Can Libby Read to You? Read Aloud, Read-Alongs and Audiobooks

Not by itself. Libby's help pages describe no read-aloud button and no text-to-speech setting. To hear a book, they point you to three other routes: borrow the audiobook, borrow a read-along (a narrated ebook for children, often with the words highlighted), or turn on your phone's screen reader and use Libby's "Read From Here" mode.

What Libby can't do is show you the text while an audiobook plays. Read-alongs put narration and words on the same screen, but OverDrive, which makes Libby, aims them at young readers. For any other book, you can borrow both editions and follow along by hand. For public domain classics, HushBook does the syncing for you, free, highlighting each word as the narrator says it. Here is how each route works, from the help pages of Libby, OverDrive, Apple, Google and Amazon.

Can Libby read to you?

Yes, in three ways, though none of them reads the ebook you have open at the tap of a button.

• The audiobook edition. If your library lends the audiobook, borrow it. Libby's player lets you set the speed anywhere from 0.6x to 3x and set a sleep timer.
• Read-alongs. Narrated ebooks for children, such as picture books, with the words highlighted in many titles. More below.
• Your screen reader. Libby works with VoiceOver on iPhone and iPad, TalkBack on Android, and desktop screen readers such as NVDA and JAWS. In Read From Here mode, the screen reader reads the ebook aloud in a synthetic voice.

Libby's own advice on that last route is direct. Its screen reader guide says: "For sighted users, we recommend listening to audiobooks instead." A screen reader is built for people who cannot see the screen, and turning one on changes how your whole phone responds to touch. Of the 163 articles in Libby's help center in October 2026, that guide is the only one about having an ebook read aloud.

A smart speaker is no shortcut. Libby can stream an audiobook from your phone to an Amazon Echo or Google Home over Bluetooth, but its help says "you won't be able to play audiobooks from Libby using voice command."

All three routes are free with a library card. Libby says there are "no subscription costs, no in-app purchases, and no late fees."

Does Libby have read-along books?

Yes. OverDrive calls them read-alongs: ebooks "with professionally recorded narration that plays along while you read." Libby's App Store listing offers "interactive read-alongs" to read and listen to "with your kids," and OverDrive aims them at "developing readers."

According to OverDrive, read-alongs come with:

• professional narration, with controls for the narrator's speed and volume,
• words, sentences or paragraphs that light up as the narrator reads them, in many titles,
• pages that turn by themselves when the narrator reaches the end,
• a soundtrack or sound effects, in some titles.

In OverDrive's browser reader, you can also tap a word to hear it again.

To find them in Libby, a 2023 post on OverDrive's Libby blog says to tap the filter icon on your library's page and choose read-alongs under Format. On your library's OverDrive website, run a search, then pick OverDrive Read-along under the Ebooks filter. What you find depends on what your library has bought.

Do they help? The research is on narrated digital storybooks in general, not Libby titles, but it is encouraging. A 2015 meta-analysis by Takacs, Swart and Bus pooled 43 studies with 2,147 young children. Compared with listening to stories in more traditional ways, such as storybook reading, technology-enhanced stories gave a small extra boost to story comprehension (g = 0.17) and expressive vocabulary (g = 0.20). Animated pictures, music and sound effects helped. Interactive extras such as hotspots, games and dictionaries distracted. And in a 2020 study of 61 children aged 4 and 5, Liao and colleagues found that highlighting each word in time with the narration doubled the share of reading time spent looking at the text, from 19% to 38%.

For how listening fits alongside reading together, see our guide to whether audiobooks are good for kids.

Can you read along with a Libby audiobook?

Not inside Libby. Libby lists its audiobook player's features as speed from 0.6x to 3x, a sleep timer, skipping forward and back, and bookmarks, notes and highlights (see how to take notes on audiobooks for how those work). None of them shows the book's text, and Libby's help center has no article on syncing an audiobook with its ebook.

You can't move the audio to another app to get the text there, either. Libby's help says its audiobooks "can't be transferred to MP3 players or iPods." You listen in the Libby app or in a web browser at libbyapp.com.

