Updates, fixes, and new features for Harkable beta.
v0.29·Latest
Smarter long-document setup
New
Harkable now recognizes books, reports, and essays before MP3 generation and shows the detected reading mode in the confirmation step.
Long books and reports are split with more structure: books can stay aligned to chapter breaks, and reports can stay aligned to major sections instead of being treated like one flat block of text.
Studio voice pricing is clearer in the admin rate snapshot, including the current $0.25 per-generation premium and a reminder to reconcile provider costs before changing customer prices.
Fixed
Added deeper generation-health monitoring for failed jobs, stale pending jobs, and gapless-audio fallback events so audio reliability issues are easier to catch.
v0.28·
Credit purchases, steadier
Fixed
Credit purchases are more reliable. Checkout now verifies the required Stripe price setup before sending you to Stripe, so a misconfigured pack is caught early instead of silently doing nothing.
Billing monitoring is quieter and more useful: alerts now send at most one daily email while billing is down, instead of repeating throughout the day.
The admin Media workflow was consolidated so document/audio management is easier to review while supporting users.
v0.27·
Studio voice, for everyone
New
Studio voice is here for everyone: a more expressive, natural AI voice you can shape with a style — calm, narrator, energetic, soothing, and more — on any conversion for a small premium. Toggle it on under the voice picker when you Convert.
v0.26·
Hear it before you sign up
New
The home page now plays quick voice samples — press play to hear Harkable read everyday things like a commute article, lecture notes, or a newsletter while you cook, each in a different voice.
v0.25·
See your audio being made
New
Converting a long document now shows a clear "Generating…" screen, then slides into the player the moment your first part is ready.
v0.24·
Warmth and glow
A second visual pass today: light mode feels warmer and lit from within, and dark mode gains a tasteful glow.
New
Light mode is warmer: a soft parchment depth behind the page plus warmer text and edges, so cards lift off the background.
Dark mode is the lantern lit: a gentle glow on the audio player, cards, and primary buttons, with glowing play buttons in the library so the grid reads as audio at a glance.
The document page player now carries a soft glow that tracks whichever theme you're using (Stars & Stripes glows blue, not amber).
In dark mode, your selected settings, filters, and voice now light up, and cards gently lift when you hover them, so what's active is clearer at a glance.
Fixed
Resolved an issue that could incorrectly block sign-in and new account creation. Logging in is reliable again.
v0.23·
A fresh look, and listening straight from the library
A visual refresh across Harkable, plus you can now play documents right from the Audio Library.
New
Play straight from the Audio Library: every document card now has a play button and a waveform, with a mini-player docked at the bottom, so you can listen and keep browsing without opening each page.
A cleaner top bar: the header is now a single tidy row with a grouped, simplified menu.
A refreshed document page: the audio player is front and center, with the summary and source set quietly below it.
A redesigned sign-in screen, and Settings reorganized into Appearance, Audio, and Reading tabs so options are easier to find.
Fixed
Account emails such as sign-up confirmation now send reliably from harkable.app.
On phones, the convert page no longer shows a duplicate Generate button.
The Audio Library no longer flashes a "couldn't load" message over documents that already loaded.
v0.22·
Big books, handled
Long documents now convert faster and finish reliably, even hours-long books.
New
Much faster conversions: Harkable now generates several parts of your document at once, so a big book finishes in a fraction of the time it used to take.
Resume instead of restart: if your tab closes, your device sleeps, or your connection drops partway through, your progress is saved and the conversion picks up where it left off.
A bigger referral reward: your friend gets $5 in credits to start, and you now earn $3 when they sign up with your code.
A friendlier first visit: the short, skippable getting-started tour now greets first-time visitors right away, not only after signing up.
Fixed
Long documents are far more reliable: a single timeout or busy moment no longer stalls the whole job. Harkable retries automatically and keeps going past any one stuck section, so large books reach the finish.
Harkable now keeps your screen from sleeping during an active conversion and warns you before you accidentally leave the page mid-job.
v0.21·
A fresh look
Harkable has a new face — same calm, bookish feel, sharper everywhere.
New
A new look — a refreshed Harkable logo (our lantern, lit by a sound wave) and matching H mark, new app icons and favicon, a new display typeface, and a gentle lantern animation while your audio is being generated.
Switch languages from the footer — the EN / ES language switch is now in the footer too, not just the header, so it's easy to find from any page.
Fixed
A smoother audio player — refreshed playback controls on the result and audio-library pages.
Tidied up the top navigation bar's layout and spacing for a cleaner header.
A clearer thank-you page after checkout, with your new credits ready to use.
v0.20·
Stars & Stripes theme
New
A new Stars & Stripes theme — a warm, patriotic look you can switch on from the theme picker, alongside the existing Harkable themes.
v0.19·
Hear it first, and a guided start
New
Free 30-second preview — hear how a document will sound before you spend a credit. Look for Preview on the convert page; the first ~30 seconds play for free.
