read by Marlow, over rain on a window
Twenty past eleven. The third line of the wind-down set, in a voice she picked herself.
You did not choose the voice in your head.
It has been talking since you were small. It narrates the queue, the inbox, the drive home. Nobody auditioned it. Nobody signed off on the script.
Whose voice do you trust?
The words do less of the work than the person saying them. Take someone from the cast, describe a stranger and wait for them to arrive, or read one passage aloud and let it be you.
Or read one short passage aloud, once. After that every line comes back in your own voice, which is a strange and useful thing to hear at four in the morning.
or describe a stranger
Where do you want to be when you hear it?
Nothing is ever said in a vacuum. Pick the place you would rather be standing in.
or say where you would rather be
In the language you were loved in
Comfort lands in your first language. The library speaks seventy-four of them, and changing it changes everything — the words on the page and the voice reading them to you.
Every language the library speaks
- Afrikaans
- العربية
- Հայերեն
- অসমীয়া
- Azərbaycan dili
- Беларуская
- বাংলা
- Bosanski
- Български
- Català
- Cebuano
- Chichewa
- 中文
- Hrvatski
- Čeština
- Dansk
- Nederlands
- English
- Eesti
- Filipino
- Suomi
- Français
- Galego
- ქართული
What it looks like in your hand
The home screen asks first, then offers sets to start from.
Record your own voice, describe one, or take a reader from the list.
One line, the voice reading it, and the sounds underneath.
Packs, the lines you have added, and every language in the library.
None of it asks much of you
The app is easiest to keep when it takes nothing to use. These are the parts that work while you are busy doing something else.
Something worth hearing catches your eye before you have opened anything.
home screen widget
Start it, skip it or stop it on the way into the room, without unlocking.
lock screen controls
It keeps going with the screen dark, under everything else, through whatever is already in your ears.
background play
The line stays on screen while it is read, so you can follow it instead of chasing it.
words as it plays
It fades out on its own, so falling asleep is not a decision you have to make.
sleep timer
A line becomes a card you can hand to someone who needs it more than you do.
share a line
The things you need to hear
Four sets to begin with. Add the one you actually need and it joins them, in the same voice, in the same room.
Before the hard thing
Morning set
Wind down
For the 3 a.m. mind
One day, with someone in your ear
It is not a course and there is nothing to finish. It is on in the background of an ordinary day.
06:50
One line waits on the home screen, where the weather usually goes. You read it before you are properly awake.
07:15
It plays on the iPad propped against the kettle, at arm's length, while the coffee goes.
08:40
On the walk in it keeps going with the screen dark, under everything else, through whatever is in your ears.
13:55
Ninety seconds outside the room before you go in. Play, pause and skip from the lock screen, without unlocking.
19:30
You save one line as a card and send it to someone who needed it more than you did.
23:15
It fades out at forty-five minutes. You will not hear the end of it.
On a bigger screen it stops being a glance
The whole library open at once, read back in the voice you recorded yourself.
Pick a line and let it run. It tells you when to breathe in, when to hold and when to let go. Three breaths and it is over.
The voice in your head learns whatever you play it most. It may as well be one that is kind to you.
iPhone and iPad. Free to try.