Reviews for Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader
Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader by LSD Software
Review by Firefox user 18331836
Rated 4 out of 5
by Firefox user 18331836, 3 years agoUsed this for like years to make my novels audiobooks and the desktop browser version of it works pretty well. IMO, the only good TTS voice is the microsoft zira one lol. Works very well for what it is, but the in-built firefox reader also has a TTS function, which is essentially the same thing. I don't discourage people from using this extension though, since it comes in handy when you just need one specific section TTS'd and it's quicker to activate than the in-built one.
An issue I found only on the desktop browser is that the highlighted text would jump ahead of the actual text the extension is reading and it would continue reading the text even if you press 'stop' (only in the case of the jumping highlighted text). Found that if this happens, press 'test' in the settings and the 'stop' after and it'll stop. Kind of annoying though since it happens every so often.
On the other hand, the mobile version of the extension is kinda meh. The issue I mentioned before doesn't seem to exist on mobile but a different one cropped up. On certain sites, or pages within the sites, the TTS randomly decides to change their voice to another. Again, only microsoft zira is listenable so it forces me to just stop the TTS and read manually.
Also, the 'sign in to use premium voices' have never acutally worked for me on mobile. Every time I click 'sign in', nothing appears T_T, lowkey frustrating. And apart from the offline voices, all of the voices don't work when I'm running on data. They do work when I'm using someone elses hotspot tho :(. Frustrating since I usually want to use mobile TTS when I'm out and about.
An issue I found only on the desktop browser is that the highlighted text would jump ahead of the actual text the extension is reading and it would continue reading the text even if you press 'stop' (only in the case of the jumping highlighted text). Found that if this happens, press 'test' in the settings and the 'stop' after and it'll stop. Kind of annoying though since it happens every so often.
On the other hand, the mobile version of the extension is kinda meh. The issue I mentioned before doesn't seem to exist on mobile but a different one cropped up. On certain sites, or pages within the sites, the TTS randomly decides to change their voice to another. Again, only microsoft zira is listenable so it forces me to just stop the TTS and read manually.
Also, the 'sign in to use premium voices' have never acutally worked for me on mobile. Every time I click 'sign in', nothing appears T_T, lowkey frustrating. And apart from the offline voices, all of the voices don't work when I'm running on data. They do work when I'm using someone elses hotspot tho :(. Frustrating since I usually want to use mobile TTS when I'm out and about.
1,282 reviews
- Rated 4 out of 5by Danis Barsant, 6 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Mike, 7 days agoMy eyesight is deteriorating and I have found Read Aloud to be a lifeline because it is simple to use, unlike a couple of the more sophisticated/complex key command driven tools that require frequent practising to memorize the commands.
While there are sometimes mispronunciations of known words, the usefulness of the tool far outweighs any disadvantages.
Also, while selecting the voice, I didn't come across any accents that could be identified as truly Canadian, but I have managed to find one that is fairly close. - Rated 5 out of 5by sealchan, 8 days ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Nicolap, 12 days ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 20150530, 15 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18142561, 16 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 20121652, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by FelixS, a month agoIMPORTANT: Default voice is GARBAGE. For English "GoogleStandard British English (Benjamin)" was very good. You have to give special permission for it to work, which was not super easy. Follow these instructions:
1. Click the permission thing in the settings that show up when you choose this voice.
2. Press the grant permission button.
3. A new page will open. Do NOT press the blue button that says "Try text-to-speech free" or "Start free". Scroll down and press the other blue button that says "Speak it" or similar.
4. Click "I am not a robot" and do a stupid test thing such as clicking on all boxes that contain bridges.
5. Now everything should work and you can close these tabs! - Rated 1 out of 5by kandosh27, 2 months agoLa extensión se salta frases, palabras en muchas paginas, tienes que revisar a mano que se salta
- Rated 1 out of 5by rift, 2 months agorandomly stutters, loads for a minute, then gives up.
skips the first ten words.
can't see short sentences unless highlighted.
worse than useless. - Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 14934088, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 17789734, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by enes, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Syd, 2 months ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by 斗小马, 3 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 14009137, 3 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Pedro, 3 months agoA ferramenta é simples e prática, isso é ótimo, mas eu também adoraria poder mexer na velocidade do texto
- Rated 5 out of 5by PK, 3 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Daniel Vartanian, 3 months agoAmazing! Who needs Speechify when you can use OpenAI voices directly!
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 19908280, 4 months ago