Read Aloud

Tap play. Your document starts talking.

Your work doesn't stop when your screen does.

About Read Aloud

Open any document in Obvious, tap the Read Aloud button in the toolbar, and a floating playback bar appears at the bottom of your screen. The document starts reading in a natural-sounding voice. Navigate away — check another thread, open a workbook, come back — and it keeps going. The audio doesn't stop when you leave the page.

Choose from multiple voices, dial the speed from slow review to fast-scan pace, and scrub to any position in the document without starting from the top. A 3,000-word brief doesn't require listening in sequence. Jump to the section you need, speed through what you know, slow down where it matters.

Documents generated in Obvious — research briefs, strategy memos, meeting summaries — have always been useful. Read Aloud makes them useful when you're not at a desk, not looking at a screen, not able to give them your full visual attention. The commute counts. The walk counts. The ten minutes between calls counts. Read Aloud is the first step toward a version of Obvious that doesn't require you to be sitting still.

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How-to

Application

Templates

Start with a template that uses this feature

Feature: Read Aloud

Audio-First Document Review

Most strategy documents sit unreviewed not because the decision-maker lacks judgment — but because dense visual documents are the wrong format for how they think best. This template removes that friction. Audio-First Document Review prepares any strategy document for Read Aloud, generates a three-sentence pre-listen brief so you enter the session with the decision framed, and guides you through annotating in real time. When you're done listening, your reactions are already organized: what you approved unconditionally, what has conditions attached, and what the team must action before Monday. The output isn't a summary of what you heard. It's a signed document with your name on it — the governing version the team opens in the morning and knows exactly what to do. The workflow works in one session. You bring the document. Obvious prepares it, briefs you, and structures your review into a signed artifact with concrete owners on every follow-up.

Created by Obvious

Feature: Read Aloud

Daily Audio Briefing

Most Chiefs of Staff walk into a 9am leadership meeting with partial context. The documents exist. The problem is the 20 minutes between the car and the conference room — not enough time to read, too important to skip. The Daily Audio Briefing Template generates a structured briefing document from your source documents, written for linear listening at 1.5x speed. Orientation first. Situation blocks. Key decisions already made. Open items still live. The agent handles the rewrite — turning scattered updates into a single clean voice track. During your commute, use Read Aloud to play the briefing and annotate anything you want to flag. When you park, those annotations are already captured in the Post-Briefing Actions section at the bottom of the document. Built for Chiefs of Staff, Executive Assistants, and ops leads who run on situational awareness and can't afford to arrive underprepared. Works from any source documents in your workspace, or from the included structured intake workbook for recurring briefing topics.

Created by Obvious

Feature: Read Aloud

Audio Proofreading Workflow

By the fourth read, a Comms Manager stops seeing her own document. Eyes pattern-match what they expect — not what's there. The missing word in the opening sentence, the wrong product name, the date that never got updated: these survive visual review because visual review stops working. Audio proofreading works because listening is a different cognitive channel. A missing word forces the reader's voice to pause. A duplicate word makes the ear hear it twice. This template structures that process into a reliable workflow: prepare the draft, listen once at a steady pace, annotate as you go, compile the catch log, resolve and publish. The workflow guides you through document preparation for listening, instructs the error annotation pass, categorizes each catch by type (copy error, factual flag, or rhythm issue), and produces a marked-up draft with a resolution status. The output is either publishable after you resolve annotations — or a handoff artifact ready for an editor. For Comms Managers, Content Leads, and Brand Editors who own external-facing copy and publish under deadline. Designed for the 15 minutes before 5pm.

Created by Obvious

Shortcuts

One-click prompts to try this feature

Listen to This Brief

Start reading any document aloud and keep listening as you navigate the rest of your project

Read this draft aloud at 0.8x speed — I'm doing a final proofreading pass by ear and want to hear anything that sounds wrong

Proof by Ear

Listen at reduced speed to catch what eyes skip on a visual pass

Read this draft aloud at 0.8x speed — I'm doing a final proofreading pass by ear and want to hear anything that sounds wrong

Commute Review

Queue up multiple documents to listen through in sequence without going back to the screen

Read this document aloud and when it finishes let me know — I have two more documents I want to listen to in sequence before my 9am

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