TapTales

TapTales press kit

For writers, editors and podcasters. Everything here is free to use in coverage of TapTales.

In one paragraph

TapTales is an iPhone and iPad app that turns a parent's voice into a picture book a small child can read by themselves. You read a story aloud once; the app transcribes it on the device, finds the page breaks in your pauses, and turns each page into a big picture tile. The child taps a tile and hears you read that page, one tile at a time, until they know every word. Grandparents and anyone else in the family record pages from their own phones through iCloud sharing, so a child in one city can hear Grandma in another at bedtime. There's no account, no ads and no tracking: stories and recordings stay in the family's own iCloud.

The facts

  • Name on the App Store: TapTales: Read-Aloud Books
  • Launch: 12 October 2026
  • Runs on: iPhone and iPad, iOS 26.5 or later
  • Price: free to download. The twelve classic stories are free for good, and so are three stories recorded in your own voice. Plus ($9.99 a month, with a 7-day free trial) adds unlimited recording, photos on the tiles, bedtime mode, Translate, and saving a story as a video or picture book. Pro ($12.99 a month) adds a storyteller voice that can narrate five of your own stories a month. A subscriber's plan covers everyone in their family.
  • Family sharing: up to six people, each on All or Limited, with no extra sign-up beyond their Apple Account.
  • Storyteller voices: five, and they read a story in the language it's written in.
  • Privacy: no account, no ads, no analytics or advertising SDK. Recordings sync only through the family's iCloud. The privacy policy lists everything the server sees.
  • Made by: one parent, for their own kids. An independent app with no investors.

What it does

  • Read it aloud once. Read a whole book, or type or paste it in; it comes back as tiles, cut at your pauses and never mid-sentence.
  • Tile by tile. Or make a story a page at a time, with your own photos on the tiles: the first day of preschool, a new baby, a move, a trip to the dentist.
  • Built for small hands. Only the next tile opens. Leaving a story takes a long press, so a toddler stays in it.
  • Grandma can read it too. Ask someone to read a story and it waits at the top of their shelf, with a Record button.
  • Bedtime mode. Stories play back to back with rain or waves, the screen dims, and it stops only between pages.

Icon and screenshots

Tap a picture for the full-size PNG. App screens are 1320 × 2868 (a 6.9-inch iPhone); the icon is 1024 × 1024. Please don't crop the icon's corners or add a border.

The TapTales app icon
App icon
A story as tiles: the next tile glows, later ones are locked
Reading: only the next tile opens
The shelf of a family's own stories
The shelf
The story editor, recording as Grandma
Recording a page as Grandma
Making a new story: All at once or Tile by tile
Two ways to make a story
App Store image: Their favorite story, in your voice
App Store image
App Store image: Grandma can read it too
App Store image

Contact and promo codes

Email support@taptales.xyz for questions, an interview, or a promo code for Plus to try every feature. A real person answers, usually within a day.

TapTales on the App Store