Text to Speech
A text-to-speech tool reads typed text aloud. Paste or type into the box, pick a voice, set Speed, Pitch and Volume, and press Speak. The reading is done by your own device through the browser's speech synthesis, so the voice list is whatever your operating system has installed and no text is sent anywhere.
About Text to Speech
Type or paste into the text box — the counter above it shows the character count as you go — or load one of the three samples: an English pangram, a French one, or Lorem Ipsum. Filter by language narrows the voice list to a language code, Voice picks one of the remaining voices, and three sliders shape the delivery: Speed from 0.25 to 3 in quarter steps, Pitch from 0 to 2 and Volume from 0 to 1, all in tenths and all starting at their normal value of 1.
Speak starts the reading, the button turns into a pause control while it runs, and Stop cancels it. A progress bar advances as the engine reports word boundaries, so it tracks the reading rather than a timer. Pausing and resuming continue where the voice stopped rather than restarting the passage.
The whole thing runs on the browser's built-in speech synthesis, which calls the voices your operating system provides. That has two consequences worth knowing. The voice list is different on every device — Windows, macOS, Android and iOS each ship their own set, and a browser may add its own — so a colleague will not necessarily have the voice you chose. And the text never leaves the page: there is no account, no upload and no per-character quota.
What it cannot do: there is no MP3 or WAV download, because the browser plays the audio rather than handing over a file. There is no SSML, no per-word emphasis and no way to add a voice from here — voices are installed in the operating system's own settings. If the browser has no speech support at all, or has support but no installed voices, the page says so instead of failing silently.
Use Cases
How to use
Type or paste your text into the box, or press one of the sample buttons for English, French or Lorem Ipsum.
Narrow the list with Filter by language, then choose a Voice from the ones installed on this device.
Set Speed, Pitch and Volume with the three sliders; each starts at its normal value.
Press Speak and follow the progress bar; the button becomes Pause while the reading runs.
Use Pause to hold the position, or Stop to cancel and start again from the beginning.
Pro Tips
- Set Filter by language before choosing a Voice: the filter rebuilds the voice list and resets the selection to the first entry, so picking a voice first and then filtering loses your choice.
- Speed moves in quarter steps from 0.25 to 3; 0.75 is the useful setting for proofreading and anything above 2 is generally only intelligible on the higher-quality system voices.
- The progress bar advances on word boundaries reported by the engine, so a voice that does not report them will read correctly while the bar stays still — that is the engine's behaviour, not a stall.
- Pause keeps the position; Stop discards it. If you only want to answer the door, use Pause and the reading resumes from the same word.
- Volume here is the utterance's own level from 0 to 1, on top of your system volume — a reading that is still too quiet at 1 needs the device's volume raising, not this slider.
Troubleshooting
The page says no speech voices are installed.
The browser supports speech synthesis but the device has none of the voices it needs. On Windows they are added under Time & language, on Android under the text-to-speech settings, and on Linux a package such as speech-dispatcher is usually required. The warning appears after two seconds because voices load asynchronously.
The page says my browser does not support speech synthesis.
Some browsers, and many in-app browsers inside social apps, do not expose the speech API at all. Open the page in a current standalone browser instead. Nothing on this page can add the capability, since it is provided by the browser and not by the site.
The reading stops after a few seconds.
Long passages are cut short by some engines, and the browser stops speech when the tab loses focus or the phone screen locks. Keep the tab in the foreground, and split a very long text into a few paragraphs and read them one at a time.
The progress bar does not move while the voice reads.
The bar is driven by word-boundary events, which not every engine emits. When they are missing the reading is still correct and Pause and Stop still work — only the bar has nothing to advance on. Try another voice if you want the progress indicator.
Changing the language filter reset the voice I had chosen.
Filtering rebuilds the voice list and selects the first entry in it, so any earlier choice is lost by design. Set Filter by language first, then pick the Voice, and keep that order whenever you switch language.
Frequently Asked Questions
It uses the speech synthesis built into your browser. The page hands your text, the chosen voice and the Speed, Pitch and Volume values to the browser, and the browser asks the operating system to speak them. Nothing is sent to a server, which is why it starts instantly and works without an account.
Because the voices belong to the device, not to this page. Windows, macOS, Android and iOS each install their own set, users add more, and some browsers bundle extras. The Filter by language dropdown is built from whatever is actually present on the machine you are using at the time.
No. The browser plays the speech through the sound output rather than producing a file, so there is nothing here to save. If you need an audio file, you need a service that renders one server-side; this page deliberately does not send your text anywhere, which is the same reason it cannot hand you a recording.
No. The text stays in the page and is passed straight to the browser's own speech engine. There is no request carrying it, no storage and no character limit imposed by a plan, because there is no service behind it to meter.
Speed is the rate multiplier, from 0.25 to 3 in quarter steps, with 1 as the voice's normal pace. Pitch runs 0 to 2 around a normal 1 and raises or lowers the tone without changing the tempo. Volume is 0 to 1 for this reading only, multiplied by whatever your device's own volume is set to.
Three usual reasons: the device has no speech voices installed, in which case the page shows a warning above the text box; the Volume slider is at 0; or the system output is muted or pointing at the wrong device. Browsers also require a real click before any audio, so the Speak button has to be pressed rather than triggered by script.
The reading itself is local, so once the page is open the speech does not need the network. Whether a particular voice works offline is a property of that voice: some system voices are installed on the device, while others are downloaded on demand by the operating system and go quiet without a connection.
Yes, with the voices that phone has. Android and iOS both provide speech synthesis to the browser, and the voice list will look nothing like a desktop's. Mobile browsers also stop audio when the tab goes to the background, so a long reading needs the page left in the foreground.
Not directly — the only input is the text box. Copy the passage you want and paste it in. There is no file upload, no URL field and no browser-extension component, so anything you want read has to arrive as plain text.
Not from here. The page passes plain text with no SSML, so there are no tags for emphasis, phonemes or timed pauses. In practice, punctuation is your only lever: a comma or a full stop makes most engines pause, and respelling an awkward name phonetically often fixes it.