The content of my previous post was mostly factual, based on my own experience. As a follow-up, here's some wild conjecture and opinion:

Firstly, I'm not convinced that this is a feature Voice Dream's owners have developed in collaboration with Amazon. When you sign in, the web page clearly states that you are signing into Amazon's own Kindle web reader, rather than a third-party product via OAuth. There is no native #VoiceDream interface for browsing/searching through your library, it's all done via the web interface, suggesting that they don't have official API access to hook into.

So, what does that mean? If this feature has been developed without Amazon's blessing, it could stop working at any time. Either because access is blocked, because the structure of the underlying web page changes in a way that prevents book text from being scraped, or some other reason.

Meanwhile, I'm curious whether pulling text out of the Kindle web reader via a JavaScript bridge goes against Amazon's terms of service. I don't know; I haven't read them. But it strikes me as a form of "reverse engineering", which most commercial platforms explicitly prohibit.

For now, I'll acknowledge that the Kindle support is in beta, but also say that I'm underwhelmed. The Kindle web reader was not built, nor optimised for mobile devices running on battery, so the prospect of leaving it open and on screen is not appealing. The awkward user flows, and lack of wider app integration make it stand out, but not in a good way. And the speech pauses are irritating.

Is it better than reading with VoiceOver or Speak Screen in the Kindle app? I don't know; I've never done that.

Here are some initial comments:

Kindle doesn't appear in #VoiceDream as a standard content source. Instead, Amazon's web reader is embedded into the app, and the book text is extracted from the web page to be spoken.

This means that Kindle isn't deeply integrated into the rest of the app, and results in the majority of Voice Dream features being unavailable. You can choose a book and start audio playback, but not access bookmarking, text highlighting, annotations, full-text search, the built-in dictionary, etc. More fundamentally, standard book navigation (e.g. by heading) is not possible either. You can skip by page, and that's all.

I don't know if the features aimed at other audiences, such as finger reading and word highlights, work or not. I would suspect not, given the webview-based architecture, but I haven't been able to verify either way.

Meanwhile:

1. Playing a Kindle book doesn't register it as your "currently reading" item. If you relaunch the app, or close the Kindle viewer, you have to locate the book in Amazon's web interface from scratch.
2. Speaking of Amazon's web interface, selecting a book to read happens entirely within it, bringing all of the accessibility issues along for the ride that you may expect from Amazon in 2024.
3. While Kindle content is playing, the #VoiceOver magic tap gesture causes whatever non-Kindle document you were reading elsewhere in Voice Dream to resume.
4. You can pause the playback of a Kindle book on AirPods. But when you try to resume, you also trigger the previous non-Kindle document.
5. On the two books I've tried, there are large pauses in the speech stream at frequent intervals, lasting almost a second. These don't seem to line up with page changes, and I'm not sure what causes them. Maybe something related to scrolling.
6. I pressed "next page" four or five times in quick succession, to jump past all of the copyright information in a book. Unfortunately, this caused playback to completely stop working, no matter how many times I toggled it.

Quote from Kishin Manglani on the #VoiceDream mailing list:

"Following our recent announcement to transition #VoiceDream to a subscription, we received an overwhelming response from thousands in our community. Your feedback, along with the impactful stories shared about Voice Dream being a pivotal part of your daily lives, has led us to reverse this change.

We will continue to provide access to the app's existing features at no additional cost.

As we continue developing Voice Dream, some new features may be offered as part of a subscription, but the current capabilities will remain free to those who have already purchased Voice Dream.

For those who have already moved to a subscription, it's no longer necessary to continue using the app. You may cancel your subscription, but we welcome you to keep it active to support ongoing development."

/unquote.

Original source (login required): https://groups.io/g/Voice-Dream/message/116