The newsletters are good. The problem is when they arrive. Long-form writing lands in your inbox at the exact moment you have the least patience for it, and so it sits there: fifty unread issues, a little guilt, eventual mass-archive. We've written before about the newsletter graveyard; turning newsletters into a podcast is the most reliable way out of it.
It works because audio is where the attention already is. Per Edison Research's Infinite Dial 2026, 58% of Americans now listen to podcasts every month, roughly 167 million people. The walk, the commute, the dishes, the gym: those slots have been growing for a decade while focused, eyes-on-screen reading time has been shrinking. Move the writing into the slot and the backlog mostly takes care of itself.
This guide covers every way to do it, from a single article to your whole inbox.
First, decide which "newsletter to podcast" you mean
Search for this and you'll get two completely different answers mixed together, because there are two completely different goals:
- You're a reader. You subscribe to newsletters and want to listen to the ones already landing in your inbox. Most of this guide is for you.
- You're a writer. You publish a newsletter and want to ship an audio version to your own subscribers. Skip to the section for writers.
Getting clear on which one you are saves a lot of wasted setup. Below are the three methods for readers, in rough order of how much of your inbox they cover.
Method 1: Text-to-speech, one article at a time
The simplest approach. Paste a newsletter (or a link) into a text-to-speech tool and listen to that one piece. Apps like Speechify and other read-it-later voices do this well, and it's a fine way to get through something you've specifically saved.
Good for: the occasional long read you want off your screen.
The catch: it's manual and per-item. Nothing arrives on its own, there's no daily rhythm, and the unit is "a thing I remembered to paste in" rather than "everything new since yesterday." It's the audio equivalent of saving links: useful, but it doesn't fix a recurring pile-up. (That difference is the whole subject of Junco vs Audioread.)
Method 2: A personal podcast feed from a forwarding address
A step up in automation. Some services give you a dedicated email address; you subscribe to newsletters with it, and each issue gets converted into an episode on a private podcast feed you add to any podcast app. Tools in this space include Read It and AudioLetter.
Good for: people who want subscriptions to flow in automatically and listen in a podcast app they already use.
The catch: a raw feed is just a stream of episodes. There's usually no daily digest, no way to combine sources into one listen, and limited control over voices or formatting. It automates the delivery but not the experience.
Method 3: A dedicated newsletter podcast app
The most complete version: an app built end-to-end to turn the newsletters you subscribe to into a daily listen. This is what we built Junco for, and it's worth explaining why a dedicated app beats a "listen" button bolted onto a reader. We make that argument in full in why we built a podcast app, not a reader.
With a dedicated app you get:
- A daily episode, not a backlog. Everything that arrived overnight, summarized and stitched into one morning listen.
- A real player. Queue, lock-screen controls, background playback, sleep timer, and offline downloads: the things that make a podcast habit stick.
- Mixtapes. Combine several newsletters into a single longer episode for a longer walk.
- A personal inbox address. Subscribe with
you@listen.tryjunco.comand never hand a writer your real email. No Gmail connection required. - Better voices. Natural-sounding TTS, with premium cloud voices for the ones you listen to most.
Good for: anyone whose actual problem is "I never get to the newsletters I'm subscribed to," not "I have one article to play right now."
Choosing a method
| TTS app | Forwarding feed | Dedicated app | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listen to a single article | Yes | Clumsy | Yes |
| Subscriptions arrive automatically | No | Yes | Yes |
| Daily digest of everything new | No | No | Yes |
| Full podcast player (offline, queue) | Partial | Depends on app | Yes |
| Combine newsletters into one episode | No | No | Yes |
| Works without connecting Gmail | n/a | Sometimes | Yes |
If you only ever have one thing to play, a TTS app is enough. If you want your subscriptions to show up on their own, you want Method 2 or 3, and the difference there is whether you want a raw stream of episodes or a designed daily listen.
How to turn your inbox into a podcast with Junco
Concretely, the reader path takes about two minutes:
- Download Junco from the App Store.
- Choose your source. Either connect Gmail and pick the senders you care about, or use the personal inbox address you get at signup and subscribe newsletters to it directly. (No Gmail needed for the second option.)
- Add from the catalog (optional). Browse 100+ curated newsletters and subscribe with one tap. Junco forwards through a managed address, so the writer never sees your real one.
- Press play tomorrow. Your first daily episode lands in the morning, with a notification when it's ready.
For more tactics around the same problem, see how to keep up with newsletters in 2026.
If you write a newsletter: publish an audio version
Different job, same phrase. If you publish a newsletter and want an audio edition for your subscribers, you have good options too. Substack has built-in narration and creator voiceovers (see Substack's own guide to adding a voiceover to a post), and tools like Jellypod and Aloudable generate an audio episode from each issue you send.
That's a publishing workflow, and it's separate from the reader's problem this guide is mostly about. Junco is for the listener filling their own queue, not for distributing your show to an audience.
FAQs
Can you turn any newsletter into a podcast? Almost. Anything that arrives as an email (Substack, Beehiiv, Ghost, ConvertKit, or a plain sender) can be converted to audio by forwarding it to a dedicated address or connecting the inbox it lands in. Newsletters delivered only as RSS work too.
How do I listen to Substack posts as a podcast? Two ways. As a reader, forward the Substack to a newsletter-audio app (or connect the inbox you receive it in) and it becomes an episode. As a subscriber to a writer who records narration, the Substack app plays their voiceover directly.
Do I have to connect Gmail?
No. With Junco you can skip Gmail entirely and use the personal inbox address (you@listen.tryjunco.com) you get at signup, then subscribe newsletters to it.
Is it free to turn newsletters into a podcast? Junco is free to start. Most text-to-speech tools have free tiers with paid voices or limits above a certain amount of listening.
What's the difference between this and a newsletter reader? A reader assumes the bottleneck is the reading experience. Audio assumes the bottleneck is finding eyes-on-screen time at all, and moves the content into a slot you already have. That's the case we make in Junco vs Meco.
If the missing piece has been when, not what, audio is the fix. Download Junco and turn the newsletters you already subscribe to into tomorrow morning's first listen.