Text to Speech

What it does

Paste any text — an article, an email, a script, a chapter from a book — pick one of the voices installed on your device, and listen to it read aloud. Useful for proofreading by ear (typos and awkward phrasing become obvious when you hear them), accessibility for low-vision readers or anyone who finds listening easier than reading, multitasking through long-form content while doing chores or driving, and language learning (hear how a sentence should sound in a target language).

The tool uses your browser's built-in speechSynthesis API, which routes the synthesis to whatever voices your operating system has installed. macOS and iOS have ~60 high-quality voices (including the famous Siri-quality "Samantha" and "Daniel" voices); Windows ships with the OS-default voices plus any you've added; Linux defaults are functional but typically robotic. Voice quality varies dramatically — try a few and pick one that sounds best to you.

Adjust speech rate (0.5× slow → 2× fast), pitch (low to high), and volume. Some browsers respect the rate slider better than others; macOS/iOS Safari implementations are generally the most controllable. The whole pipeline runs locally — no audio is uploaded, no API quota, no cost.

How to use it

1. Paste text into the input box. Plain text works best; HTML/Markdown formatting is read literally so strip it first if you don't want "asterisk asterisk" pronounced.
2. Pick a voice from the dropdown. Voices come from your OS — macOS has 60+, Windows has 5-10 by default plus any you've added.
3. Adjust rate (0.5-2x), pitch, and volume. Most users find ~1.1-1.3x faster than default sounds more natural for prose.
4. Click Play to start, Pause/Stop to interrupt. The text highlights word-by-word as it's read so you can follow along.
5. Use Download Audio (if your browser supports it via MediaRecorder + speech) to save the spoken text as a WebM file. Not all browsers support this.

When to use this tool

• Proofreading your own writing — typos and clunky sentences pop out when read aloud.
• Listening to long articles or PDFs while doing something else (commute, chores, exercise).
• Accessibility — reading text aloud for low-vision or dyslexic readers.
• Language learning — hearing a sentence in your target language pronounced naturally.
• Quick sanity-check on names: does "Eoghan" sound like "Owen"? Hear it before saying it wrong.

When not to use it

• Production-quality voice work (audiobooks, ads, professional narration) — use a paid service like ElevenLabs, OpenAI TTS, or Google Cloud TTS for human-quality output.
• Whispered, emotional, or character voices — system voices are a single neutral tone with no inflection control beyond pitch/rate.
• Complex SSML markup (pauses, prosody tags) — browsers expose only basic SSML support and inconsistently across platforms.
• Long-form audio you'll re-listen to — system voice quality is fine for one-pass comprehension but tiring at length compared to human or premium-AI voices.

Common use cases

• Onboarding a colleague who needs the same calculation/conversion
• Verifying a number or output before passing it on
• Quick conversion during a typical workday
• Pre-decision sanity-check on inputs and outputs