A guided first run — new users now get a short, skippable walkthrough showing how to upload a document, preview it, and generate the full MP3.
v0.18·
Harkable en español
Harkable now speaks Spanish.
New
Español — the homepage, pricing, and convert pages are now available in Latin American Spanish. Tap the EN / ES switch in the header to change languages; you stay on the same page.
Spanish gets its own web addresses (harkable.app/es) so the Spanish pages can be found in Spanish search results. More of the app will follow.
Fixed
Opened from Instagram or Facebook? Those apps' built-in browsers block file downloads. The result page now detects them and shows a heads-up with one step to open Harkable in Chrome or Safari, where your MP3 downloads normally. Your audio is always saved to your library either way.
v0.17·
Reliability & security hardening
Fixed
Behind-the-scenes reliability and security improvements across billing, referrals, and account handling.
Tidied up the browser console — internal debug logging no longer appears in production.
Made the failure-monitoring more resilient to email-delivery hiccups.
v0.16·
Share as video, smoother sign-in
New
Share as video — turn any document's audio into a short, branded video clip (9:16 for Reels/TikTok, or 1:1 square) you can post and share. Look for the 'Share as video' button next to Download MP3.
Fixed
Signing in no longer loses your work — if you upload a document while signed out and then sign in to generate, your document stays loaded and you go straight to generating, no re-uploading.
Blog articles now open correctly from the blog list.
Added Facebook and Instagram links in the footer.
v0.15·
Sharper audio library
New
Higher-quality library audio — featured documents in the public audio library (the Declaration of Independence, Federalist 10 & 51, Washington's Farewell, Lincoln's Second Inaugural, and JFK's 'We Choose to Go to the Moon') are now read from clean, curated text and open with a spoken title, so they sound polished from the very first second.
Clearer narration of numbers and symbols — dollar amounts, percentages, and common abbreviations in library documents are now spoken naturally instead of read character-by-character.
Fixed
Fixed a delivery issue where some library source texts could fail to load, so library audio now regenerates reliably.
v0.14·
Installable app, lockscreen controls & mobile polish
New
Installable on mobile — Harkable can now be added to your home screen on iOS and Android. Open the site in your browser and tap 'Add to Home Screen' for an app-like experience.
Lockscreen audio controls — when listening to a generated MP3, your device's lockscreen now shows play, pause, and skip controls with the document title. Works on iPhone, Android, and desktop.
Skeleton loaders — account page, audio library cards, recent generations, and blog list now show smooth loading placeholders instead of blank space.
Read Aloud Guides — new resource hub at /read-aloud-guides covering strategies for listening to documents, papers, and textbooks.
Fixed
iOS Safari URL bar clipping — page content no longer disappears behind the Safari URL bar on iPhone.
Focus rings and screen reader labels added to icon buttons and voice preview controls throughout the app.
Large PDF generation (200K+ chars) no longer times out on the server — generation is now capped at a reliable length with clean audio output.
Database query performance improvements — several internal queries now run faster under load.
v0.13·
Generation fixes, polish & continuity
New
Clear button on paste text input — a small × appears inside the textarea on /convert when text is entered, one click clears it.
Aurora shader continuity pass — the aurora background now adapts correctly across all four themes and both light and dark modes.
Fixed
Referral bonus balance was not updating — pay_referral_bonus now upserts the credit balance, mirroring purchase_credits. All affected referrers have been credited retroactively.
Theme toggle persistence — the toggle now works correctly in private/incognito browsing by falling back to sessionStorage when localStorage is unavailable.
Long multi-part generation auth failures — the job token TTL was increased from 30 minutes to 4 hours so jobs with 10+ segments no longer fail mid-generation with 'Job token is invalid or expired'.
v0.12·
Accessibility, referrals & stability
New
Reading & Accessibility settings — reduced motion toggle (respects system preference by default), OpenDyslexic font toggle, and text size control (90–140%). Find them in Settings.
Low balance nudge — a banner appears on /convert and /account when your credits drop below $3.00, with a direct link to top up. Dismisses for 24 hours.
Referral system updated — both sides now get $5 when a new user signs up with a referral code. Codes only work at account creation, not after.
Nine new pages: /for-researchers, /for-accessibility, /docx-to-mp3, /for-commuters, /pdf-to-mp3, /compare/elevenreader, /compare/voicebrief, /compare/paper2audio, and a /compare hub.
Fixed
Safari sign-in — auth requests are now first-party to harkable.app via a Cloudflare Worker proxy. Silent sign-outs, tab-reopen logouts, and private window failures should no longer occur.
