Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader

Read out loud the current web-page article with one click. Supports 40+ languages.

Read Aloud: Text to Speech Voice Reader Firefox Add-on

Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader is a versatile Firefox add-on that uses text-to-speech technology to translate webpage text to audio. This add-on supports over 40 languages and works with a wide array of online platforms including news sites, blogs, and educational materials. It offers customizable settings like voice selection, pitch, and reading speed. Particularly beneficial for individuals with dyslexia, learning disabilities, children learning to read, or simply users looking for an alternative method to consume online content.

Add-on stats

Version: 1.77.0 (Last updated: 2024-12-23)
Creation date: 2018-03-19
Weekly download count: 4,117
Firefox on Android: Yes
Risk impact: Moderate risk impact
Risk likelihood:
Manifest version: 2
Permissions:
  • activeTab
  • menus
  • identity
  • storage
  • https://translate.google.com/
Size: 571.49K

Other platforms

Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader (v2.18.0)
4.19 (3,229) 6,000,000
Not available on Android
Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader (v2.17.0)
4.30 (97) 482,201
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Add-on summary

Tired of sitting, tired of reading? Click a button, jump on your bed, and have the article read aloud to you. You can choose from many available male and female voices. You can also set the pitch of the voice and the reading speed. Supports PDF. Supports EPUB (via the excellent EPUBReader extension).

Read Aloud is a Firefox extension that uses text-to-speech technology to convert webpage text to audio. It works on a variety of websites, including news sites, blogs, fan fiction, publications, textbooks, school and class websites, online universities and course materials.

Read Aloud is aimed at users who prefer to listen to content instead of reading, people with dyslexia or other learning disabilities, children learning to read, or simply to provide users with alternative way to consume web content.

Read Aloud allows you to select from a variety of text-to-speech voices, including those provided natively by the browser, as well as by text-to-speech cloud service providers such as Google Wavenet, Amazon Polly, IBM Watson, and Microsoft. Some of the cloud-based voices may require additional in-app purchase to enable.

Recent developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence has enabled very high-quality speech synthesis. Google Wavenet, Amazon Polly voices, for example, use bleeding edge technology to provide life-like synthetic speech that is close to that of human speech. Read Aloud allows you to use your own Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services account to enable these voices.

To use Read Aloud, simply navigate to the web page you want to read, then click the Read Aloud icon on the Firefox menu. In addition, the shortcut keys ALT-P, ALT-O, ALT-Comma, and ALT-Period can be used to Play/Pause, Stop, Rewind, and Forward, respectively. You may select the text you want to read before activating the extension. Right clicking on the selected text will provide you with yet another context-menu option to activate Read Aloud.

To change the voice, reading speed, pitch, or enable text highlighting, go to the Options page either by right clicking on the Read Aloud icon and choose Options, or by clicking the Gear button on the extension popup (you'll need to stop playback to see the Gear button).

Privacy Policy

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User reviews

These summaries are automatically generated weekly using AI based on recent user reviews. Firefox Browser Add-ons does not verify user reviews, so some user reviews may be inaccurate, spammy, or outdated.
Pros
  • Excellent integration of Piper voices
  • Usability for visually impaired individuals
  • Ease of use with familiar interface
  • Wide variety of voices available
  • Ability to customize voice settings
Cons
  • Robotic and uncomprehensible voice quality
  • High CPU usage leading to performance issues
  • Issues with reading accuracy, including skipping text
  • Cannot read text from images
  • Inconsistent functionality after updates
Most mentioned
  • Robotic audio quality from the default voice
  • High CPU usage causing freezing
  • Inability to control speed and pause duration
  • Issues with reading accuracy and skipping text
  • Need for better voice options and installation functionality
User reviews
This is a single best extension that I have ever used in all of my History of using Internet. I have always found the read aloud feature on edge very superior and that is something that had kept me on edge for quite a few while. At once I wasn't very impressed of the Piper voices, because I was so used to the Microsoft Eva online voices, which Microsoft provides. So I decided to use narrator on my own PC as a replacement, and thought that I wouldn't use this extension. And so I decided to download those voices on my narrator app But working with narrator is kinda hard because it's not made for people who want to read articles It's mostly made for people who have visual impairment. so i decided to go back And thought to myself that maybe I should stick to read out aloud piper voices and not bother about using anything else. But as soon as I was exploring the settings section, I realised that read aloud has automatically imported all of those voices, which is excellent and absolute beast. 😭😭😭😭😎😎😎😎😎. I'will talk to the creators of this add on so that they know it themselves. So it's implemented within the extension by default. becoz those voices are quite good. heck natural reader also uses them
by Orion Pax, 2025-01-18

Could you please add an option to determain how long to pause when it reads periods, commas or indentation? also add an option to skip over certain characters like *** instead of reading astrick astrick astrick
by kouu, 2025-01-17

robotic audio, cant understand text
by wicin, 2025-01-14
View all user reviews

Add-on safety

Risk impact

Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader requires a few sensitive permissions. Exercise caution before installing.

Risk likelihood

Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader has earned a fairly good reputation and likely can be trusted.

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