HelperCrateText to Speech
Read text aloud with your browser voice engine, rate, pitch and language controls.
Your files never leave your device. Everything runs in your browser.
What Text to Speech does
Text to Speech reads any text aloud through the voice engine built into your browser. Paste an article, a draft paragraph or study notes, choose a language and voice, then press Speak. Rate and pitch sliders let you slow a dense passage down or speed up a familiar one.
The tool uses the Web Speech API that current browsers ship with, rather than a server-side service, so there is no account and no file to download. The voices offered are the ones installed in your browser and operating system, which means the list differs between Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari.
One privacy detail is worth knowing: this page never uploads the text you paste, but a few voices are not local. Some voices — often the higher-quality “natural” ones — are synthesised over the network, and when you select one of those the browser sends the spoken text to the voice provider. Try the installed local voices when the text is sensitive.
How to use Text to Speech
- Paste or type the text into the box.
- Choose a Language; the Voice list then shows the voices installed for that language.
- Pick a Voice from the list.
- Adjust Rate (0.5 to 2, default 1) and Pitch (0 to 2, default 1) while watching the number labels.
- Press Speak, then use Pause, Resume and Stop to control playback.
- Press Speak again at any time to cancel the current reading and start over from the beginning.
Features
- Uses the browser engine already on your device — nothing to install or sign in to.
- Language and voice pickers built from the voices the system exposes.
- Rate from 0.5 to 2 and pitch from 0 to 2, with live numeric labels.
- Speak, Pause, Resume and Stop controls; starting a new reading cancels the old one.
- Reads any text the engine accepts, including punctuation pauses at commas and full stops.
- Shows a notice and updates the placeholder when the browser has no speech synthesis.
Tips and common mistakes
- The voice list belongs to your operating system: install extra voices in the system settings (Spoken Content on macOS, Speech settings on Windows) and they appear on the next page load.
- Rate 1 is normal; 0.5–0.8 helps when proofreading slow, dense text, while 1.5–2 suits skimming familiar material.
- Pause and Resume hold your place; Stop cancels the utterance, so the next Speak starts from the first character again.
- The whole box is passed to the engine as one utterance. For very long documents, split the text into paragraphs and play them one at a time so a stopped passage is easy to resume.
- Voice quality varies a lot between platforms, and the same voice name can sound different in a different browser.
- If the list of voices is empty, wait a moment: some browsers load it asynchronously after the page opens.
Frequently asked questions
Which browsers support speech synthesis?
Current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari support the Web Speech API on desktop and mobile, but the voices and their quality differ between platforms. If your browser has no speech engine at all, the page says so instead of pretending to play.
Why is the voice list empty?
Some browsers fill the list a moment after the page loads. If it stays empty, no voices are installed for speech synthesis on your system, and you may need to download one in the operating system settings.
Can I download the audio as an MP3 file?
No. The page only plays speech through your speakers. Exporting audio would require a different kind of tool that captures the engine output, and that is outside what this page does.
Does this page send my text to a server?
The page itself uploads and stores nothing. Some voices, however, are network-based: when you use one of those, the browser sends the spoken text to the voice provider to synthesise the audio, while locally installed voices run on your device. Try the local voices for private text.
Can it read other languages?
Yes, if the language is installed. Pick it in the Language box and choose a matching voice; languages that read right to left or use non-Latin scripts work as well as the installed voice supports them.
Why does it stop in the middle of long text?
Some engines end long utterances early or throttle speech when the tab is in the background. Splitting the text into shorter paragraphs gives more control and avoids the cut-off.
Related text tools: Word Counter, Readability Score, Markdown Editor.
This page never uploads your text. Some browser voices are network-based, though: when you choose one of those, the spoken text is processed by that voice provider, while locally installed voices run entirely on your device.