Access Online Soundscapes Effortlessly: Enable Audio Playback on Web Pages via Chrome Browser

Reading an article, like how you’re doing right now, is cool, but there are some cases where you probably want to listen to something rather than keeping your eyes on what you’re reading. If you’re driving, you might prefer something like a podcast rather than reading. Listening to websites isn’t a new concept, but now, Google is rolling out a built-in text-to-speech feature for Chrome on Android.

Google is rolling out a new text-to-speech (TTS) feature called “Listen to this page” for Chrome on Android devices. This feature allows you to have text-heavy web pages (like this one!) read aloud—if you’re reading an article, the browser will read the body out loud for you. It’s pretty useful when you need to look through a written article or read news but you need to focus your eyes on something else. It’s a feature that exists in some websites, but this Chrome implementation should let you do it with just about any article.

Arol Wright / How-To Geek

Arol Wright / How-To Geek

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The TTS option appears in the three-dot overflow menu on compatible web pages. Upon activation, a miniplayer emerges at the bottom of the screen, offering basic playback controls, a progress indicator, and the page title. You can access the full controls by tapping the miniplayer. These include a scrubber, rewind/forward buttons, and playback speed adjustments ranging from 0.5x to 4x. Additionally, users can toggle text highlighting and auto-scrolling, as well as choose from various voice options with different accents and pitches. You can fine-tune your experience so it sounds just the way you want it to sound.

While playback continues across tabs and even when the device is locked, it stops if the browser is closed. However, Chrome remembers the user’s position upon relaunch.

Google has been developing this feature for several months, and it’s gradually becoming more widely available with Chrome 125. Google is probably rolling this out gradually to ensure it works well and there aren’t any deal-breaking issues with it. If you don’t have it just yet, and you don’t feel like waiting several weeks, you can also enable it manually through the chrome://flags/#read-aloud flag.

Source: 9to5Google

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