Word-by-word highlighting
Three levels at once, the paragraph you are in, the sentence being spoken, and the word on the voice’s lips. This is what turns listening back into reading.
Free · in your browser · no sign-up
Free text to speech that reads anything aloud
Paste a paragraph, an article, a PDF or a whole EPUB, and Lumotext reads it out loud, with the sentence and the word being spoken lit as it goes, so your eyes stay where the voice is.
No account needed to start. Reading happens on your device.
What it is
A text to speech reader built for reading, not just listening.
Most text to speech tools are built to play text at you while you do something else. Lumotext is built for the other case, the one where you are still reading, and you want a voice to hold the pace and a highlight to hold your place. It is a free online text to speech reader that runs in the browser you already have.
There is no upload step and no queue. Paste text into the app and press play, and speech starts immediately, because the speech is synthesised on your own machine by the voices your operating system already ships with. Nothing about what you read is sent to us, see the privacy policy for exactly what does and does not leave your browser.
The same reader handles documents. Import a PDF and it reads the real pages with the highlight drawn over them; import an EPUB and it reads chapter by chapter. Markdown and plain text work the same way. If you would rather have the voice read the page you are already on, the Chrome extension does that without you copying anything at all.
Everything you have saved, in one place, with your position in each one kept.
What you get
Everything a text to speech reader should have done from the start.
Click a sentence to start there
No scrubbing through an audio bar. Click any sentence in the text and the voice picks it up from that exact point.
Speed from a crawl to a sprint
Slow it down for something dense, run it at 2× for something you are skimming. The highlight keeps up either way.
Every voice your system has
System voices on macOS, Windows and Linux, including the premium ones you have already downloaded. Voices your browser synthesises online are labelled rather than buried.
PDF, EPUB, markdown, plain text
Import a document and read it with the same controls. PDFs keep their real page layout, with the highlight drawn on top.
Your place is kept
Stop mid-paragraph, come back tomorrow, and the reader is where you left it, per page and per document.
Step by step
How to use text to speech in your browser.
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Open the reader
Go to the Lumotext app. There is no download, no extension required and no account needed to start.
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Paste your text or import a file
Paste anything into the compose box, or import a PDF, EPUB, markdown or plain-text file. Documents open straight into the reading view.
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Pick a voice and press play
Choose from the voices installed on your computer, set the speed, and press play. Click any sentence to jump the voice there.
FAQ
Text to speech questions, answered.
Is Lumotext text to speech really free?
Yes. Reading text aloud in the web app is free and does not require an account or a card. An optional free account adds a synced library and keeps your place in each document across devices.
Does my text get uploaded anywhere?
No. Speech is synthesised on your device by your browser’s own speech engine, so the text you are reading never reaches our servers. The one exception is that some browser voices are synthesised online by the browser vendor rather than on your machine, those voices are labelled in the picker so the choice is visible instead of hidden.
What file types can it read aloud?
PDF, EPUB, markdown and plain text, plus anything you paste in directly. With the browser extension, it also reads ordinary web pages in place.
Which voices are available?
Whichever voices your operating system and browser provide. On macOS that includes Apple’s enhanced and premium voices once you download them in System Settings; on Windows it includes the natural voices in Windows Settings. We’re also building support for premium, more lifelike voices as an optional paid upgrade down the line.
Does it work on an iPhone or iPad?
Not well, and we would rather say so. Mobile Safari cannot keep speech going in the background or with the screen locked, and its voice list is unreliable. A native iOS app is being built to fix exactly that; until then, use a laptop or desktop browser.
Is there a word or character limit?
No. Because nothing is being sent to a server to be rendered into audio, there is no per-month character quota of the kind hosted readers meter you on.
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.