Questions about listening to your documents
Short answers, including the ones that are a "no". If something here is out of date, it is a bug: Lisivo only claims what it actually does.
Is Lisivo really free?
Yes. There is nothing to pay, nothing to sign up for and no trial that ends. Reading, cleaning and narration all happen on your own device using the speech voices your operating system already ships, so a thousand documents cost exactly what one does: nothing. A paid tier is planned for features that genuinely bill per use (summaries, quizzes, studio voices), and it will never take anything away from the free one.
How do I make a PDF read aloud?
Open the homepage, drop the file onto the drop zone, and press play. Nothing is installed and nothing is configured. Playback starts within a second or two of the file being parsed, because the first passages are deliberately short. A PDF is the common case rather than the only one: an EPUB, a Word document, a deck or a plain text file all work the same way.
Which file formats are supported?
PDF, EPUB, Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx), OpenDocument (.odt), Markdown and plain text, up to 60 MB. Office formats from before 2007 (.doc, .ppt, .xls) cannot be read in a browser: re-save them in the modern format, which is one "save as" away. The browser extension adds any web page, which then reads like a chapter. All of it is parsed on your own device, which is exactly why no format is held back for a paid tier.
Is my document uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is opened and parsed by your browser. There is no upload endpoint, no storage bucket and no server-side processing: disconnect from the network after the page has loaded and importing a PDF still works. The one thing to know is that some system voices (the Google voices in Chrome, for example) are produced remotely, which means the sentence being read is sent to that service by the browser itself. The voice picker labels every voice as on-device or network so the choice is yours.
Which languages does it read?
English and French are tuned: the document language is detected automatically and a matching narrator is chosen. Other languages will still be narrated if your device has a voice for them, but the text cleaning and chapter detection are not tested against them. The interface language and the document language are independent: a French interface will happily narrate an English book in English.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes, and it can be installed from the browser so it opens full-screen like an app. One honest limitation: when a phone locks its screen, browsers suspend speech synthesis. Media controls and a screen wake lock are implemented, but genuinely backgroundable playback needs server-generated audio files, which is a paid-tier item.
Can it read a scanned PDF?
Yes. A scanned page is a photograph with no text layer, so your browser runs text recognition over it, in English or French, without the file going anywhere. It is slow (a few seconds a page, longer on a phone) and the first run downloads the recognition data. Lisivo spots these documents on its own and offers that route, telling you how long it will take before you start it.
Can I download the audio as an MP3?
Not today. The narration is produced live by the speech engine on your device, so there is no audio file to save. Downloadable audio and a private podcast feed require generating real files on a server, which costs money per document, so they are planned for the paid tier.
Does it work offline?
Yes, once the app has been installed. The shell, the code and the parsing engines are cached, and the voices are already on your device, so a document can be imported and narrated with the network switched off entirely.
How long are my documents kept?
7 days, in the browser that imported them. With a free account they are kept for 90 days and follow you between devices. Every document carries an expiry date, and anything past it is deleted the next time you open the app. Clearing your browser's site data removes everything immediately.
How large a document can it handle?
Up to 60 MB and 1500 pages. The limit protects your own device's memory rather than a server budget, which is why it is generous.