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Readvox - Text to Speech Reader

Readvox reads text aloud. Paste an article, an email or your own notes, or open a PDF, and Readvox splits it into sentences and speaks them one after another using the voices built into your browser and operating system. The sentence being read is highlighted, so you can follow along or glance back to find your place.

It is handy when your eyes are tired, when you want to listen to a long document while doing something else at your desk, when you are proofreading your own writing (hearing a text catches mistakes that reading misses) or when you are learning a language and want to hear how a passage sounds.

Documents are saved in a library that you can sort and organise into folders, and Readvox remembers where you stopped, the speed you chose and the voice you picked for each document.

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The app runs entirely in your browser. What you enter is saved only on this device.

How to use Readvox

  1. Add a document. Tap the + button in the library and choose Text to type or paste, or PDF to open a PDF file from your computer or phone. The extracted text is shown so you can check or edit it and give it a title.
  2. Save and play. Tap Save & Play to open the player, then press the play button. The current sentence is highlighted and the progress bar shows how far you are.
  3. Adjust speed and voice. Drag the speed slider between 0.5x and 3.0x. Tap the voice icon at the top of the player to pick another voice; Readvox detects the language of the text and suggests matching voices.
  4. Skip and jump. Use the previous and next buttons to move sentence by sentence, or tap a sentence in the text to start reading from there.
  5. Set a sleep timer or queue. The moon icon stops playback after 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes. The queue icon lets you line up several documents to play one after another.
  6. Fix pronunciation. In Settings, open User Dictionary and add a word with the reading you want — useful for names, abbreviations and technical terms that the voice gets wrong.

Features

Getting the most out of text-to-speech

Where the voices come from

Readvox does not send your text anywhere. It uses the speech engine of your browser and operating system (the Web Speech API), so the available voices depend on your device. On a Mac or iPhone you will usually see Apple's voices such as Samantha or Daniel; Chrome adds Google voices; Windows offers Microsoft voices, and Microsoft Edge has many high-quality "Natural" voices. If a language is missing, you can usually add it in your operating system's language or speech settings and then reload the page.

Some voices are labelled as online or network voices. They often sound more natural but may need an internet connection and can pause on a slow network. Offline voices start instantly and work anywhere.

Choosing a speed

Natural conversational speech is roughly 150 words per minute. Many people find 1.2x to 1.5x comfortable for familiar material once they are used to a voice, and listeners who use speech regularly often go above 2x. For dense or technical text, new vocabulary or a foreign language, slow down to 0.8x–1.0x. Raising speed gradually over a few days works better than jumping straight to a fast setting.

Preparing text for better listening

Text-to-speech reads exactly what it is given. Copying from web pages can bring along menu items, captions and footnote numbers, and PDFs may contain page headers, footers and hyphenated line breaks. Readvox tries to drop repeated headers and footers from PDFs, but it is worth a quick look at the extracted text before saving. Removing reference lists and table data makes long documents far more pleasant to hear.

Abbreviations are a common stumbling block: a voice may read "Dr." correctly in one sentence and stumble in another, or spell out an acronym you say as a word. The user dictionary lets you replace such words with how they should sound.

Listening to learn and to proofread

Hearing your own writing read back is a well-known editing technique: missing words, repeated words and clumsy sentences become obvious when you cannot skim. For language learning, follow the highlighted sentence while listening, then replay it and repeat it aloud (shadowing). Scanned PDFs that contain only images of pages have no text to extract and cannot be read aloud.

Frequently asked questions

Is my text uploaded anywhere?

No. Documents are stored only in this browser on this device, and speech is produced by your device's own speech engine. Clearing site data for this website or using a private window deletes your library.

Why does the voice sound different on another device?

Voices come from the browser and operating system, so each device and browser offers a different set. Pick a voice from the voice menu in the player.

Can it read a web page from a link?

Not in the web version — browsers block one site from fetching another site's pages. Copy the text of the article and paste it into a new text document instead.

Can it read text from a photo?

Not on the web. Text recognition from images runs on the phone in the iPhone and Android app.

Why can't Readvox find text in my PDF?

Some PDFs are just scanned images of pages and contain no text layer. Only PDFs with selectable text can be imported.

Does it keep playing if I switch tabs or lock my phone?

Browsers may pause speech when the tab is hidden or the phone locks. Keep the page open and in front while listening. The phone app supports background playback and lock-screen controls.

Limitations of the web version

Phone app

Readvox is also available as an app for phones and tablets:

App Store (iPhone, iPad) Google Play (Android)

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