Text to Speech
Text to speech that uses the voices already installed on your device. Paste anything, choose a language and voice, set the rate, pitch and volume, and listen — with the sentence being spoken highlighted so you can follow along or proofread by ear.
How to use Text to Speech
- Paste the text you want read aloud, or press “Load sample text”.
- Choose a voice — they are grouped by language, and your choice is remembered for next time.
- Adjust rate, pitch and volume until it sounds right; changes apply from the next sentence.
- Press Play. The sentence currently being spoken is highlighted, and you can pause, resume or stop at any point.
About Text to Speech
Hearing your own writing read back is the single most effective proofreading technique there is. Your eye skips over a repeated word or a missing “the” because it knows what the sentence was meant to say; your ear does not. Text to speech is also how a lot of people get through long documents at all — while commuting, while cooking, or because reading a wall of text on screen is genuinely difficult. Both needs are served by the same thing: a reliable voice, a speed control and a way to follow the text.
This tool uses the Web Speech API, which means the voices are the ones already installed on your computer or phone. That has two big advantages over a cloud service: nothing needs uploading for the local voices, and playback starts instantly because there is no round trip. The list is grouped by language so you can find a native voice for the text you are actually reading, and your pick is remembered between visits. Rate, pitch and volume are separate sliders — for proofreading, a slightly slower rate catches more.
The important engineering detail is chunking. Browsers cut off a single long utterance after a short window, which is why so many read-aloud tools mysteriously stop mid-paragraph. Here the text is split into sentences and queued as separate utterances, so a 5,000-word article plays through to the end. It also gives you sentence-level highlighting, accurate pause and resume, and the ability to stop cleanly. What no browser tool can do is save the audio: the API offers no access to the output stream, so a downloadable MP3 is not on the table without a paid cloud service.
Frequently asked questions
Is this text to speech free?
Yes, and there is no word limit, no account and no watermark. It uses the speech engine already built into your operating system through the browser, so there is no API cost to pass on.
Can I download the speech as an MP3 or WAV file?
No, and no browser-based tool can do this honestly. The Web Speech API sends audio straight to your system's output device and gives web pages no access to the resulting stream, so there is nothing to capture or save. Any site offering downloads is using a paid cloud service and uploading your text to it. To make a file, record your system audio locally with software such as Audacity or OBS.
Is my text sent anywhere?
The text stays on your device and nothing is stored by this page. Be aware that some operating systems use a cloud voice engine for their highest-quality voices, in which case the sentence being spoken is processed by your OS vendor — the local or offline voices in the list avoid that entirely.
Why do I see different voices on different devices?
Because the voices come from your operating system and browser, not from this page. Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and ChromeOS each ship a different set, and installing extra language packs in your system settings adds more to the list.
Why does long text sometimes stop early in other tools?
Most browsers silently truncate a single utterance after roughly 15 to 30 seconds. This tool avoids that by splitting your text into sentence-sized utterances and queueing them one after another, which also makes pausing, resuming and sentence highlighting possible.
What if my browser has no speech synthesis?
The page detects support on load and shows a clear message instead of a broken player. Speech synthesis is available in current versions of Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox on both desktop and mobile.
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