GUIDE

Read Aloud in Edge, Word and Chrome: how to use it

Edge, Word and Chrome can all read text aloud without any extension: a web page, a PDF or your own document. It is handy for proofreading, for studying and for resting your eyes.

This guide shows where Read Aloud is in each of them and how to control it, and what to do when you want something they do not give: the speech saved as an audio file for your phone, or a voice of your choice.

Hear the voices Install the free engine

Microsoft Edge

Open a page or a PDF and press Ctrl + Shift + U, or right-click and choose Read aloud; the same shortcut pauses and resumes. To hear only part of a page, select it, right-click and choose to read the selection aloud. The toolbar that appears lets you skip paragraphs and, under voice options, pick another voice and change the speed. On some pages the Read aloud icon is missing from the address bar, but the shortcut still works.

Microsoft Word

On the Review tab, choose Read Aloud: Word reads from the cursor onward, highlighting each word, and the small player lets you pause, skip and open settings for the voice and speed. Place the cursor where you want it to start. Reading your own text aloud is one of the best ways to catch typos and clumsy sentences.

Google Chrome

Recent versions of Chrome have Reading mode: right-click the page and choose Open in reading mode, then press Play in the Reading mode panel to have it read aloud, with controls for the voice and speed. It shows the main text of the page without clutter, which suits articles best. If you do not see the option, update Chrome.

Save the text as an MP3 instead

All three read aloud while the window is open; none of them saves the speech as a file. To listen on a walk or in the car, voice the text into an MP3 with the free SuperClonica engine: install it with python -m pip install superclonica-cpu, save the text as a .txt file and run superclonica --text-file article.txt --voice F2 --lang en --normalize --output article.mp3. It works offline on Windows, macOS and Linux, in 31 languages, and catalog voices can be tried on their pages first.