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The Listening Room · Field guide

A quiet guide
to finding your way.

Listen, read, keep a thought, share a shelf, and take a book with you. This guide explains the whole room—from the first play button to private sharing and offline travel.

Start with the shelf ↓About 8 minutes to read

01 · Arrive

Begin with your shelf.

The Library is your doorway. Every book shown there is available to your signed-in account.

  1. Choose a book.Open its cover to enter the listening view. Your last position is saved, so returning readers can continue where they left off.
  2. Use My PDFs and Shared with me.Your own uploads remain separate from books another reader has shared with you.
  3. Continue listening.When available, the Library offers a direct return to the book and passage you most recently heard.

02 · Listen

Set your own rhythm.

The player is designed for moving between hearing and reading without losing your place.

Move through the book

Play or pause, skip ten seconds, choose a chapter, drag the position control, or tap a paragraph to begin there.

Choose the pace

Adjust playback from 0.75× to 2×. A sleep timer can stop the player after 15, 30, or 60 minutes.

Decide what comes next

At the end of a chapter, choose whether the book continues automatically or waits for you.

Follow the words

The read-along view follows the spoken passage. Turn Follow audio off when you want to explore the text independently.

03 · Notice

Keep what stays with you.

Notes, quotes, and bookmarks belong to the reader who creates them. Another person listening to the same book keeps an independent record.

  • Note

    Capture a thought at the current chapter, time, voice, and PDF page.

  • Quote

    Highlight words in the read-along view and save the selection with its location.

  • Bookmark

    Keep a place without needing to write anything.

  • Carry it out

    Select saved items to copy, email, text, share through another app, or export as a PDF.

Opening a device’s share sheet prepares the material; The Listening Room never claims that a message was delivered.

04 · Travel

Take a book beyond the signal.

Offline copies stay inside the browser or installed app on the device where you saved them.

  1. While online, open the book.Expand Offline listening beneath the player.
  2. Choose Download audiobook.Download this chapter saves only the current section. Audio still being prepared cannot be downloaded yet.
  3. Keep the app open.Wait until the saved count matches the available count. A large library may need several gigabytes.
  4. Test before you leave.Open the offline player, switch on airplane mode with Wi-Fi off, and play a chapter. Open the downloaded PDF too.
Open my offline libraryChoose a book to download

05 · Collect

Build your own narrated shelf.

Owners with full access can add selectable-text PDFs, organize them, and prepare narration only when they choose.

Add one or many PDFs

The reader processes a batch one file at a time. Each PDF may be up to 25 MB and 1,000 pages. Image-only scans need OCR first.

Organize without exposing

Rename PDFs, place them in private folders, and reorder the shelf. A shared reader never sees your folder structure.

Shape continuous listening

Use Manage sections to include, skip, or hide individual sections. Hidden sections remain recoverable.

Make a queue

Add available books, reorder them, and start anywhere. A queue reuses prepared audio and does not create narration.

06 · Invite

Share a room, not an account.

Every reader signs in with their own approved email and keeps their own progress and notes.

  1. Choose Share access.For several PDFs, select them first and use Share selected.
  2. Add the reader’s exact email.The owner also admits the reader to the private Site. Invitation wording does not itself grant access.
  3. The reader signs in.The books appear under Shared with me. Prepared narration comes with access and is not regenerated.
  4. Change access when needed.Revoking access blocks future online requests. It cannot erase a copy already downloaded to a disconnected device.

07 · Approve

Nothing should spend quietly.

Ordinary listening is not narration generation. The Listening Room draws a visible boundary between the two.

Play saved audio, pause, seek, change speed, download, queue, or shareNo new speech or transcription call
Upload and extract text from a PDFNo narration credit used
Prepare an unrecorded passage or selected PDF batchEstimated cost shown first; owner must explicitly approve

An estimate is not a guaranteed quote. New narration can use both speech generation and transcription. Saved passages are reused, including after a recoverable timing problem.

08 · Recover

When something needs attention.

I cannot enter.
Confirm that you signed in with the exact approved email. Site admission and per-book access are both required.
A shared book is missing.
Ask the owner to confirm your email under that PDF’s Share access panel, not only in the Site invitation.
Audio will not play.
Retry the passage while online. If it has never been prepared, only the PDF owner can review and approve its cost.
Offline listening is incomplete.
Reconnect in the same browser or installed app, reopen the book, and resume its download. Existing saved sections are reused.
Preparation paused or failed.
Reopen the Library online and check Preparation status. Resume the individual job—or use Resume all failed when several need attention.

Still finding your way?

Return to the roomRead terms & privacy