Voqora: Listen to What You're Already Reading
Updated September 29, 2026
Some reading is better heard. A long article between meetings, a paper that needs one more pass, a draft you want to hear out loud before you send it. The text is already on your screen; you just don't want to keep staring at it.
Voqora is a native Mac app that reads text aloud. Select text in any app and press a shortcut to hear it. For longer material, add a document and listen to it like an audiobook, with the transcript following along.
Voqora is in early release. It works well for daily use, and it is still changing quickly. If something breaks, feels confusing, or is missing, please open an issue. Feedback, bug reports, and pull requests are all welcome.
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Two ways to listen
Selected text
Select a paragraph in a browser, PDF reader, editor, or notes app and press Command + Shift + .. Voqora starts speaking almost immediately and shows the text in Now Playing, highlighting each sentence as it is read. Click any sentence to hear it again from its first word.
| Action | Default shortcut |
|---|---|
| Speak selection | Command + Shift + . |
| Play / pause | Command + Shift + / |
| Stop | Command + Shift + , |
| Export the latest clip | Command + Shift + M |
Every shortcut can be changed in Preferences. Past selections are kept locally in The Vault, where you can search, star, and replay them.
Audiobooks
Add a PDF, Word document, text file, or Markdown file to the Library. Voqora shows the page count, word count, and expected length, then narrates it on your Mac. The player is built for long documents:
- A transcript that follows along, highlighting the sentence being read. Click any sentence to play from it.
- Sections for jumping between headings.
- Scrub previews that show the time and section before you let go.
- A sleep timer that can stop at the end of the current section, even if you pause, skip, or change speed.
- Continue Listening in the sidebar, so closing the app never costs you your place.
Voqora follows your Mac's appearance, light or dark.
What stays on your Mac
| You do this | Voqora does this |
|---|---|
| Speak selected text | Sends it to a speech engine running on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded. |
| Add a document | Extracts, narrates, and stores it locally, along with your progress. |
| Clean up a difficult or scanned PDF | Uses Google Gemini only if you add your own key and turn cleanup on for that document. |
Voqora asks for a name and email once during setup and records a small set of product events. It never sends selected text, document contents, audio, filenames, or API keys.
How it works
Voqora is a SwiftUI and AppKit app that ships with a bundled local speech service (FastAPI running the Kokoro ONNX model). A few decisions shape how it feels:
- Speech starts before the audio is finished. Audio streams into the native player as it is generated, so a long selection starts playing right away.
- Sentence timing comes from the audio itself. The engine leaves a short silence after each sentence. Voqora finds those pauses and aligns them to the text, which is why clicking a sentence starts on its first word instead of somewhere nearby.
- The engine stays warm. Voqora loads the model ahead of time when you copy text or bring the app forward, without reading what you copied, so the shortcut doesn't wait on a cold start.
- The engine only answers Voqora. It listens on loopback and rejects requests that don't come from Voqora's own networking layer, so a web page can't reach it, even on the same Mac.
Install
Voqora runs on Apple-silicon Macs with macOS 14 or later. Download the DMG from the latest release and drag Voqora to Applications.
The early release is not yet notarized by Apple. If macOS blocks the first launch, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and choose Open Anyway. The install notes cover the rest. To read text from other apps, Voqora needs Accessibility access; setup walks you through it.
What's next
- Developer ID signing and notarization, so installing is a normal drag and open.
- Clearer diagnostics when the speech engine or a permission needs attention.
- More polish for very long documents.
Help shape it
Voqora is early, and the most useful input is specific: what you tried to listen to, where it helped, and where it got in the way.
- Found a bug? Open an issue and attach the logs from Preferences → Data → Export Debug Logs.
- Have an idea? Issues are the right place for feature requests too.
- Want to contribute? Pull requests are welcome. The contributing guide covers setup.
Voqora is source-available under the PolyForm Noncommercial license. You can use, study, modify, and share it for non-commercial purposes.
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Voqora grew out of an earlier project, SuperSay.