How to read text aloud online
- Paste or type the text you want to hear.
- Pick a voice from the list; voices for your own language are shown first.
- Adjust Speed, Pitch and Volume with the sliders.
- Press Play, then use Pause, Resume or Stop as needed. Clicking the text while it's being read also stops it.
What you can do with Text to Speech
- Your device's voices
- Uses the speech voices installed with your operating system and browser, often covering dozens of languages and accents, with no account or credits.
- Speed, pitch and volume
- Set speed from 0.5x to 2x, pitch from 0 to 2 and volume from 0 to 100% to suit listening, proofreading or learning.
- Word highlighting
- The current word is highlighted and scrolled into view as it's spoken, whenever the selected voice reports word positions.
- Long text support
- Long passages are split into sentence-sized chunks behind the scenes, avoiding the cut-offs some browsers have with long speech.
- Pause and resume
- Pause in the middle of a sentence and continue where you left off, or stop and start again from the beginning.
Where text to speech voices come from and how to use them
This tool uses the speech synthesis part of the Web Speech API, which is built into every major browser. The voices come from your system: Windows includes Microsoft voices, macOS and iOS include Apple voices with optional enhanced downloads, Android uses its installed speech engine, and Chrome adds a few Google voices that are marked as online in the list. Because voices differ between devices, the same text can sound quite different on a phone and a laptop. For more choice, install extra voices in your operating system's speech or accessibility settings.
Listening to your own writing is a reliable proofreading trick: your ears catch missing words, repeated phrases and awkward rhythm that your eyes skim past. Text to speech also helps with language learning, with reading difficulties such as dyslexia or low vision, and with resting your eyes during long documents. For proofreading, a speed between 0.9x and 1.1x works well, while 1.5x is comfortable for skimming familiar material. Browsers don't expose the synthesized audio to web pages, so speech plays live but can't be saved as an MP3.
Frequently asked questions
Is my text sent to a server to be read aloud?
With most voices, no: speech is generated by your device's own speech engine. Voices labeled (online), such as some Google voices in Chrome, are produced by the browser vendor's cloud service, so pick a local voice for sensitive text. PanDev itself never receives your text.
Can I download the speech as an MP3?
No. Browsers play synthesized speech directly through your speakers and don't give web pages access to the audio, so it can't be saved as a file from here. To capture it you would need separate system audio recording software.
Why are the voices different on another device?
Voices are supplied by the operating system and browser, not by this website. Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and ChromeOS each ship their own set. You can usually add more voices and languages in your system settings, then reload the page to see them.
Why isn't the word highlighting working?
Highlighting depends on the voice sending word boundary events while it speaks. Many local voices do, but some online and Android voices don't, so speech plays without the moving highlight. Try another voice from the list if you want to follow along.
Does text to speech work on iPhone and Android?
Yes. It works in Safari on iPhone and iPad and in Chrome on Android, using the voices built into the device. If you hear nothing on an iPhone, check that silent mode is off and the media volume is turned up.