Speech Screen

On the Speech Screen, NewsBrain reads articles, one after the other, until you close the screen. It reads the same stream of articles you would see if you were paging through them one by one on the Article Screen - always the most interesting, newest, unseen articles first.

To invoke speech from the Articles Screen, press on an article until a menu appears, the select "Speak". To invoke speech from the Article Screen, tap the Share button, then select "Speak". NewsBrain will read articles aloud, starting with the one you selected.

NewsBrain's Speech Screen operates like other audio apps. It continues to read articles, even if you close the app, or the screen locks. To stop speech, tap on the Speech Screen image to pause, tap the Pause or Close button on the toolbar or use the remote control pause button on the Control Panel, lock screen, or headset.

When NewsBrain reads an article, it shows the associated image on screen. It also shows the toolbar along the bottom of the screen, and the text that it is speaking just above the toolbar, though both the toolbar and speech text may be hidden as described below.

You can control speech by touching the screen, tapping buttons on the toolbar, or using remote audio controls.

Touch Controls

To pause or resume speech, tap the screen. This is the same as tapping the Pause/Play button on the toolbar. Speech will pause, and an indicator will appear on screen. Tap the screen again to resume.

To hide the toolbar or speech text, swipe down. The first swipe down hides the toolbar. A second swipe down hides the speech text, if it was showing.

To show the toolbar or speech text, swipe up. The first swipe up shows the speech text, if it was hidden by a swipe down, otherwise it shows the toolbar. If the first swipe up showed the speech text, a second swipe up shows the toolbar.

To skip to the next article, swipe left. To repeat the current article, swipe right. These are the same as tapping the Forward or Reverse buttons on the toolbar. Swiping toward the left will stop speaking the current article and start the next one. Swiping toward the right will start speaking the current article over again.

To change the image size, double tap. The size will toggle between filling the entire screen, or fitting itself onto the screen to show the entire image. You can also change image size by pinching. To make images fit on screen, pinch closed. To make images fill the screen, pinch open.

To close the Speech Screen, triple tap. This is the same as tapping the Close button on the toolbar. Speech will stop, the Speech Screen will close, and the Article Screen will show the article that was being spoken.

To see a menu, press and hold on the Speech Screen. Speech will pause, and a menu will pop up with these items: Continue will continue speaking; Skip To Next will start speaking the next article; Say Again will repeat the article; View Article will close the Speech Screen and show the article on the Article Screen; Share will let you share the article with others via various services; Save to Pocket will save the article web page on pocket.com; Online Help will show this Help Screen.

Toolbar Buttons

The toolbar holds a set of items along the bottom of the screen. If the toolbar is not showing, swipe up to make it appear.

The Close Button

To stop speech and close the Speech Screen, tap the close button (looks like an "X") at the far right of the toolbar. The Speech Screen will close, and the Article Screen will show the article that was being spoken.

The Forward, Reverse, and Pause/Play Buttons

To pause speech, tap the Pause Button at the center of the toolbar. The Pause button will change to a Play Button, and tapping it will resume speech.

To skip ahead to the next article, tap the Forward Button. NewsBrain will stop reading the current article and move on to the next one.

To replay the current article, tap the Reverse button. NewsBrain will start reading the article from the beginning.

The Level View

At the far left of the toolbar is the familiar article Interest View. Though it is smaller than usual, it works the same. It shows the Interest Level of the article being read, and you can press on it to pop up a slider to let you adjust the Interest Level.

The Options Button

Tapping the Options Button will pop up the Speech Options Screen. You can change settings, and also see this online help for the Speech Screen. NewsBrain continues speaking while the Speech Options Screen is displayed. These are the available options:

Speak Heading: If turned on, a heading will be spoken that mentions when the article was posted and the name of the article source. For example: "Article: Posted three hours ago on Myallo News".

Speak Headline: If turned on, the article headline will be spoken.

Speak Article Body: You can set this to No, which skips reading the article body, Summary, which reads the article summary, or Full Text which reads the full article text.

The article summary is the text you would see on the Articles Screen. The Full Text is the text you would see on the Article Screen. Usually, the Summary is shorter than the Full Text, typically it is the first paragraph, but in fact it is whatever the article source sets it to - it can vary from one line to the whole article. The Full Text is usually the whole article text or a goodly portion of itt, but again it is up to the article source, so it may or may not be everything that appears on the actual article's original web page.

Speech Speed allows you to control the rate of speech. "Normal" is the system default speed and seems quite fast, though you may get used to it after a while. "Slower" is NewsBrain's default speed may be more natural sounding. "Relaxed" is an in-between speed.

Show Spoken Text controls a view of the text that is being spoken. You can set this to No, which does not show the text, Fixed, which will show the text over the lower part of the image, or Automatic, which shows a smaller or larger amount of text on the lower portion of the screen, dynamically changing height with the text being spoken.

The Fixed size is usually enough for a couple of lines, depending on the chosen text style. The Automatic size will vary with each item being spoken, depending on the amount of text.

If it can't fit the whole text being spoken, the text scrolls automatically so the word being spoken is always in view.

Spoken Text Style lets you set the font and size of the Spoken Text area on the screen, if any. Tap this to get a list of available fonts and sizes.

Stay Awake While Speaking: If turned on, your device screen will not dim while the Speech Screen is showing, unless the battery level goes under 25%, at which point it will be able to fall asleep normally. Although the screen will go dark when the device falls asleep, NewsBrain will continue to speak, so if you might fall asleep while listening, make sure the device is plugged into a charger.