Gloss · voice-first manual companion
Ask your manual a question. Out loud.
Gloss reads the manuals for everything you own — the wardrobe, the sewing machine, the synthesizer — and answers out loud. It reads the diagrams too.
In development for iPhone · Answers work offline
A quick listen
Which way does the cam lock face on step fourteen?
Flat side toward the edge of the panel, arrow pointing at the peg. There are four on this step and all four face the same way. If an arrow points away from its peg, the shelf will not seat.
Flat-pack wardrobe · step 14 · this page has no words on it
And when the answer is a drawing, it walks the path:
- Spool
- Tension discs
- Take-up lever
- Thread guide
- Needle
An illustration of how Gloss speaks a diagram it has read, not a live model. Every path is one it built when it read the drawing.
The reason Gloss exists
A diagram you can hear
A sewing machine's threading path may be the most reproduced illustration in the history of household objects. No blind person has ever used one.
Most of what you actually need in a manual is a drawing — the threading path, the exploded view, the routing matrix, the thirty wordless panels of an assembly guide — and a drawing is the one thing a manual refuses to say in words. Gloss reads the pictures, then walks the path it built when it read them: every arrow on the page becomes a connection it can follow, name and speak.
What it is
Every manual in the house, answerable out loud
Not a search result. Not a highlighted PDF. A spoken procedure, in order, with the page it came from so you can check the work.
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Prose, not page numbers
A spoken procedure, in order, with the page it came from so you can check the work — never a highlighted PDF you still have to read.
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It reads the pictures
The threading path. The exploded view. The routing matrix. The thirty wordless panels of an assembly guide — the one thing a manual refuses to say in words.
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Across everything you own
Add the wardrobe and the drill. Add the Montage and the Quad Cortex. Then ask a question that lands in both.
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No signal. Still answers
Rehearsal rooms are basements. So is the gap behind the wardrobe. The whole index lives on your phone, so the search, the procedures and the described paths all work with the radio off.
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Honest when it doesn't know
An app that reads confidently from the wrong page is worse than no app at all. When Gloss doesn't know, it says so — and it tells you when it drops to your phone's built-in voice, rather than pretending.
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Your model, not one like yours
Revision B moved a screw. The 2019 firmware moved a menu. Gloss answers from the document that came with the thing on your bench, and tells you which page it's on.
Four steps, once each
You bring the manual. Gloss writes the notes.
The reading happens exactly once. After that the notes are yours, on your phone, and they don't need us.
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Paste the download link
Manufacturers put their manuals online and give them away. Your phone fetches yours straight from them — Ikea, Singer, Whirlpool, Yamaha, whoever made the thing.
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Gloss reads it once
Every page. Every table, every exploded view, every wordless panel. It writes its own notes on what it finds. This is the part that costs money, and it happens exactly once.
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The notes live on your phone
A few megabytes. Not the manual — the notes. They're yours, they're small, and they don't need us.
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Ask out loud
Because your hands are full of cam locks, or bobbin thread, or a patch cable, and the phone is somewhere on the floor.
What it costs
No subscription. You don't read manuals every month.
You buy a thing, you live in its manual for a week, then you don't open it for a year. Charging you monthly for that would be charging you for silence.
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Once
The app
Buy Gloss. Add your manuals, ask your questions, offline, forever.
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By the page
Credits
A microwave manual is twenty pages. A synthesizer manual is four hundred. You pay for what gets read.
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Free
Usually
If anyone has already added your exact manual, yours costs nothing. Most household manuals were read long before you got here.
Your manuals
We never keep the book
Gloss reads your file, writes its own notes, hands them to your phone, and forgets it. The manual stays where it started — with you and the company that made your thing.
Manuals you add privately stay private. They're indexed to your device, never pooled, never shared, never part of anybody else's library.
Questions
Frequently asked
What works offline, and what doesn't?
The whole index lives on your phone, so the search, the procedures and the described paths all answer with the radio off. The common answers are already recorded in your chosen voice and waiting; past those, Gloss falls back to the voice built into your phone — and it tells you that's what happened. What you lose offline is follow-up questions and the good voice. You keep every answer the manual actually contains.
Why not just ask a chatbot?
Three reasons. It hasn't read your manual — revision B moved a screw and the 2019 firmware moved a menu, and Gloss answers from the document that came with your thing. It can't see the drawing — ask the web where the thread goes and you get the threading path of a sewing machine in general, not the one on your bench. And there's no signal down there — the manual is needed exactly where the bars run out. Some things have no manual and the web knows them cold; Gloss is for everything else.
What happens to my manual?
Gloss reads your file, writes its own notes, hands them to your phone, and forgets it. Manuals you add privately stay private — indexed to your device, never pooled, never shared. There is no shelf of other people's manuals on a server somewhere; there is a shelf of notes about them.
What will it cost?
Three ways at once, and no subscription. Once, you buy the app. By the page, you pay credits for what actually gets read — a microwave manual is twenty pages, a synthesizer four hundred. And usually free: if someone has already added your exact manual, yours costs nothing. Exact prices will be announced closer to launch.
When can I get it?
Gloss is being built now, for iPhone, and not yet released. Join the waitlist and you'll hear from a person when it's ready. We're not announcing a firm date yet.
Be early
Get Gloss when it opens
If you own more manuals than patience, get on the list. You'll hear from a person, not a newsletter.
One more step
Your email app has opened a ready-to-send waitlist request for Gloss addressed to tau@taudesignworks.com. Send it and we'll be in touch at that address when there's a beta to try.
The suite
Part of the TauDesignWorks suite
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Iris
Your mail, out loud.
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Clair
Eyes that reason, a friend that speaks.
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Vellum
Expenses, captured and kept yours.
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You are here
Gloss
Every manual in the house, answerable out loud.
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Facet
Pan a room. It counts what's there.
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Umbra
Dims the parts of the screen that hurt.