How to use text to speech
Paste or type your text above, choose a voice and press Play. You can add up to 100,000 characters at a time, which is well over an hour of speech. Long texts are read in short sections, so you may hear a brief pause between sentences.
- 1
Add your text
Paste an essay, an article or your notes into the text box. - 2
Choose a voice
Voices in the language of this page come first. Every other voice on your device is further down the list, so a text in another language can get a matching voice. - 3
Set speed and pitch
Speed runs from 0.5 to 2 and pitch from 0 to 2. Some voices ignore pitch. Changes made while it reads take effect at the next break, usually within a few sentences. - 4
Listen
Pause and resume when you like. Stop goes back to the start of the text. Keep the tab open: closing or reloading it ends the reading.
Why voices differ between devices
The voices are not part of this website. They come from your device and your browser, so the list on your phone will not match the list on your laptop, and the same text can sound quite different on each. If there is no voice for the language of this page, the tool says so. You can usually add more voices in your device's language or accessibility settings and then reload the page.
Some browsers also offer online voices, which the list marks as online. They run on the browser maker's service, such as Google in Chrome, so they need a connection and the text they read goes to that service. The other voices run on your device, and the tool starts with one of those when it can.
Why there is no audio file to download
Browsers let a page start a voice, but they do not hand the sound back to the page. It goes straight to your speakers or headphones, so this tool cannot save it as an MP3 or any other audio file. If you need a file you can keep or share, you need a service made to generate one.
What it is useful for
Hearing your own text is a quick way to catch clumsy sentences, missing words and typos your eyes skip over.
- Proofread an assignment or thesis chapter by ear.
- Listen to your notes or an article while you rest your eyes.
- Check how a speech or presentation sounds before you practise it.
Going the other way, from a recorded interview to text, is a different job. Interview transcription in Spirelight gives you a draft to check against the audio.