Turn your read-later list into bite-size audio convos w/AI ✨
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Ryan Hoover

Recast - Turn your read-later list into bite-size audio convos w/ AI

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Recast’s AI app helps you β€œread” without reading.
🎧 Listen to any article as a short podcast
πŸŽ™οΈ Co-hosts explain in real dialogue
πŸ“² Submit any article to convert
🌐 Or browse community recasts
πŸƒ Keep learning while on the go
⚑️ Save reading and screen time

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Ryan Hoover
Hunter
πŸ“Œ
I used to be an avid user of Umano (RIP), an app that paid voice actors to read news articles and blog posts. That was almost a decade ago and ofc the tech to generate high-quality, humanlike narration has improved a ton. Recast doesn't rely on people and can narrate any article. It's definitely worth a try. :) Side note: Instagram cofounders are also exploring audio narration features with Artifact. I'm very interested to see if it becomes a core focus for them or more of a side feature.
AndrΓ© J
@rrhoover πŸ™ Audio gist in your pocket. Its so obvious it's the future! Personalised podcast without filler content πŸš€
Josh Barkin
@rrhoover Artifact seems like they are just bolting on ML / AI features on to an old concept to see what sticks, but at the end of the day it’s another D2C news aggregator, just with some interesting features that everyone else can also bolt on.
Vladislavs Sprengels
@rrhoover Congratulations on the launch!
Radu Tudosescu
@rrhoover congratulations on your launch and fingers crossed! 🀞 πŸš€
Matteo Tittarelli
Maker
πŸ“Œ
Hey Hunters! 😽😽😽 As a startup marketer always striving to stay on top of the trend, getting through my articles has always been a daunting challenge. Since I've been using Recast, though, my life has changed! It's like having my personal podcast team summarize all my tech articles and newsletters into short, engaging conversations. 🎧 Stoked to have played a small part in Recast's first PH launch, and a big kudos to the Recast team for creating something truly game-changing! πŸ‘
@matteo_tittarelli Love the product! It's been game-changing for me.
Matteo Tittarelli
Maker
@falak_sher thanks for your kind words and for being a Recast user, Falak! Let me know if you have any questions or issues :)
German Syroezhkin
@matteo_tittarelli Recast will save tons of time for a lot of people πŸ™Œ Thanks, guys!
Lucy Zheng
@matteo_tittarelli @laocool yes! And I love it for the article too!
Uladzimir Yankovich
@matteo_tittarelli , it seems there are +1 products in the 1000-club :)
Adam Altman
Maker
Hey Product Hunt community! πŸ‘‹ First off, thank you for checking out Recast. It's a product that’s close to our hearts, born out of a personal need. We’ve all felt that overwhelming sense of drowning in a sea of tabs, bookmarks, and read-later apps. The internet is bursting with incredible content, but who has the time to read it all? That's where the idea for Recast came from. We wanted to create a way for everyone to consume content more easily, without spending hours staring at a screen. Recast transforms articles and essays into bite-sized audio conversations. It’s like having two knowledgeable friends chat about a topic you care about, making it both engaging and informative. Over the last months, we’ve poured our souls into refining the experience. The feedback we've received from early users – from thinkpiece enthusiasts to students, to those with visual or reading difficulties – has been heartwarming. It's humbling to know Recast has brought joy and value to so many. But, we know the journey doesn't end here. We’re excited to introduce Recast to the Product Hunt community and gather more feedback. Please give it a try, and let us know your thoughts. We’re here to answer any questions, and we're keen to hear about your experiences with Recast. Thank you for being a part of our launch day. Let's redefine the way we consume written content, together! Warmly, Adam (CEO Cofounder, Recast)
Ghost Kitty
Comment Deleted
Lucy Zheng
@a18n congrats team !! Great launch and great product 😎
Lena Xiao
@a18n !!! Congrats! So excited for this to be out in the world πŸ₯³πŸ₯³
Romano Pravdic
Hi ?makers this looks.. amazingly usefull. I'm still unclear about how it works - do I just copy paste the URL and it'll do the rest? Does it work with 12ft.io?
Engin Kurutepe
Maker
@romanopravdic you can use the iOS app or the Chrome Extension to submit articles to Recast. We will do the conversion and you will see the final recast in the iOS or web app.
Austin Mark
@romanopravdic @ekurutepe Its also worth noting that as a pro user you can create a custom podcast channel you can access with your podcast app and listen to all your recasts in that manner.
Engin Kurutepe
Maker
@romanopravdic @avataraustin That is correct. With the pro subscription you can also enable offline listening which keeps your recasts on your phone so that you can listen in airplane mode etc.
Engin Kurutepe
Maker
Dear Hunters, Co-founder/CTO of Recast here. We're super excited to show you what we have been building! We build recast to help us get through all the interesting stuff to read on the Internet and discover things you would not have gotten around to reading otherwise. I used to be an avid podcast listener when driving, now recast replaced podcasts for me. Recast is different than a podcast, it does not, yet, have the theatrical part but it's also much quicker and gives me short and to the point conversations which are fun to listen while doing something else and gives me much more variety than a podcast would. I'd love to hear what you think about recast. Keep the feedback coming!
b00tsy
Awesome how sophisticated speech synthesis became recently. The intonation is very human-like...
Mustafa S.
Congrats on the launch team πŸš€ I've tried it last week and it seemed like a really fun way to consume written content to me. Sometimes I wish a similar thing would be really cool if it is possible for X(aka Twitter) though.
Matteo Tittarelli
Maker
@milkers hehe great feedback, like the ability to turn X/Twitter threads into Recasts? Sounds like a great use case (cc @ekurutepe @a18n @verena_ortlieb )
