Text to speech: read text aloud online

Free text to speech in your browser

This text to speech tool reads aloud whatever you paste in: an email, an article, revision notes. It uses the voices already on your computer or phone, with nothing to install and no account. The sentence being read is highlighted, and so is the spoken word when the voice supports it.

The text box takes up to 50,000 characters. The tool splits your text into chunks of no more than 160 characters, always between two words, and reads them in turn, which avoids the cut-offs some browsers make on long passages.

How to read text aloud

1. Paste your text into “Text to read”, or try the “Sample text” first.
2. Pick a voice. The list shows the English voices on your device; tick “All languages” to read a French or Spanish text.
3. Press “Play”. The button turns into “Pause”, then “Resume”. “Stop” takes you back to the start. Outside the text box, the space bar does the same as the main button.
4. Click any sentence to carry on from there, or step through sentences with the arrow buttons.

Below the text you will see the character count and an estimated listening time, based on 150 words per minute. A 600-word text takes about 4 min at ×1 speed, 2 min 40 s at ×1.5 and 5 min 20 s at ×0.75.

What people use text to speech for

• Proofreading by ear: hearing your cover letter or university essay read back exposes missing words, repeated phrases and clumsy sentences your eyes skip over.
• Learning a language: choose a French or German voice, slow it down and repeat after it to work on pronunciation.
• Accessibility: for people with dyslexia, low vision or tired eyes, listening is simply another way into a text, at their own pace.
• Listening on the go: a long article is easy to follow while you cook, tidy up or fold the laundry.

Which voices are available

Voices depend on your device and browser. A laptop often has two or three English voices, sometimes with British and American accents; a phone may have more. To add voices, open your system's language or accessibility settings, look for the speech or spoken content section, download a voice, then reload this page. If no voice can be found, the tool tells you so.

Recommended settings

“Speed” runs from ×0.5 to ×2. For proofreading, ×1 or ×1.1 is plenty; for language practice, drop to ×0.75; to skim a long article, ×1.25 or ×1.5 is still easy to follow. Leave “Pitch” at 1: a voice pitched too high or too low soon gets tiring. “Volume” works on top of your device volume.

Privacy: offline and online voices

This site never sends your text anywhere: speech is produced by your browser and operating system. There is one catch worth knowing. Some browsers offer online voices from the browser's maker alongside the installed ones. With those, the browser passes each sentence to that speech service. The tool labels them “online voice” and picks an offline voice by default when there is one.

Limits

Browsers do not give web pages access to the generated sound, so the tool cannot save an MP3. Names, acronyms and abbreviations are sometimes mispronounced; writing “Doctor” instead of “Dr” or “kilometres” instead of “km” helps. On some phones, reading stops when the screen locks.

Frequently asked questions

Can I download the audio as an MP3?

No. The browser plays synthesised speech straight to your speakers without handing the sound back to the page, so no site using this feature can record it. You can only listen here.

Why do I only see one or two voices?

Those are the English voices installed on your device. Add more in your system settings, or tick “All languages” to see the rest.

Reading stops halfway through a long text. What can I do?

Click the sentence where it stopped to pick up from there. If it keeps happening, choose an offline voice.

Is my text saved anywhere?

Only in your browser, on this device, for your next visit. “Clear” deletes it. The site never receives it.