I have a long PDF of lecture notes, about 60 pages, and I’d much rather listen to it on my commute than read it on my phone. Is there a way to turn a PDF into an audio file, or is that not really possible?
If the PDF has selectable text, open it in Microsoft Edge and use “Read aloud,” or use your phone’s built-in accessibility speech. If it’s scanned pages, you’ll need OCR first, and Google Drive or OneDrive can sometimes pull the text out. That usually streams the reading rather than making an audio file. I use the phone option for documents between loads, and learned the hard way to test a few pages before a long drive.
There’s no real one click pdf to mp3 thing, but you can get it read to you. I upload stuff to Google Play Books and hit read aloud, or on iPhone Speak Screen reads any pdf you have open. An actual audio file is definately more hassle, the exporters usually want plain text pasted in. What phone are you on?
If the PDF has selectable text, PDFcap can extract it cleanly first, then you can use your phone or computer’s built-in text-to-speech to read it aloud. For a scanned PDF, run OCR first, which means turning the page images into real text. I would check a couple pages afterward, since lecture notes with formulas or columns can get read in a funny order.