Adam Altman
Maker
@milkers I believe it works to ask @threadreaderapp to rollup a Tweet thread, then recast that page. Maybe someday we could build direct support, but are fans of their solution for now.
Mustafa S.
@matteo_tittarelli yes indeed. Another one I come up with is to convert long Slack threads into audible recasts. IDK if that is already possible with the current version of the Slack as an accessibility feature though. But I would like to tune in to some important threads while I keep working on my daily tasks without having Slack FOMO (i.e. keeping my main attention to my beloved IDE).
Ghost Kitty
Comment Deleted
Adam Altman
Maker
@fabrizio_caracausi πŸ™ and it's just the start! There's SO MUCH more we have in the works for how to level up the format conversion.
Ghost Kitty
Comment Deleted
Tim
Been using since early beta. The idea is genius & I'm very impressed with the voices - they're very real and pleasant to listen to actually. The killer feature for me is recasting my own articles. Though there is a growing library and recommendations that actually work quite well, I love recasting long-form articles that I find on social media or that my friends send me. Keep going strong & good luck with the launch!
Adam Altman
Maker
@tim_sfiligoj Re the voices, that's a special point of pride for us. Getting 80% of the way there comes out of the box, but the devils in the details. We have so many systems that we invested a lot of effort in early on to chase down edge cases and classes of edge cases where this new crop of AI-transformer based voicing, which is usually great, fails. And those rare WTF moments just kills the whole audio experience. One place you'll notice we tend to be way better than others is on acronyms, which come up more than you'd think. There's a lot of complexity there. But for users, we want you to never have to think about it. It should "just work"
Tim
@a18n You certianly outdid yourselves when it comes to the voices!
AndrΓ© J
This is what I need! Please Mozilla buy this startup and roll it into getpocket.com
Adam Altman
Maker
@sentry_co for the right price, we're also open to acquiring Mozilla ;)
Ilya Melnikov
I wasn't sure if Recast would suit me, but now not a day goes by without it. It has always saddened me that I don't have enough time to read everything I want from news and articles that will be useful in work or personal development, and Recast has completely solved my problem! Now I can listen to everything I want to read, in parallel with other things or on the way to work, and now I have enough time, I finally started to sort out what I added to "read later" a month ago. Thank you!!!
Matteo Tittarelli
Maker
@millman so glad we've been able to alleviate your pain, Ilia! Let's kill all read-later lists! πŸ˜„
Philipp Berner
I've been using this product since early beta. It's such a game changer to just be able to listen to articles. finally my hour-long drive delivers some value.
Matteo Tittarelli
Maker
@philippberner thanks for your unwavering support Philipp! Excited to play a part in turning your hour-long drives into valuable time 🀘
Max Gerasimov
I have been waiting for such a product for years! Amazing idea, team!
Matteo Tittarelli
Maker
@maxgerasimov thanks Max! ✨
Ross Merritt
Such a time saver and so engaging. Love how it sounds like a podcast with different voices having a conversation about the article in question.
Adam Altman
Maker
@rosswmerritt to us this conversational format is the critical difference to make it engaging and absorbable, especially while multi-tasking... which with audio, is basically always.
Tom Hillman
Love this idea ⚑️⚑️
Adam Altman
Maker
@wholenewwworld we did too! And when we built the first prototype it felt too right to not pursue!
Michelle Evans
Great job Matteo!
Matteo Tittarelli
Maker
@michelle_evans1 thanks Michelle! Kudos to the team :)
Verena Ortlieb
Maker
@michelle_evans1 @matteo_tittarelli couldn't have done it without you Matteo!
Matteo Tittarelli
Maker
Woohoo! πŸŽ‰ Congrats on hitting Product Hunt with your amazing launch! It's inspiring to see your innovative product take flight. Best of luck as you continue to soar!
Matteo Tittarelli
Maker
@nurullah_kanbak thansk for your kind words and support Nurullah, let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions :)
Marco Scoppetta
Amazing idea! Looking forward to being able to finally close all my browser tabs that I was supposed to read months ago πŸš€ πŸš€ Definitely trying this out today!!!
Matteo Tittarelli
Maker
@marco_scoppetta excited to hear your feedback bro! #killingbrowsertabs πŸš€ πŸš€
Adam Altman
Maker
@marco_scoppetta HECK YES. IT'S THE BEST FEELING. S8UMBIT, CLOSE, SUBMIT, CLOSE, SUMBIT CLOSE
Dineshan
It is an excellent app, works perfectly fine, and the narrative voices don't feel robotic. Congrats on the launch.
Matteo Tittarelli
Maker
@dineshan_sithamparanathan thank you for the feedback sir!
Lucy Zheng
@dineshan_sithamparanathan their voices sound super real and I love the accents !!
Adam Altman
Maker
@dineshan_sithamparanathan thanks for noticing, those voices took a LOT of work to chase down the major edge cases.
Johnson Ta
This looks like such a quality of life improvement, quite surprised nobody came up with this yet! Congrats on the launch, definitely plan on trying this out!
Matteo Tittarelli
Maker
@johnson_ta hehe we seized the opportunity! It's not about the idea rather the execution right? :D
Thomas Arend
Love it. Congrats on the launch, Adam and team. This is so exciting. A couple of questions: 1) can I give feedback on the summary quality in the Web app and Android app? 2) can I define the size of the summary (e.gm what if I only have 2 minutes) 3) can I configure the speaker voices? 4) are you planning an international launch in other languages?
Adam Altman
Maker
@techno Great questions! Re 1) In-app feedback. YES you can and please do! There should be a little feedback button on the player when a recast is playing (chat bubble with ! icon). Those are great for us to receive because they sync the track-and-time stamp. Re 2-4). All planned, just give us time!