Read Aloud

Read Aloud is a lightweight open-source browser extension designed for users who frequently need to read web content. Once installed, it automatically detects the main content of a web page and can convert articles, news, blogs, and more into smooth speech with a single click. As a text-to-speech browser plugin, it supports Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and other major browsers, with built-in TTS engines for 40+ languages.

The biggest advantage of this extension is that it is completely free and open-source — no registration required, no user data collection, and all code is hosted on GitHub for community review and contribution. Users can control play/pause and jump between paragraphs using keyboard shortcuts, and freely adjust reading speed, volume, and pitch to suit different reading habits. Supported TTS languages include Chinese, English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and more.

A practical feature of Read Aloud is its ability to remember reading progress on each page, allowing users to resume from where they left off after reopening a tab. It also integrates both the browser’s built-in local speech engine and cloud-based premium voices, balancing speed and quality. The downside is that it relies on network access for cloud voices and doesn’t provide offline reading capability. For offline use, pairing it with a local TTS engine is recommended. Overall, this is one of the most recommended speech synthesis browser extensions available.