ListenLock

Recipes · Making

Turn photos of your class notes into an audiobook

Photograph printed notes or handouts, let ListenLock read them as one book, and save them as audio to play anywhere.

You need
Text recognition (a one-time 38 MB download)
Set-up
10 minutes for a stack of pages
Features combined
Read pictures · Scanned pages (OCR) · Save as audiobook
Phone cost
Saving an audiobook runs in the background and a long book takes hours, so start it while the phone charges
  1. Photograph the pages with your camera app, flat and in good light, one page per photo.
  2. Make them one book. In the Library, tap ⋮ and then Read pictures from the gallery. Pick up to 50 photos in the order you want them read: ListenLock keeps that order.
  3. Let it read the text. If text recognition is not on the phone yet, tap Download when asked. Each page is marked with how sure the recognition is.
  4. Listen once and fix what sounds wrong. Press and hold a sentence and tap This sounded wrong to note a bad line, or fix how a word sounds in every book in Words in every book (search the Library for it).
  5. Save it as audio. Press and hold the book in the Library, then under the save choices tap Audiobook. You get one file per chapter, with the cover, in Audiobooks on your phone, ready for any music app, a car stereo or a friend.

Why it works

Read pictures skips the scanner and the PDF step entirely. Recognition happens on the phone, so private notes never leave it, and the audiobook files play in apps that have never heard of ListenLock.

If it goes wrong

Handwriting is not recognised well; this recipe is for printed or typed pages. If a page reads as nonsense, retake that one photo closer and in brighter light, and use Point and read (Library ⋮) to check it before rebuilding the book.

Steps checked against ListenLock 0.1.0. Something look different? Tell us.