Substack has become the default platform for independent writers, hosting hundreds of thousands of newsletters across every conceivable topic. If you subscribe to more than a handful, you already know the problem: the reading backlog grows faster than you can clear it. Listening to Substack newsletters as audio is the most efficient way to keep up, but not all methods are equal.
This guide covers how to convert Substack text to speech -- from Substack's own built-in feature to third-party apps that deliver a dramatically better listening experience.
What Substack Offers Natively
Substack launched a built-in audio feature that allows writers to attach audio versions of their posts. When a writer enables it, subscribers see a play button at the top of the post.
There are two flavors:
- Author-recorded audio. Some writers record themselves reading their posts. This is the best-case scenario -- you get the author's intended emphasis and pacing. But most writers do not do this because recording and editing audio for every post is time-consuming.
- AI-generated audio. Substack offers an automated TTS option that writers can enable. It uses a synthetic voice to read the post aloud.
The Limitations
Substack audio has several constraints that make it inadequate as a primary listening solution:
It depends on the writer opting in. If a writer has not enabled audio on their newsletter, you get nothing. There is no way for you as a reader to generate audio for posts that lack it.
The AI voice quality is mediocre. Substack's automated voices lack the naturalness of dedicated neural TTS engines. For a 3-minute post this is tolerable. For a 20-minute essay, the robotic cadence becomes fatiguing.
Speed control is limited. Substack's player offers basic speed adjustment, but the range and granularity are restricted compared to dedicated apps.
No offline library. You cannot download Substack audio for offline listening. If you lose connectivity on the subway or a flight, the audio is gone.
No cross-newsletter queue. Each post's audio lives on its own page. There is no unified player that queues up audio from all your subscriptions and plays them sequentially. You have to open each post individually.
Audio availability on Substack is entirely at the writer's discretion. Even among newsletters that offer it, the quality and format vary widely. This is the core reason many subscribers turn to third-party tools.
Using speakeasy for Better Substack Audio
The most direct approach is to use a dedicated TTS app that can convert any Substack post to audio on demand, regardless of whether the writer has enabled native audio.
speakeasy handles Substack URLs natively. The process is straightforward:
Open the newsletter in your email or in the Substack app. Copy the link to the specific post you want to listen to.
Use the iOS share sheet from Safari or paste the URL directly into the app.
speakeasy extracts the article text, strips Substack's navigation and promotional elements, and synthesizes audio using InWorld neural voices. The result sounds natural and is saved to your iCloud library for offline access.
The advantages over Substack's native audio are significant:
- Works on every Substack post, not just those where the writer enabled audio.
- Neural voices that sound natural across long-form content.
- Speed control from 0.5x to 4x with fine-grained adjustment.
- Offline library with iCloud sync across iPhone and Mac.
- Unified queue across all your saved articles, not just Substack.
Using RSS Feeds for Automatic Conversion
If you subscribe to several Substacks and want a hands-off approach, RSS feeds are the most powerful option. Every Substack newsletter has a public RSS feed, and apps that support RSS can automatically convert new posts to audio as they arrive.
How to Find a Substack's RSS Feed
Every Substack newsletter exposes its RSS feed at a predictable URL:
https://[newsletter-name].substack.com/feed
For example, if you read a newsletter at https://example.substack.com, its RSS feed is at https://example.substack.com/feed. This works for every Substack, no exceptions.
Setting Up Automatic Conversion
In speakeasy, navigate to the RSS section and add the feed URL. The app will fetch the latest posts.
Toggle automatic conversion for the feed. New posts will be converted to audio as they arrive, without any manual intervention.
New episodes appear in your library automatically. Open the app, press play, and your latest newsletters are ready.
This approach turns Substack into something closer to a podcast app. New posts arrive as audio, queued and ready, without you needing to copy a single URL.
This same RSS approach works with Ghost newsletters, WordPress blogs, Medium publications, and virtually any site with an RSS feed. Once you have the workflow set up for Substack, extending it to your other reading sources is trivial.
Step-by-Step: Building Your Substack Audio Setup
Here is the complete setup if you are starting from scratch:
Open your Substack account and review which newsletters you actually want to keep up with. Be ruthless. The goal is a manageable list, not an overwhelming one. Five to ten active subscriptions is a good target.
Split your subscriptions into two tiers. Tier 1: newsletters you want to hear every post from (these get RSS auto-conversion). Tier 2: newsletters you occasionally want to listen to (these you will convert manually when a post catches your eye).
For each Tier 1 newsletter, add its RSS feed URL to your TTS app. Enable automatic conversion. These will now arrive as audio without any effort on your part.
For Tier 2 newsletters, the workflow is manual but fast. When you see a post in your email that looks interesting, share or paste the URL into speakeasy. Ten seconds later, it is in your audio queue.
Pair your Substack listening with a recurring activity: commuting, exercising, cooking, or walking. Consistency matters more than duration. Even 15 minutes a day will keep you current on several newsletters.
Best Substacks for Audio Listening
Not all newsletters translate equally well to audio. The best candidates share a few traits: they are prose-heavy, they tell stories or develop arguments, and they do not rely heavily on embedded images or charts.
Newsletters that work exceptionally well as audio:
- Long-form essay newsletters (analysis, opinion, narrative nonfiction)
- Personal journals and reflections
- Industry analysis and strategy breakdowns
- Book reviews and cultural criticism
- Interview-format posts with edited transcripts
Newsletters that work less well as audio:
- Data-heavy financial analysis with charts and tables
- Design-focused newsletters with screenshots and visual examples
- Coding tutorials with inline code snippets
- Newsletters that consist primarily of link roundups with short commentary
The general rule: if a post would make sense as a podcast segment, it will work well as audio. If it requires you to look at something, it will not.
The Bigger Picture
The shift toward listening to newsletters is not just a productivity hack. It represents a fundamental change in how people consume written content. The writers who thrive on Substack tend to produce exactly the kind of long-form, thoughtful prose that works best as audio -- and the technology to convert that prose into natural-sounding speech is now good enough that the listening experience rivals reading.
If you have been falling behind on your Substack subscriptions, the solution is probably not to read faster. It is to stop reading and start listening.