The reading mode built into your web browser helps declutter web pages to let you see articles without any annoying ads or popups. Whilea lot of popular browsershave had this feature for a long time,Google Chromecaught up with themonly recently. But Google is actively working to bring additional features to its reading mode, and a handy read-aloud option is already on the way for the Chrome browser.
As the name suggests, read aloud basically reads out the entire article, as if you’re listening to an audiobook, with text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities. Again, a few mainstream browsers and apps like Pocket already have the feature, but Google Chrome is only now rolling it out through the Canary channel.
When you open an article in Chrome Canary’s reading mode on the desktop, you will see a new option, as spotted by browser expertLeopeva64. You can use this tiny play button to get the browser to read the article aloud for you. In thevideo sampleshared by the user, you can hear what the narration sounds like — and it isn’tvery pleasing.
The voice output sounds pretty robotic as it used to be in the early days of TTS conversions, which is especially ironic coming from Google, which has some of the most natural-sounding voice models at its disposal. This clearly indicates that the read-aloud feature is in its early stages of development and will take some time before it becomes ready for prime time.
In its current state, Chrome’s read-aloud tool looks quite rudimentary. Other browsers let you change the speed of the speech, skip ahead in the article, and even change the voice. For instance, Microsoft Edge has a long list of more natural-sounding voices in English and various regional languages. None of those options are available on Chrome Canary right now, though nothing is stopping Google from releasing a fully featured version of read-aloud with a stable build down the line.
ConsideringGoogle’s prowess in natural TTS voicesin various languages, a built-in read-aloud feature will undoubtedly be more capable and useful for the users. However, while Google still has some work to do, you can useChrome browser extensionsto add read-aloud capabilities.
