Text to Speech

This text to speech tool reads your text aloud using the voices already built into your browser and operating system. Paste an article, an essay, an email or study notes, pick a voice and language, set the speed and pitch, and press Play. You can pause, resume and stop at any time, and the word being spoken is highlighted so you can follow along.

Listening is a quick way to proofread (your ear catches missing words and clumsy sentences your eye skips), to rest your eyes, to practise pronunciation in another language, to rehearse a speech, or to make reading easier for people with dyslexia or low vision. The estimate below the player tells you roughly how long the text takes to hear at your chosen speed.

Speech is generated on your device through the Web Speech API, so your text is never uploaded. The voices available depend on your browser and system: Chrome, Edge and Safari include several natural-sounding voices, and you can add more in your operating system’s speech settings. This tool plays audio; it does not save an MP3 file.

The browser’s speechSynthesis engine reads the text with the chosen voice, language, rate, pitch and volume. A rate of 1 is the voice’s normal speed, 2 is twice as fast and 0.5 half as fast; pitch ranges from 0 (low) to 2 (high) with 1 as normal. Long text is split into sentences and queued, which avoids the cut-off some browsers apply to very long single utterances.

The listening-time estimate assumes a typical synthetic voice speaks about 150 words per minute at normal speed, close to conversational English, and scales linearly with the speed setting. Real voices differ (roughly 140–180 wpm) and pauses at punctuation add time, so treat the figure as an approximation. Words are runs of letters or digits, allowing apostrophes and hyphens.