Text to speech in your browser
This text to speech tool reads any text aloud: an article you want to listen to, an e-mail you are proofreading, a speech you are rehearsing or study notes. It uses speech synthesis built into your web browser (the Web Speech API), so there is no app to install and no account to create. While it reads, the current word is highlighted in a reading panel so you can follow along.
Where the voices come from
The voices are provided by your browser and operating system, not by this site, so the list differs between devices. A desktop computer usually offers a few voices for its system language, phones often more, and many systems let you download extra voices in their language or accessibility settings. After installing one, reload the page and it appears in the list.
Some browsers also offer online voices; they are marked “online” in the list. To produce those, the browser sends the text to its maker’s speech service. For private text, choose a voice without that mark: installed voices work on your device.
Options explained
- Voice: grouped by language, with your browser’s language first. Your choice, speed, pitch and volume are remembered in this browser.
- Speed: from 0.5× to 2×. The time estimate assumes about 160 words per minute at 1×.
- Pitch: from 0 to 2, where 1 is the voice’s normal pitch. Some voices ignore it.
- Volume: 0 to 100% of your device volume.
- Play, Pause, Resume, Stop: Play starts from the beginning, or reads only the text you selected. While reading, the button changes to Restart.
- Counts: characters, words and the estimated listening time update as you type.
Example: what happens to a long text
Some browsers stop speaking a single long passage after about 15 seconds, and others limit one request to roughly 32,000 characters. To avoid that, the tool splits your text into sentence-sized parts of up to 220 characters and reads them one after another. A paragraph like this:
Welcome to the reader. Paste any article, e-mail or note, choose a voice, and press Play.
You can pause at any time.is read as two parts – the first paragraph, then “You can pause at any time.” – with the blank line kept as a natural pause. Very long sentences are split at a comma or a space instead. Speed, pitch and volume changes apply from the next part.
Word highlighting
Many voices report each word as they speak it, and the tool highlights that word. Others, often online voices, only report the start of each part; then the whole sentence is highlighted instead. Both depend on the voice, not on your text.
Can the audio be downloaded?
No. Browser speech synthesis plays sound straight to your speakers and does not give the page the audio, so there is no MP3 or WAV file to save. If you need a recording, use your device’s own screen or audio recorder while the text is read.
Tips for natural speech
- Choose a voice in the same language as the text: a voice reads foreign words with its own pronunciation rules.
- Full stops and commas create pauses. Text without punctuation, such as a list of lines, sounds better after you add some.
- Abbreviations, symbols and numbers are read the way the voice understands them; write them out if they come out wrong.
- Clean pasted text of odd characters with the Text Cleaner, or check its length with the Word Counter. To read a web page's text, strip its tags first with the HTML to Text Converter.