Voca 1.3: louder, quieter, and back on the sentence

Voca 1.3 adds an app-specific volume control, repairs reader follow-along, and lets you save the exact passage you selected as a bookmark.

Voca is a private listen-later reader for Android. Share an article, paste text, open a PDF or Markdown file, follow a feed, or paste a Nostr link, and Voca reads it with the speech service already configured on your phone. Your queue, positions, bookmarks, and imported documents stay on the device.

Volume that fits the recording#

The new Volume gain setting ranges from -30 dB to +20 dB in exact one-decibel steps. It applies to live system speech, rendered speech, voice previews, and imported audio. Negative values provide substantial attenuation. Positive values use Android's session-specific loudness processing so Voca can boost quiet material without pretending that the ordinary volume slider goes past its limit.

Normal remains the default. The setting affects only Voca, and the positive path falls back to normal playback if a phone's audio stack does not provide the optional effect. Start with low system volume before trying a heavy boost, especially with headphones.

Gain can make quiet output louder, but it cannot make a speech model generate audio faster. Long pauses caused by a third-party engine still need to be diagnosed in that engine or model.

Follow the sentence that is actually speaking#

The reader now anchors follow-along to the speech engine's audible-start callback instead of letting a rebuilt estimate move the highlight late. The estimated word schedule also stops charging a learned sentence-boundary delay after audio has already begun.

Manual scrolling reliably detaches follow mode. The current-sentence button reattaches it and recentres the audible sentence, including when that sentence starts outside the part of a long Markdown document that is currently composed.

The result is a reader that follows promptly, yields when you scroll, and returns to the right place when you ask it to.

Bookmark the words you selected#

Selecting text now offers Bookmark beside Copy. Voca saves the selected passage with its exact source position and sentence, so opening it later returns to the context you meant. The action is available across the plain-text, dense, and Markdown reader surfaces.

Voca remains free software under the MIT license, designed first for GrapheneOS and available for Android 10 and newer. Update from Zapstore, try the new gain control carefully, and report any engine-specific timing problem through Voca's opt-in diagnostics preview.