Account page Play button was redirecting to homepage instead of opening the audio player.
Continue Listening card now populates correctly after playing audio for 5+ seconds.
Referral bonus was not being paid to the referrer due to a missing database function. Fixed and all affected referrers have been credited.
v0.11·
Launch-week fixes
New
Improved: Very long PDFs that hit the extraction timeout now return partial audio with an on-screen notice, instead of failing entirely.
Improved: Multi-part generation now says 'generating in 2 parts' instead of '2 MP3s', the output is always one file.
Analytics: audio play and download events now tracked across the public library.
Navigation: /listen and /library now redirect to /audio-library.
Bookmarks, your listening position is now saved automatically. Close the tab, come back later, or switch devices and it picks up where you left off. A 'Continue Listening' card on your account page shows your top 3 in-progress jobs.
Chapter navigation, audio over 8 minutes now shows chapter pills above the player. Click any pill to jump to that section.
Fixed
Stripe webhook was pointing to the old domain, purchases were silently failing. All purchases now work correctly. If you tried to buy credits this week and nothing happened, try again. Still having issues? Email us at support@harkable.app and we'll sort it out.
/audio-library detail pages were loading the index list instead of the document. Routing corrected.
Public audio files were unreachable due to an incorrect storage bucket path. Audio now streams and downloads correctly.
Pricing page showed different prices for logged-out vs. logged-in users due to a race condition. Both states now show consistent prices.
PDFs with image-heavy covers were incorrectly flagged as scanned and rejected. Detection now samples multiple pages before giving up.
Password reset now works end-to-end.
v0.10·
Public Audio Library + cleaner long-document audio
New
Public Audio Library, Browse and listen to 18+ classic and official documents, speeches, and reports, no account needed. Find it in the More menu.
Blog launched, find it at /blog.
10 SEO landing pages, dedicated pages for key use cases and comparisons.
SEO overhaul, per-route Open Graph images, JSON-LD structured data, breadcrumbs, and alt text across the site. Better previews in search and social.
IndexNow, new pages are now submitted to search engines automatically.
Switched PDF parser to unpdf, more reliable extraction across a wider range of PDFs, including files that previously crashed or timed out.
Smarter text cleanup, citations, footnote markers, LaTeX math, and bibliography sections are stripped before audio generation.
Longer documents, removed the old 17,500-character routing cap. Harkable handles full-length documents end-to-end.
Theme system, four visual themes (Default, Reader's Olive, Sage Mist, Inkwell Plum) with light and dark modes.
Admin: bulk row actions added to the admin dashboard.
Fixed
PDF 524 timeout, long PDFs no longer return a gateway error; extraction completes or returns a partial result.
Account redirect flow, returning to /account after sign-in no longer loops.
Duplicate page_view analytics events removed.
Paste text chunking and naming, multi-part paste jobs now label correctly.
Dropdown hover styling.
v0.9·
Memorial Day check-in
Happy Memorial Day from Harkable. To those who served, thank you. We're a small team in the USA, building this for you.
New
Honest pricing copy update, corrected the "200-page paper" example from $8 to $20 across / and /why.
/why page sharpened, students, researchers, busy professionals, plus a new accessibility section.
Pack bonus now applies on every purchase, no more first-purchase-only stealth.
Smart text cleanup, citations, URLs, and repeated page headers stripped before TTS for cleaner audio on long documents.
Audio Library card added to /account, replay past generations within the 7-day window.
Updates pill + "More" dropdown in nav, easier discoverability for Why / Roadmap / Changelog / Support.
Loudness normalization on TTS output, audio is now consistently louder.
Theme accent colors live across all 4 themes (teal / terracotta / clay rose / antique gold).
Hero shader background with mouse-reactive aurora, bookended on the closing CTA.
Pricing disclosure note added, honest about ongoing pricing iteration.
Fixed
/convert "Use this text" button no longer requires a double-click, single click now scrolls to the review step and advances the flow correctly.
/pricing now shows Buy buttons for signed-in users on every credit pack. No more forced detour to /account to purchase.
Stuck "Redirecting..." state after abandoning Stripe checkout. Buttons now reset automatically when you return via back button or tab switch.
v0.8·
v0.8, Consolidated release
New
Four-theme system (Harkable Default, Reader's Olive, Sage Mist, Inkwell Plum) with light + dark modes.
Harkable logo and favicon, slab-serif H with audio waveform.
"Why Harkable" comparison page at /why.
Editable document preview, fix extraction errors or trim content before generating.
"What's new" pill consolidates announcements into one dismissible spot.
Confirmation modal toggle in Settings (opt out for paid generations if you're confident).
Audio recovery, completed MP3s are saved for 7 days, survive browser refresh and device switches.
