# LibreOffice text to speech: read aloud in Writer, Calc and Impress Updated 2026-10-31 LibreOffice has no Read Aloud button like Microsoft Word, but a free extension adds one. Hearing your text is one of the best ways to catch typos and clumsy sentences, and it helps when reading on screen is tiring. This guide shows how to install and use the Read Text extension, when your system’s own screen reader is enough, and how to turn a whole document into an audio file offline. ## Install the Read Text extension Download Read Text from the official LibreOffice Extensions site and add it in LibreOffice under Tools, Extension Manager, then restart LibreOffice. It works in Writer, Calc, Draw, Impress and Web Writer, and it can also read the system clipboard. ## Read text aloud Highlight some text, then choose Tools, Add-Ons, Read Selection, or click the Read Selection button on the toolbar. In Writer you can select several passages by holding Ctrl. To read whatever you copied, choose Tools, Add-Ons, Read clipboard. The extension can use another language or voice and can save the speech as an audio file. ## When a screen reader is enough If you already use a system-wide screen reader, such as Narrator on Windows or VoiceOver on a Mac, you may not need the add-on at all. The extension also writes temporary files to pass text to other programs; its description explains how to clear them if the text is confidential. ## A whole document as MP3 For a long document, save it as plain text with File, Save As and the Text format, then voice it offline with the free SuperClonica engine: python -m pip install superclonica-cpu, then superclonica --text-file document.txt --voice F2 --lang en --normalize --output document.mp3. It runs on an ordinary processor, has no character limit and keeps private documents on your computer. ## Pick a voice you like On the page of any voice in the SuperClonica catalog, paste a sentence of 30 to 100 characters from your document and press Voice it to hear how it sounds, free and without an account. The engine speaks 31 languages. ## More guides - [Text to speech for blind and visually impaired people](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/text-to-speech-for-blind-people) - [OneNote text to speech: hear your notes](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/onenote-text-to-speech) - [Text to speech reader: listen to books, PDFs and articles](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/text-to-speech-reader) - [Google Docs text to speech: listen to a document or save it as MP3](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/google-docs-text-to-speech) - [Adobe Read Out Loud: have Acrobat Reader read a PDF aloud](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/adobe-read-out-loud) - [Notion text to speech: an audio version of any page](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/notion-text-to-speech) - [Fanfic text to speech: listen to AO3 and Wattpad stories](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/fanfiction-text-to-speech) - [Excel text to speech: from Speak Cells to audio files](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/excel-text-to-speech) - [How to turn off the voice guide on a TV](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/tv-voice-guide-off) - [How to turn off the narrator on Mac, Chromebook and Xbox](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/turn-off-narrator-mac-chromebook-xbox) - [Word document to audio: turn Word and Google Docs into MP3](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/word-document-to-audio) - [Obsidian text to speech: listen to your notes, offline](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/obsidian-text-to-speech) ## Text to speech and comparisons - [Text-to-speech that runs on your own computer](https://superclonica.com/en/text-to-speech) - [Supertonic vs SuperClonica: same model, faster and cleaner](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/supertonic) - [Fish Audio and Fish Speech vs SuperClonica](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/fish-audio) - [OmniVoice vs SuperClonica: more languages or more speed](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/omnivoice) - [Qwen3-TTS vs SuperClonica for local text-to-speech](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/qwen3-tts) - [VoxCPM 2 vs SuperClonica: studio sound or CPU speed](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/voxcpm) - [F5-TTS vs SuperClonica: zero-shot cloning or fast CPU speech](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/f5-tts) - [An offline alternative to ElevenLabs](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/elevenlabs) - [Kokoro TTS vs SuperClonica: two small models for local speech](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/kokoro) - [Piper TTS vs SuperClonica: tiny devices or custom voices](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/piper) - [Coqui XTTS-v2 vs SuperClonica: a Coqui TTS alternative](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/xtts) - [Chatterbox TTS vs SuperClonica: instant cloning or a trained voice file](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/chatterbox) ## Frequently asked questions ### Does LibreOffice have text to speech? Not built in. The free Read Text extension adds Read Selection and Read clipboard commands under Tools, Add-Ons. ### Can LibreOffice save speech as MP3? The Read Text extension can save speech as an audio file; for whole documents, the free SuperClonica engine voices a text file straight to MP3. ### Does it work in Calc and Impress? Yes. Read Text works in Writer, Calc, Draw, Impress and Web Writer. ### Is it free? Yes. LibreOffice, the Read Text extension and the SuperClonica engine are free. - [Browse voices](https://superclonica.com/en/explore) - [Install the SuperClonica engine](https://superclonica.com/en/superclonica) ## Sources - [LibreOffice Extensions: Read Text](https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/show/read-text) - [SuperClonica engine on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/superclonica-cpu/) - [SuperClonica](https://superclonica.com/en/) - [AI voice catalog for text to speech](https://superclonica.com/en/explore) - [Text to Speech API: free key, plans from $5](https://superclonica.com/en/speech-api) - [Custom voice commissions for Supertonic 3](https://superclonica.com/en/requests) - [How it works: voices, local speech, training](https://superclonica.com/en/guide) - [Install the faster Supertonic 3 engine](https://superclonica.com/en/superclonica) - [About us: speech synthesis enthusiasts](https://superclonica.com/en/about) - [Contacts, support and voice complaints](https://superclonica.com/en/contacts) - [Privacy policy: what data we keep](https://superclonica.com/en/privacy) - [Terms of use: rules for buyers and authors](https://superclonica.com/en/terms) - [Text to speech](https://superclonica.com/en/text-to-speech)