistakes, so check a page and listen to a short passage before relying on a whole scanned book. Start with the clearest copy you have.
Listen to PDFs without uploading them
Speech runs on your Apple silicon Mac. Once the voices have downloaded, listening works without an internet connection, and your documents do not need to be sent to a speech service.
Recito is a downloadable Mac app, rather than an online PDF converter. Internet access is still used for license checks, app updates and bug reports you choose to send. The app does not remove DRM or unlock protected documents.
Turn a PDF into an audiobook
Listening inside the reader and exporting an audio file are different tasks. The free trial lets you listen in Recito for 30 minutes per rolling 24 hours. Recito Pro removes that listening limit and adds audiobook export.
For exported audio, choose MP3, M4B with chapters, M4A, FLAC or WAV. M4B is useful when you want an audiobook with chapter navigation; MP3 is an option for players that expect ordinary audio files. The plans below show the full price and what each includes.