Read Text Aloud (browser speech)
MediaEverything runs locally in your browser — nothing is uploaded
Your text never passes through this site’s servers; it is handed to the **browser’s built-in speech engine**, which on some systems uses a cloud voice. This site itself makes no requests.
⚠️ Reading is cancelled when you leave the page: `speechSynthesis` is global to the browser, so switching tabs or closing the page can leave the voice talking. This tool cancels it on `pagehide` and `visibilitychange`.
Hand a passage to the browser speech engine: pick a voice, set the rate, pitch and volume, and long text is read sentence by sentence with the current sentence shown. Two boundaries come first. One, the text is handed to the browser speech engine — it does not pass through this site's servers, but on some systems that engine uses a cloud voice, so it would be wrong to say flatly that "the data never leaves the browser". The honest wording is that it does not pass through this site. Two, a visible Stop button is essential: `speechSynthesis` is global to the browser, so once a long passage starts, switching tabs or even closing the page can leave it talking — hence the explicit Stop, plus a cancel when you leave the page. The voice list arrives asynchronously: some browsers return an empty array from `getVoices()` right after load and only fill it in on the `voiceschanged` event. Without handling that, the voice dropdown stays empty forever — the single most commonly missed step in a tool like this. Voices are grouped by language, and one matching the interface language is picked by default. Sentence-by-sentence reading is not just cosmetics: some browsers cap the length of a single utterance, and a multi-thousand-character one is cut off part-way with no error and no end event — it simply stops mid-way. Splitting at punctuation avoids that.
Features
- Read with the browser's built-in speech engine — this page sends no requests
- Voices grouped by language, with one matching the interface language picked by default
- Rate 0.5-2, pitch 0-2 and volume, all adjustable
- Sentence-by-sentence reading: long text is split at punctuation and shows which sentence is being read
- Pause, resume and stop — a long passage cannot be stopped by reloading the page
- Cancels on page leave or when the tab goes to the background, so the voice does not keep talking elsewhere
- Says why the voice list is empty (waiting for voiceschanged, or no speech packs installed)
- Shows a rough estimate of how long the reading will take
- Your text never reaches this site's servers (it is handed to the browser speech engine)
How to use
- Paste the text you want read into the box
- Pick a voice and set the rate and pitch
- Leave sentence-by-sentence reading on if you like
- Press Read aloud, and Stop when you want it to end
FAQ
- Is my text uploaded?
- Not to this site — the page makes no requests at all. It is handed to the browser's built-in speech engine, which on some systems uses a cloud voice. So this page promises only that it does not pass through this site's servers, rather than claiming the data never leaves the browser.
- Why is a Stop button essential?
- Because `speechSynthesis` is global to the browser: once a long passage starts, reloading the page or switching tabs will not stop it, and the voice can keep talking in another tab. So there is an explicit Stop, and it also cancels on page leave and when the tab is hidden.
- What if the voice list is empty?
- Two possibilities. The browser may not have listed the voices yet — `getVoices()` is asynchronous in some browsers and fills in after the `voiceschanged` event, so give it a moment. Or the device has no speech packs installed, in which case there is genuinely no voice available and the tool says so.
- Long text stops part-way through?
- That is the browser's limit on a single utterance (seen especially in Chrome): an over-long utterance is cut off mid-way, with no error. With sentence-by-sentence reading each sentence is its own utterance, which avoids the limit.
- Can it read in another language?
- Yes. The voice list is grouped by language — pick a voice for the language you want. What the text sounds like depends on the voice you choose, not on the language the text is written in.
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