Real pages, real layout
The document is rendered, not reflowed. Figures, tables, columns and page numbers stay exactly where they are.
PDF read aloud · free · no upload
Read a PDF aloud without losing the page
Most PDF readers strip a document down to a wall of text before they will speak it. Lumotext renders the actual pages and draws the highlight on top, so the figure, the table and the layout are all still there while it reads.
No account needed to start. Reading happens on your device.
PDF text to speech
A reader that speaks your PDF without flattening it.
Reading a PDF aloud usually means extracting the text and throwing the document away. That is fine for a novel and useless for a paper, a spec, a contract or a textbook, where the numbering, the figures and the tables are half of the meaning. Lumotext paints the real pages with pdf.js and overlays a highlight layer on top of them, so the read aloud runs sentence by sentence over the document as it actually looks.
There is no conversion step and no upload. The PDF is opened by your own browser, the text is extracted locally, and the speech is produced by the voices installed on your machine. A confidential document never leaves your computer, which is the part to check before you paste a contract into a hosted reader.
If you would rather read the extracted text than the pages, for a badly scanned document, or to copy from. There is a text view and a raw view, switchable while you read. And if you want the same thing for a book rather than a paper, see listening to EPUB files.
The real page, not a reflowed text column, figures, tables and page numbers where the author put them.
On the page
Everything stays where the author put it.
Highlight drawn over the page
The sentence and word highlight is positioned on the rendered page itself, so you can follow the voice through a two-column paper.
Click a line to read from there
Click anywhere in the document and the voice starts at that line, useful for skipping a method section or re-reading a paragraph.
Headers and footers do not derail it
Sentence detection accounts for page turns and vertical jumps, so a running header does not get glued onto the middle of a sentence.
Nothing is uploaded
The file is read in your browser. No copy is stored on a server, which is what makes this usable for work documents.
Text view when you want it
Switch to extracted text or raw text at any point, and save the text to your library if you want to come back to it.
Step by step
How to get a PDF read aloud.
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Open the reader
Go to the Lumotext app on a desktop browser. No install, no account.
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Import the PDF
Drop the file in. The pages render progressively while the text model is built, and reading starts as soon as the first page is ready.
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Read, or jump in anywhere
Press play for the whole document, or click the line you want to start from. Adjust the voice and speed while it reads.
FAQ
PDF read aloud questions, answered.
Is my PDF uploaded to a server?
No. The file is opened and rendered in your own browser and the speech comes from your system’s voices. Nothing about the document is sent to us.
Can it read a scanned PDF?
Only if the scan has a text layer. A pure image scan with no embedded text has nothing to read, optical character recognition is not built in yet. If the text is selectable in your usual PDF viewer, Lumotext can read it.
Does it read the headers, footers and page numbers too?
Sentence detection breaks on page turns and on large vertical jumps, so running headers and footers are separated out rather than spliced into the body text.
Can I save the PDF to my library?
You can save the extracted text to your library with a free account, and your place in it is kept. The original file itself is not stored on our servers.
Is there a page limit?
No. Pages render progressively in the background, so a long document starts reading without waiting for the whole file to paint.
Start reading in the next minute.
Paste something in and press play. No email, no account. Sign in later if you want it saved.
Free to use. An optional free account syncs your library across devices.