What you can do is borrow both editions and follow along yourself. Nothing highlights, but it works:

1. Borrow the ebook and the audiobook. They are separate loans, and both count toward the borrowing limit your library sets. Check that they are the same edition, because an abridged audiobook will not match the full text.
2. Put the ebook on a second screen. Play the audiobook on your phone and read on a Kindle e-reader (US libraries only), a Kobo with built-in OverDrive support, or Libby in a web browser. Libby can copy your loans to another device with a recovery passkey or a setup code.
3. Line up the chapters. Open the Table Of Contents in each title and jump to the same chapter.
4. Speed the narrator up. ACX, Audible's production platform, says most narrators read about 9,300 words an hour, roughly 155 a minute. A 2019 meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert puts adult silent reading in English at 238 words a minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction. So 1.25x or 1.5x is often closer to your own pace. Our guide to whether reading along helps explains when the slower pace is worth keeping.
5. Pause when you fall behind. The audio will not wait while you turn the page.

How to make Libby read aloud on iPhone

Use VoiceOver, Apple's screen reader. Libby's help is specific: "If you're using an iOS device, you'll need to use VoiceOver, not Spoken Content, to read books in Libby." Spoken Content is the iOS 18 menu that holds Speak Screen and Speak Selection. From iOS 26, Apple calls it Read & Speak. So asking Siri to "speak screen" is not the method Libby supports.

1. Turn on VoiceOver in Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver, or ask Siri, "Turn on VoiceOver."
2. Open the book in Libby. If asked where you'd like to read it, choose Libby.
3. Swipe until you hear "dismiss navigation button" and double tap. Then swipe left until you hear "Read From Here button" and double tap again. Shortcut: a two-finger double tap anywhere in the reader enters or leaves Read From Here mode.
4. Swipe down with two fingers to hear the book read from that point on. A two-finger tap pauses or resumes.
5. Hearing nothing? A new book opens on its cover. Select Menu, then Contents, and go to the first chapter.

Apple warns that "VoiceOver changes the gestures you use to control iPhone." With it on, one tap selects an item and a double tap activates it. Once VoiceOver is on, the VoiceOver Tutorial in Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver lets you practice before you open a book.

How to make Libby read aloud on Android

Use TalkBack, Google's screen reader, which it says "gives you eyes-free control of your device."

1. Turn it on in Settings > Accessibility > TalkBack > Use TalkBack. If the TalkBack shortcut is on, you can instead hold both volume buttons for a few seconds.
2. Open the book in Libby and choose Libby as the reader.
3. Select "dismiss navigation," then "Read From Here."
4. Start continuous reading with TalkBack's "Read from the next item" action, or swipe to hear one section at a time.

TalkBack also changes your gestures, and its tutorial opens automatically the first time you turn it on. On a computer, the same Read From Here mode works with NVDA or JAWS at libbyapp.com.

Can Kindle read your Libby books aloud?

Possibly, if your library is in the US. Libby can send most ebooks from US libraries to Kindle: on your Shelf, tap Read With..., then Kindle, and finish on Amazon's website.

The Kindle app has its own read-aloud feature, Assistive Reader. Amazon says it reads the book with your device's text-to-speech engine and highlights the text as it goes. It runs in the Kindle app on iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac and Fire tablets, and "works with any Kindle book with Enhanced Typesetting." To turn it on, open the book, tap the top center of the screen, then Aa, then More, and switch on Assistive Reader.

The catch: Amazon's page lists books bought from the Kindle store, borrowed from "Kindle+ or Prime Reading, or other official Kindle partner sources," and shared in Family Library. It does not mention public library loans, so try it on your loan before you count on it. For e-readers, Alexa and the other ways to have a Kindle read aloud, see can Kindle read to you.

Audiobooks don't go to Kindle. The Kindle option in Libby is for ebooks, and Libby audiobooks play in the Libby app or at libbyapp.com.

Should you use a screen reader or the audiobook?

If you can see the screen and your library has the audiobook, borrow the audiobook. That is Libby's own recommendation.

