“HARK”, listen closely!, English, c. 1225How and Why Hark

HARK!NEWS

Sunday, August 2, 2026News YOU Care About

The lead

All the news(letters)
you swore you’d read,
read to you.

Without ever handing an app your inbox

(There’s no app to hand it to anyway.)

Today’s Breaking NewsSunday, August 2, 2026From our founder’s personal newsletters6:16Total runtime

Today’s Major Headlines (tap to listen)

  1. The race to zero in artificial intelligenceThe Hustle · Mike Allen
  2. Steep water cuts looming for three western states1440 Daily Digest
  3. A fragile ceasefire hinges on sequencing1440 Daily Digest
  4. A quiet referendum could reshape state courts nationwidePOLITICO Playbook
  5. More Major Storiesfrom 11 total newsletters
Make your own, free

5 minutes to sound smarter,
from the carpool to the boardroom

A matter of record

The newsletters you love, distilled into a 5-minute morning audio newscast you can listen to walking your dog or doing the dishes.

Done with your sensitive email staying where it belongs, in Gmail.

All Other Apps, inbox access

Every other newsletter reader asks you to connect your email, an OAuth grant that hands a startup standing permission to read your entire mailbox. Bank alerts. Medical results. Tax documents. Password resets. A decade of private correspondence. A breach at a company small or big, and all of it leaks.

The Hark way, no access exists

You never connect your email. One Gmail filter you control forwards only bulk mail, one way, to a private address. Your personal and financial email never leaves Google's servers. We process just the newsletters, drop the promotional ones and purge the raw mail when your morning audio cast is ready. Delete the filter anytime and the pipe is gone.

“Your bank statements are none of our business and it shouldn’t be anyone else's either.”

How it works

Set one Gmail filter, once, in about a minute. You create it and control it; every future newsletter flows in on its own. We show you step by step during onboard.

We sort the mail, real newsletters kept, marketing dropped, raw mail purged once we pull together the audio cast for the day.

Every morning, a simple text with a link to your audio cast so you can feel ready for the day. Five minutes, and you're ready for any conversation from the board room to the carpool.

Today's Featured Newsletter · Our Editorial Review and Why It May Be for You

Why it sounds different

Your sources, not our picks. We use only the newsletters that you curated to fit your curiosity and needs. No Hark editorial desk, the daily audio cast is built only from what you subscribe to. No two are the same!

Synthesis with a point of view. “Everyone called the pause expected; only WSJ flagged the bond market.” We dedupe stories, analyze where different media have different angles and point out all of the nuances so you have the full picture.

Capped at five minutes. A briefing, not a feed. It ends.

Sources one tap away, for every story, always.

Small pleasures

  • Audio read by a news anchor
  • Every source a tap away to dig deeper
  • Audio player custom-built for the newscast
  • Bookmark any story
  • End-of-briefing quiz
  • Listening streaks
  • Share a story or entire episode as a playable link
  • Offline? No problem, download and listen anywhere

The price

Try completely free.
Then $5 a month.

Try free for an entire week.

No tiers. Cancel anytime from your account settings.

Make your own, free

Questions from the floor

Do I need to download another darn app?
No way, we’re all tired of downloading an app for everything. Hark is a simple link sent by text each day that opens an audio player with the day’s news, all wrapped up in a 5-minute bow. No website to track, no app to download, no annoying notifications, just one simple text daily as a reminder.
Do you see my personal email?
Nope. They never reach us since we don’t connect to your Gmail like all other news audio apps. A forwarding filter you control sends only bulk newsletters to a private address, one way. Your personal emails never leave Gmail.
What newsletters can I forward?
Any email newsletters you already subscribe to and subscribe to in the future. News, sports, finance, technology, politics, whatever topics you’re most interested in. Hark digests and reads them back to you as a concise 5-minute summary to get your day started like the POTUS: short, sweet, and preps all of your conversations.
What does it cost?
Try completely free for a week with no credit card to input when you sign up (unlike most slimy apps), then $5 a month. No tiers, simple, just like your morning audio briefing, and cancel any time.
Can I use it outside Gmail?
We currently fully support only Gmail; rule-based forwarding from other providers is on the roadmap. If you’re not a Gmail user, sign up for free and use that just for your newsletters, which connects to Hark! Or use the unique forwarding email we give you when you sign up, simply forward newsletters there anytime and wake up to your personalized audio newscast!