Sliding markup curve, long documents cost dramatically less per character.
Reader and Scholar subscriptions (optional, pay-as-you-go is still the default).
First-purchase bonus credits.
Previous v0.6, v0.7, and v0.8 pre-release entries merged into this single entry.
Branded favicon, Apple touch icon, and Open Graph social-preview image.
Robots and sitemap coverage for /why and /pricing/subscriptions.
Twitter / Slack / LinkedIn share previews now show the Harkable brand.
Fixed
Free MP3 counter now updates correctly after use.
Paste-text recovery card works (was showing 'Re-upload' for paste sessions).
/pricing/subscriptions route no longer 404s.
Voice regeneration cost shown up-front.
Free MP3 confirmation modal no longer shows a confusing 'Price' row.
Convert page visual hierarchy improved.
Player layout cleaned up across single + chunked generations.
Many copy and visual polish fixes from external beta testing.
v0.6·
Server PDFs, staged loading, and admin overhaul
New
Server-side PDF extraction via Gemini, finally handles malformed PDFs that broke the browser-side parser. No more workarounds for normal documents.
Per-segment progress and early playback for multi-part generations. Listen to Part 1 while later parts are still generating.
Staged loading UI, text extraction, audio generation, and finalize are now shown as distinct steps with time estimates.
New admin dashboard with revenue, gross margin, OpenAI cost tracking, failed-job monitoring, and visitor analytics.
Segment-level failure tracking, a partial failure now properly marks the job failed instead of silently completing.
Referral system: auto-creates a personal HARK-XXXXX code for every signup. New users redeem for $5 in credits at signup, the referrer earns $1 per friend who joins.
Security hardening on database functions.
Known issue: Safari users may stay signed out due to Apple's Intelligent Tracking Prevention blocking auth requests. Workaround: turn off 'Prevent cross-site tracking' in Safari settings, or use Chrome/Firefox. Fix planned.
Coming next: more accessible pricing for long documents, and an optional subscription tier for power users while keeping pay-as-you-go as the default.
Fixed
Analytics events now actually record (long-standing legacy column bug).
Multi-segment auth header was being dropped (fixed).
Header auth no longer flashes 'Sign in' on refresh.
Admin tab now appears for admin users.
v0.5.1·
Known issue: Safari sign-in
Known issue: Safari users may stay signed out due to Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) blocking Supabase auth refresh requests. Workaround: use Chrome or Firefox, or disable 'Prevent cross-site tracking' in Safari Settings → Privacy. Permanent fix planned via Supabase custom domain or a Cloudflare Worker auth proxy so auth requests appear first-party.
Added a dismissible Safari warning banner on the convert page.
v0.5·
Harkable Launch & Beta Improvements
New
Rebranded from FileCast to Harkable, new name, domain, and branding throughout.
Live payments via Stripe, 4 credit packs available: Starter, Standard, Power, and Pro.
Voice previews refreshed with Harkable branding across all 9 voices.
Referral system, share your code. Your friend gets $5 to start, you earn $1 when they join.
Low credit warning on the convert page so you know before you run out.
PDF parser improvements for cleaner, more accurate text extraction.
Progress bar now shows % complete and ETA during generation.
Generation titles now show the filename or a snippet of the source text.
Internal admin dashboard for monitoring and support.
Analytics and visitor tracking added to better understand usage.
Fixed
Upload zone reliability fix, fewer stuck uploads and clearer error states.
v0.4·
Dark mode, color refresh, and invite codes
New
Dark mode, toggle in header or Settings → Appearance. Follows system preference by default.
Color-coded credit packs: Starter, Standard (Most popular), and Power now visually distinct.
Warmer landing page with gradient hero.
Redeem a code, enter an invite code from the account menu to unlock beta access and credits.
v0.3·
Polish, trust, and audio fixes
New
Convert page heading now updates based on whether you're uploading a file or pasting text.
Pre-generation explanation added, see what happens before you commit credits.
Internal cost and provider language removed from all non-developer views.
Account page copy updated to accurately reflect beta, no false promises about history.
Audio parts terminology is now consistent throughout the app.
Fixed
Browser read-aloud and generated MP3 playback no longer interfere with each other.
Result page now shows a friendly recovery screen instead of a blank page on errors.
v0.2·
Stripe billing, per-part loading, and performance
New
Credit packs live, buy Starter ($5), Standard ($10), or Power ($20) credits.
First-purchase bonus credits applied automatically at checkout.
Per-part loading animation, see each audio part go from pending to generating to ready.
Document text is cleaned before conversion, page numbers, TOC leaders, and bare URLs stripped.
Chunk size increased and concurrency improved, long documents generate faster.
v0.1·
Private beta launch
New
Upload PDF, DOCX, or TXT and convert to downloadable MP3.