With Book2Speech
1.
Get Book2Speech from the App Store.
2.
Open the PDF in Files, Mail or Safari, tap Share, then Book2Speech.
3.
Pick a narrator and press play. It starts in seconds.
What you get
•
Only the words that matter: page numbers, running headers and footers are dropped.
•
Chapters from the PDF’s outline or headings, so you can jump around.
•
The PDF view lights up each word on the page as it is read.
•
Background play, lock-screen controls, speed from 0.75x to 2x and a sleep timer.
With Speak Screen (built into iOS)
It reads what is on screen in the system voice, page numbers and headers included. Fine for a page or two.
1.
Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → turn on Speak Screen.
2.
Open the PDF in Files or Books and swipe down with two fingers from the top.
Questions people ask
Will it skip the page numbers?
Yes. Book2Speech drops repeated page numbers, headers and footers before narrating. Speak Screen reads them.
What about scanned PDFs?
They need a text layer, which the Notes app and many scanner apps add for you. A scan that is only images has no words to read.
Is there a size limit?
PDFs up to 10 MB. For a bigger file, export the chapters you need.
Does it work for textbooks and papers?
Yes. Prose reads beautifully; equations and tables are read as the text the PDF holds, so glance at the page for those.