You can read one of your child's finished books aloud, a page at a time, and we keep your recordings with the book. What we keep is the recording itself. We do not build a copy of your voice from it, and nothing can make your recording say anything you did not say.
Making the recordings
- Go to Readers, choose your child and open the "Books" tab.
- Next to a finished book, press "Record your voice". The page that opens is called "Read it in your voice".
- Every page of the book is listed with its words. Press the microphone button beside a page and read the words out loud.
- Press the same button again to stop. The recording is saved and the page is marked "Recorded".
- Carry on with any other pages, in any order. You do not have to record them all.
The first time, your browser asks whether this page may use your microphone. Chrome, Safari and Firefox can all record on a phone or a computer. While you record, the seconds count up under the button.
Each recording can be up to 90 seconds long. If you reach 90 seconds, the recording stops by itself and is saved. The page also tells you how many pages of the book you have recorded so far.
A few things to know:
- Only finished books can be recorded.
- Recording needs the card check on your account to be done.
- If you record a lot of pages very quickly, you may see "That is a lot of recording at once, so please try again in a few minutes."
- We can switch recording off for a while. When it is off, the page says "New recordings are switched off at the moment, but anything that you have already recorded still plays."
Listening back and recording again
Once a page is saved, a player appears under its words so you can listen to it. To make the words light up in time with your voice, we work out when you said each word. Under the player you will see either "The words will light up as you read." or a note that this recording plays without the words lighting up, and that recording the page again usually fixes that.
To replace a recording, press the button beside that page again (it now says "Again") and read the page. The new recording takes the place of the old one.
The "Voice for read-along" setting
Each reader has a setting called "Voice for read-along", in their Settings under "Listening and Pip". It has two choices, "Pip's recorded voice" and "A grown-up from home". Once you have recorded a page, the recording page reminds you to choose "A grown-up from home" if your child is still set to hear Pip.
Once it is set to "A grown-up from home", a page you have recorded is read in your voice when your child opens that book, with the words lighting up in time with it, and any page you have not recorded is read by Pip as before. A book kept on a tablet for reading offline takes your recordings with it.
What we keep, and for how long
- Your recordings. They are yours, and they are kept with the book you made them for.
- In your copy of everything. Your recordings are included in the copy of your data you can download from Settings.
- Only for your family. If the book is shared to the library, your recordings are not shared with it.
- Your child's voice is different. A recording of your child is never kept. See Read-along and the tools inside a book.
The companies that help us run the service are listed in the privacy notice.
Removing a recording
There is no button to delete a single recording. You can record over any page at any time, which replaces what was there.
Your recordings are deleted along with the book. That happens 30 days after you remove the reader the book was made for, or 30 days after you close your account. Putting a book away does not delete it or its recordings.
If you want your recordings removed sooner, ask us from Help in your dashboard, choose "What you hold about us", and tell us which book.