Free Text to Speech
Turn any text into natural-sounding speech. Choose from every voice on your device, adjust speed, pitch and volume, and listen instantly — no sign-up, no uploads.
Your Text & Settings
Playback
What Is Text to Speech?
Text to speech (often shortened to TTS) is technology that converts written text into spoken audio. Instead of reading with your eyes, you listen with your ears. TTS has moved far beyond the robotic voices of the 1990s — modern voices sound natural, handle punctuation correctly and support dozens of languages and accents.
Our tool uses the Web Speech API, a browser-native feature that requires no plugins, no accounts and no server round-trips. Your text stays on your device at all times[reference:1].
Who uses text to speech?
| User | How they use it |
|---|---|
| Students | Listen to notes, essays and textbook passages while commuting or exercising. |
| Writers | Hear their own drafts to catch awkward phrasing, repetition and rhythm problems. |
| Language learners | Hear correct pronunciation of foreign words and practice listening comprehension. |
| Accessibility users | People with dyslexia, low vision or reading difficulties use TTS to access written content. |
| Content creators | Generate voiceovers for videos, podcasts or social media posts. |
| Commuters | Convert articles into audio for hands-free listening on the move. |
| Teachers | Demonstrate pronunciation in class or create audio study materials. |
| Proofreaders | Hear documents read aloud to catch errors the eye skips over. |
How the settings work
Voice
The voice dropdown lists every speech voice your device and browser expose. The number varies widely — a desktop Chrome install might offer 30+ voices, while a mobile browser might only offer 2–5[reference:2]. Voices are usually labelled with their language and region (for example English (United States) or Spanish (Spain)). Some are local system voices that work offline; others (particularly Google's in Chrome) are cloud voices that need an internet connection.
Speed (rate)
Rate controls how fast the speech plays. The range is 0.5× to 3×[reference:3]:
- 0.5×–0.8× — slow, clear speech for language learning or note-taking.
- 1.0× — natural conversational pace.
- 1.5×–2× — faster listening for familiar content.
- 2.5×–3× — speed-listening for skimming long documents.
Pitch
Pitch shifts the tone of the voice from 0 (lowest) to 2 (highest), with 1 being the voice's natural pitch[reference:4]. Lower pitch sounds deeper and more authoritative; higher pitch sounds lighter and more energetic. Extreme values can sound unnatural, so keep it between 0.7 and 1.4 for normal use.
Volume
Volume goes from 0 (silent) to 1 (full). This is a relative volume applied on top of your system volume[reference:5].
How word highlighting works
As speech plays, the tool listens to the boundary event fired by the speech engine. That event reports the character index of the word currently being spoken, and we use it to bold the active word in the preview box[reference:6]. Note that boundary events are only fired reliably by local (system) voices — cloud voices may skip highlighting[reference:7].
About the Download button
The Web Speech API plays audio directly to your speakers; it does not expose the raw audio stream. To let you save an audio file, we record the speech in real time using the browser's MediaRecorder API and save the result as a .webm file. This means:
- The download takes roughly as long as the audio is long (it records live).
- WebM plays in VLC, Chrome, Edge and most modern players. You can convert it to MP3 with any free converter if needed.
- Tab audio capture is best supported in desktop Chrome and Edge.
Common use cases
Audiobook Creation
Convert articles, short stories or notes into audio you can listen to anywhere.
Language Learning
Hear native pronunciation in 20+ languages to practise listening and speaking.
Proofreading
Listen to your writing to catch typos, repeated words and clumsy sentences.
Accessibility
Reads any text aloud for users with dyslexia, low vision or reading fatigue.
Voiceovers
Generate quick narration for video drafts, demos and social media clips.
Multitasking
Turn long emails or documents into audio you can absorb while doing other things.
Kids' Reading
Let children hear stories read aloud to build vocabulary and fluency.
Study Aids
Convert revision notes to audio for passive learning during commutes.
Privacy and security
This text to speech tool runs entirely in your browser using the native Web Speech API. Your text is never sent to any server, never stored, and never analysed. The only network request is the one-time page load. Safe for confidential documents, private notes and personal writing.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is text to speech?
How many voices are available?
Can I change the speed and pitch?
Can I download the speech as an audio file?
.webm audio file. For best results, use a desktop browser such as Chrome or Edge. Convert to MP3 with any free converter if needed.Does it work offline?
Is there a character limit?
Why don't words highlight when I use some voices?
boundary event, which is only fired reliably by local (system) voices. Cloud voices — especially Google's remote voices in Chrome — often do not fire boundary events, so highlighting is skipped for those. Speech still plays normally.