Text to Speech Reader
Paste or type your text, pick one of the voices your browser offers, set the speed and pitch, and press Play. It is handy for proofreading by ear and for listening to a long passage instead of reading it. CitationEasy never receives your text, and which voice you choose decides whether it leaves your device. Free, no sign-up.
Voices come from your browser and operating system, so the selection and sound quality vary between devices. CitationEasy never receives your text. A voice marked “online” — in Chrome, the “Google” voices — sends it to its provider's speech service; pick an unmarked, on-device voice to keep it on your device.
How to Use the Text to Speech Reader
- 1. Paste your text. Type or paste into the box. The Play button stays off until there is something other than spaces in it.
- 2. Choose a voice. The menu lists the voices your browser reports, English first. A voice followed by online may send your text to its provider. Leave it on Default voice and the browser picks for you, which may be an online one.
- 3. Set speed and pitch. Speed runs from 0.5× to 2× in steps of 0.1, and pitch from 0 to 2. They apply when you press Play, so stop and play again to hear a change.
- 4. Play, pause and stop. Pause holds the spot and Resume continues from it. Stop cancels, and the next Play starts again from the beginning.
Proofreading by Ear
Reading your work aloud is a standard proofreading step: the Purdue Online Writing Lab advises revising any passage that feels awkward or confusing, or that makes you pause or reread, because if it is awkward for you it will probably be awkward for your reader. Having a voice read it removes the temptation to fill in what you meant to write.
- Listen for missing and repeated words. A voice reads exactly what is on the page, so a dropped the or a doubled of of is easy to hear.
- Listen for sentences that run on. If you run out of breath for the voice, the reader will run out of patience.
- Slow it down for dense passages such as a methods section, and speed it up for a quick consistency pass.
- Do not rely on it for homophones. Their and there sound the same, so a text-to-speech voice cannot tell you which you meant. Check those by eye.
- Expect odd readings of abbreviations and numbers. A voice may say a citation, a date or an initialism in its own way. That is a limit of the voice, not an error in your text.
Where Your Text Goes
This page never sends your text to CitationEasy. What happens next depends on the voice, because the voices belong to your browser and operating system, not to this site. An on-device voice generates the sound on your computer or phone. An online voice sends the text to a speech service and plays back the audio it returns; in Chrome, the voices called Google … work this way. The voice menu adds online to every voice your browser reports as remote.
For drafts you cannot share
Choose a voice without the online mark, not Default voice. Voices differ by device, so on some devices every voice may be online, and in that case a text-to-speech reader is not the right tool for confidential text.
Which Tool Do You Need?
| If you want… | Use |
|---|---|
| Written text turned into spoken audio you listen to | This Text to Speech Reader |
| Your own speech turned into written text | Speech to Text |
| An estimate of how long a text takes to read or speak | Reading Time Calculator |
| Your text counted and measured first | Word Counter |
| Practice reading a text at a set pace on screen | Speed Reading Trainer |
Frequently Asked Questions
- How does the text to speech reader work?
- It uses the speech synthesis feature built into your browser, the Web Speech API. You supply the text, the voice, the speed and the pitch, and your browser does the speaking. The voices therefore depend on your browser and device, not on this site.
- Is my text uploaded anywhere?
- Not to CitationEasy, which never receives it. Whether it leaves your device depends on the voice: on-device voices keep it local, while a voice marked online, such as Chrome's Google voices, sends the text to a speech service. Pick a voice without that mark for private text, and avoid Default voice because the browser may choose an online one.
- Why are the voices different on my other device?
- Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox, and Windows, macOS, Android and iOS, each provide different voices, so the list and the quality change between devices. The menu shows English voices first.
- Can I use it to proofread an essay?
- Yes. Reading aloud is a standard proofreading step, and having a voice do it helps you notice missing words and clumsy sentences. It cannot tell homophones apart, so check their and there style errors by eye, and take care with unpublished work by choosing an on-device voice.
- Why is nothing playing, or why did it stop?
- Check that your device is not muted and that your browser supports speech synthesis. Some browsers load voices a moment after the page opens, so the menu may be empty at first. If speech stops partway through a very long text, press Stop and play the rest as a separate section, since voices differ in how well they cope with long passages.
- Can I download the audio as an MP3?
- No. The browser plays the speech through your speakers and gives the page no recording of it, so this tool cannot save a file. It is meant for listening.