A screen reader earns its setup in three cases: you can't read the screen comfortably, the library has only the ebook, or reading print is hard for you. For that last group, there is evidence that hearing the words while you see them helps. A 2018 meta-analysis by Wood and colleagues found that text-to-speech and other read-aloud tools gave students with reading difficulties a modest comprehension boost (g = 0.35). More in our guide to audiobooks and dyslexia.

Libby's reader can also make the text itself easier: it offers the OpenDyslexic font and a text scale slider in each book's reading settings.

What we could not confirm

• We did not test these steps on a phone. They come from the help pages of Libby, OverDrive, Apple, Google and Amazon, checked in October 2026, and app menus change.
• Whether the Kindle app's Assistive Reader works with Kindle books borrowed through Libby. Amazon does not list library loans.
• Whether Audible's Read & Listen works with a Kindle book borrowed from the library. We found only user reports.
• Whether iPhone's Speak Screen ever works in Libby. Libby says to use VoiceOver, so we have not suggested it.
• How many read-alongs libraries carry. Each library chooses its own collection.
• The read-along studies tested narrated digital storybooks in general, not Libby's titles.

Reading along with HushBook

Libby is how you borrow current books free from your library. The gap it leaves is reading along with a whole audiobook as an adult. HushBook fills that gap. It has a built-in catalogue of free public domain audiobooks from LibriVox and the Internet Archive, in six languages, and you can import audio files you own, such as MP3 and M4B. HushBook transcribes the recording on your phone and highlights each word as the narrator says it. Long-press a line to play from there. It is free to download, with no ads and no account. The read-along and the free library cost nothing. After a one-time engine download, it works offline.

Libby audiobooks stay inside Libby, so the two work side by side: borrow current books in Libby, and use HushBook to read along word by word with a recorded narrator, in the free classics built into the app and the audio files you own.

Sources

• Libby Help, "Reading a book using a screen reader"
• Libby Help, "Does Libby work with screen readers?"
• Libby Help, "What is Libby?"
• Libby Help, "Changing playback speed"
• Libby Help, "Customizing Libby to meet your needs"
• Libby Help, "Turning on dyslexic font in a book"
• Libby Help, "Borrowing limits"
• Libby Help, "Can I transfer audiobooks to an MP3 player with Libby?"
• Libby Help, "Accessing the table of contents in a title"
• Libby Help, "Setting up Libby on another device"
• Libby Help, "Reading Libby ebooks on a Kobo ereader"
• Libby Help, "Reading Kindle Books on a Kindle ereader"
• Libby Help, "Changing your reading preference for books"
• Libby Help, "Can I listen to Libby audiobooks on my Google Home or Amazon Echo?"
• Libby, the library app, App Store listing
• OverDrive Help, "What is a read-along ebook and how does it work?"
• OverDrive Resource Center, "OverDrive Read-Alongs"
• Libby Life (June 20, 2023), "25 awesome read-alongs to explore with your kids"
• Apple Support, "Turn on and practice VoiceOver on iPhone"
• Apple Support, "Use VoiceOver gestures on iPhone"
• Apple Support, "Hear iPhone speak the screen, selected text, and typing feedback" (iOS 26)
• Apple Support, the same page for iOS 18 (Spoken Content)
• Android Accessibility Help, "Get started on Android with TalkBack"
• Android Accessibility Help, "Turn on TalkBack"
• Android Accessibility Help, "Use TalkBack gestures"
• Amazon, "Use Assistive Reader to Read Aloud in Kindle Apps"
• ACX, "How long will my narrated audiobook be?"
• Brysbaert (2019), "How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate", Journal of Memory and Language
• Takacs, Swart and Bus (2015), "Benefits and Pitfalls of Multimedia and Interactive Features in Technology-Enhanced Storybooks", Review of Educational Research
• Liao, Chang, Huang and Sung (2020), "Electronic storybook design, kindergartners' visual attention, and print awareness: An eye-tracking investigation", Computers & Education
• Wood, Moxley, Tighe and Wagner (2018), "Does Use of Text-to-Speech and Related Read-Aloud Tools Improve Reading Comprehension for Students With Reading Disabilities? A Meta-Analysis", Journal of Learning Disabilities