Text to Speech: Read Text Aloud Online

This free text to speech tool reads any text aloud using the voices built into your browser and operating system. Paste an article, an email draft or your own essay, choose a voice and press Play: the words are spoken immediately and highlighted one by one in a live preview, so you can follow along while you listen. There is nothing to install and no account to create.

How to convert text to speech

1. Type or paste your text into the input box, or click Paste to insert it from the clipboard. Sample loads a short demo text so you can try the voices first.
2. In Voice Selection, filter the list by language and by voice type (male, female or neutral, guessed from the voice name), then click the voice you want. Each entry shows the voice name and its language code, for example en-GB or fr-FR.
3. Set the speed (0.5x to 2x), pitch (0.5 to 2) and volume (0 to 100%), or use a quick preset: Slow, Normal, Fast or Child (a higher pitch).
4. Press Play. Pause, resume or stop at any time; the progress bar and the “Word X of Y” counter show exactly where the reader is.

Which voices are available?

The tool uses the Web Speech API, so the voices come from your device, not from WoowTools. Chrome offers Google voices in many languages, Microsoft Edge adds natural-sounding “Online (Natural)” voices, and Safari on Mac and iPhone uses the Apple system voices. Windows, macOS, Android and iOS let you install extra voices and languages in their speech settings; after restarting the browser they appear in the list. That is also why the same text can sound quite different from one device to another.

Practical uses

• Proofreading: hearing your text read back exposes missing words, repeated phrases and clumsy sentences that your eyes skip over.
• Listening instead of reading: play a long article or report while you cook, commute or rest your eyes.
• Language learning: pick a native voice for the language you study and lower the speed to about 0.7x to hear every word clearly.
• Accessibility checks: get a rough idea of how screen-reader users will hear your copy, including abbreviations, numbers and symbols.
• Scanned pages: extract the text of a photo or scan with the image to text (OCR) tool, then paste it here to listen to it.

Good to know

Browsers do not let websites capture the speech engine's output, so this tool cannot save an MP3 or WAV file directly. The Download as Audio File button explains the alternatives, such as recording your system audio with Audacity or QuickTime while the text plays. Speed, pitch and voice are locked while speaking; stop playback to change them. The statistics panel shows the number of words and characters plus an estimated listening time, based on about 150 words per minute at normal speed. To check the length of a script before recording a voice-over, the word counter gives you a more detailed breakdown.

Private by design

WoowTools never uploads or stores your text: the page hands it straight to your browser's speech engine. Voices installed on your device work entirely locally, even offline. Some voices are cloud voices supplied by the browser vendor, such as the Google voices in Chrome or the “Online” voices in Edge; when you choose one of those, your browser sends the text to that provider to generate the audio. For confidential documents, choose a local system voice.