RottenPDF reads your documents out loud and shows the words while it speaks them: the current sentence large and centred, each word lighting up exactly as it is pronounced, the lines around it dimmed. You follow with your ears and your eyes at once.

Reading and listening are free, paid for by ads. If you would rather not see them, RottenPDF Plus is an optional monthly subscription that removes them. No account to create.

YOUR DOCUMENTS STAY ON YOUR PHONE
Your documents are never uploaded anywhere. They are opened, turned into speech and read aloud on the device, with the voices already installed on it. We run no server and no cloud, so there is nowhere for them to go. Reading works in airplane mode.

The app goes online for two things only: to download a web page when you paste its link, and to show ads.

ADS NEVER INTERRUPT THE READING
Ads are what pays for the app, and they stay out of the way: a banner at the bottom of the library and under the player controls, and now and then a full-screen ad before a document opens or after you have closed it. Never while something is being read to you. Ads are served by Google AdMob, and you decide whether they may be personalised.

WHAT IT DOES
• Opens PDF, DOCX, RTF and TXT files, from Files, Drive, Gmail, or any app that can share a document
• Reads web pages too: paste a link and it reads the article
• Reads them aloud with the text-to-speech voices already installed on your phone
• Karaoke subtitles: the word being spoken is highlighted in real time, with a scale pop and a saturated colour
• Speed from 0.5x to 3.0x with the pitch preserved — fast, without the chipmunk voice
• Tables, figures, code and formulas are read too, and shown in views built for them
• Picks up where you stopped, in every document
• Interface in twelve languages, and it reads in every language your device has a voice for

WHAT IT DOES NOT DO YET
Being straight about this is cheaper than a bad review:
• Scanned PDFs — pages that are only images — are not read yet. The app tells you the document is a scan instead of reading you nothing.
• EPUB is not supported yet.
• Playback stops when you leave the app. Background listening is next.

A NOTE ON VOICES
RottenPDF uses the voices your phone already has, so the quality depends on which ones are installed. If a voice sounds robotic, installing a better one in your system speech settings improves it everywhere, not just here. The app walks you through it the first time you open it.

WHO IT IS FOR
Anyone who reads a lot and would rather listen. Students with a stack of course notes, anyone with a long report to get through, people who take text in faster by ear, and anyone who finds a wall of text easier to follow when the words move.

ROTTENPDF PLUS
An optional subscription that removes every ad — the banners and the full-screen ones — and changes nothing else: no feature is reserved for subscribers. It is billed monthly and renews automatically until you cancel. The price is shown in the app before you subscribe, and you can cancel at any time from your Google Play account. Payment is handled by Google Play: we never see your payment details.

NOTHING IS LOCKED
Every feature works without paying: no trial that expires, no feature behind a paywall, no account. The ads are what keeps it that way, and Plus is only for those who would rather pay than see them. RottenPDF itself collects nothing about you or your documents; the ad provider collects what its own policy describes, within the choices you make.