How to use
- Type or paste your text into the box.
- Choose a voice on the right and adjust the speed and pitch.
- Click Read aloud, and pause, resume or stop whenever you like.
Options explained
- Voices
- Provided by your browser and operating system. Windows, macOS, Android and iOS include voices for many languages, and Edge adds more natural online voices.
- Speed
- From 0.5× to 2×, where 1 is normal speed.
- Long text
- Text is split into sentences and read in turn, which avoids some browsers stopping halfway through long passages.
How your text is split for reading
The text is cut into pieces that are queued one after another, and the piece being spoken is the highlighted one. A piece ends at a sentence mark (. ! ? ; and the Chinese 。 ！ ？ ；) or at a line break. A full stop only counts when it is followed by a space and a capital letter, or by the end of the text. Any piece longer than 160 characters is cut again, preferably at a comma or a space.
For example, this text:
Dr. Smith arrived at 9 a.m. He said hello! Did you hear? Yes.
New line without a full stop
你好。今天天气很好！is read as eight pieces: Dr., Smith arrived at 9 a.m., He said hello!, Did you hear?, Yes., New line without a full stop, 你好。 and 今天天气很好！. The abbreviation Dr. is split off because it is followed by a capital letter. The only effect is a short extra pause, but you can write out such abbreviations if it bothers you.
Line breaks always end a piece, so a heading without a full stop is read on its own, while a paragraph hard-wrapped at every line is read in short chunks with pauses at each break. Join the lines first if you want it smoother.
Speed and pitch are both set between 0.5 and 2, in steps of 0.1. They are passed to the browser along with the selected voice, and how strongly a voice responds depends on the voice itself. While reading, the text box is replaced by a read-only view, so pause or stop before you edit.
Frequently asked questions
Can I download an MP3?
Browser speech doesn’t produce an audio file, so playback is online only. To keep the audio, record it with your system’s recorder while it plays.
Why is there no voice for my language?
Voices come from your system. On Windows you can add language voices under Settings → Time & language → Speech; on Linux you may need to install a speech engine.
Is my text uploaded?
Not with local voices. Online voices marked ☁ are provided by the browser vendor, such as Microsoft or Google, and the text is sent to their servers.
Privacy
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files and text are processed on your device and are never uploaded to our servers.