Ear-reading is reading. Some of us read fastest, longest, or most comfortably with our ears — and plenty of us switch between eyes and ears depending on the day, the text, or how much we have left in the tank. However you get the words in, it counts.
We used to run a built-in audio player on this site. It was expensive and fussy to maintain, and — the part that bothered us most — it read to you in one voice we picked. You couldn’t choose the voice, the speed, or the way it fit into how you already read. So we retired it.
Here’s the better news it took us a while to say out loud: your browser and your device already do this, for free, in the voice you choose. The tools below read our pages — and any other page — aloud using the voices installed on your own computer or phone, at whatever speed suits you. Nothing to buy, nothing to install (in most cases), and no one deciding for you how it should sound.
Find the way you’re reading right now and start there. You don’t need all of these — one is plenty.
The quickest start for most people: the Read Aloud extension
If you want one button that reads the page you’re on, install the free Read Aloud browser extension. It works in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox.
- Install Read Aloud from your browser’s extension or add-ons store.
- Open any article and click the Read Aloud icon (or use its keyboard shortcut).
- Open its options to pick your voice and adjust the speed.
Out of the box it uses the voices already on your device. If you want higher-quality voices, its settings let you opt into those too. It’s the least-fuss option, and it’s the one we recommend if you’re not sure where to begin.
Built into your browser
Every major browser can read a page aloud without any add-on. The voice quality is whatever your device provides (see Choosing your voice below to improve it).
Microsoft Edge
Edge has the most polished built-in reader, and it reads PDFs too.
- Right-click anywhere on the page and choose Read aloud (or open the ⋯ menu and choose Read aloud).
- A small toolbar appears at the top with play, skip, and Voice options.
- Under Voice options, pick a voice and set the speed. The voices labeled (Natural) are the newer, more human-sounding ones.
Edge also scrolls to follow along and offers a distraction-free Reading mode (press F9) with the same read-aloud controls.
Google Chrome
On your computer: open Chrome’s side panel and choose Reading mode, then press play. It highlights each sentence as it reads. Reading mode works on pages Chrome recognizes as articles; for other pages, the Read Aloud extension above is the simpler route.
On Android: tap the ⋮ menu and choose Listen to this page. This is the smoothest built-in reader on any phone.
Firefox
- Click the Reader View icon in the address bar (it appears on article pages).
- In Reader View, click the headphones / Read aloud button to have Firefox narrate the page.
- Adjust the voice and speed from the same controls.
The voices come from your operating system, so how good they sound depends on the voices you have installed.
Safari
On Mac: Safari leans on your Mac’s built-in speech rather than its own button. The simplest path is to turn on Speak Selection (see macOS below), then select text and have it read. Newer versions of Safari also offer Listen to Page in the page menu at the left of the address bar.
On iPhone and iPad: tap the page menu (the aA / page-settings icon) and choose Listen to Page. You can play, pause, and change speed from there. You can also use the system’s Speak Screen and Speak Selection (see iPhone and iPad below).
Built into your device (reads almost anything, anywhere)
Turn these on once and you can have text read aloud in any app — your browser, your email, an ebook, a PDF — not just on the web. This is the most powerful option, and the one that follows you everywhere.
Windows
Use Edge’s Read aloud (above) for web pages, or turn on Narrator (Settings → Accessibility → Narrator) to have Windows read across apps.
Mac
- Open System Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content.
- Turn on Speak Selection.
- Now, in any app, select text and press Option + Esc to hear it. (You can change the shortcut in the same panel.)
iPhone and iPad
- Open Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content.
- Turn on Speak Selection (reads text you highlight) and/or Speak Screen (reads the whole screen).
- To use Speak Screen, swipe down with two fingers from the top of the screen.
Android
- Open Settings → Accessibility → Text-to-Speech (sometimes under Select to Speak or TalkBack settings, depending on your phone).
- Turn on Select to Speak, then tap the accessibility button and choose the text you want read.
Chromebook (ChromeOS)
- Open Settings → Accessibility → Text-to-Speech → Select-to-speak and turn it on.
- Hold Search + S and drag over any text on screen to hear it — in any page or app.
Choosing your voice
The whole point of doing it this way is that the voice is yours to choose. The default voice on most devices is the old, robotic one; the good voices are usually a free download away. It’s worth five minutes to pick one you actually like listening to.
- Windows: Settings → Time & language → Speech → Manage voices → Add voices. In Edge, prefer the voices marked (Natural).
- Mac: System Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → System voice → Manage Voices, then download the Enhanced, Premium, or Siri voices.
- iPhone / iPad: Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices to preview and download others.
- Android: Settings → Accessibility → Text-to-Speech output → Preferred engine, then install voice data or a better engine.
Try a few. The “best” voice is simply the one you’ll actually keep listening to.
Why we hand you your own tools
We don’t bolt a player onto the page and pick a voice for you, for the same reason we don’t use accessibility overlays: the settings you’ve already chosen on your own device are almost always better than anything we could impose on top of them. Your voice, your speed, your device, working the way you set it up — across every site you read, not just ours.
Our job is to get out of the way and point you to the switch. That’s what this page is.
Reading with your eyes today? The theme, font, and text-size controls live behind the Aa Reading button in our site header.