Reviews for Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader
Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader by LSD Software
Review by Firefox user 18331836
Rated 4 out of 5
by Firefox user 18331836, 2 years agoUsed this for like years to make my novels audiobooks and the desktop browser version of it works pretty well. IMO, the only good TTS voice is the microsoft zira one lol. Works very well for what it is, but the in-built firefox reader also has a TTS function, which is essentially the same thing. I don't discourage people from using this extension though, since it comes in handy when you just need one specific section TTS'd and it's quicker to activate than the in-built one.
An issue I found only on the desktop browser is that the highlighted text would jump ahead of the actual text the extension is reading and it would continue reading the text even if you press 'stop' (only in the case of the jumping highlighted text). Found that if this happens, press 'test' in the settings and the 'stop' after and it'll stop. Kind of annoying though since it happens every so often.
On the other hand, the mobile version of the extension is kinda meh. The issue I mentioned before doesn't seem to exist on mobile but a different one cropped up. On certain sites, or pages within the sites, the TTS randomly decides to change their voice to another. Again, only microsoft zira is listenable so it forces me to just stop the TTS and read manually.
Also, the 'sign in to use premium voices' have never acutally worked for me on mobile. Every time I click 'sign in', nothing appears T_T, lowkey frustrating. And apart from the offline voices, all of the voices don't work when I'm running on data. They do work when I'm using someone elses hotspot tho :(. Frustrating since I usually want to use mobile TTS when I'm out and about.
An issue I found only on the desktop browser is that the highlighted text would jump ahead of the actual text the extension is reading and it would continue reading the text even if you press 'stop' (only in the case of the jumping highlighted text). Found that if this happens, press 'test' in the settings and the 'stop' after and it'll stop. Kind of annoying though since it happens every so often.
On the other hand, the mobile version of the extension is kinda meh. The issue I mentioned before doesn't seem to exist on mobile but a different one cropped up. On certain sites, or pages within the sites, the TTS randomly decides to change their voice to another. Again, only microsoft zira is listenable so it forces me to just stop the TTS and read manually.
Also, the 'sign in to use premium voices' have never acutally worked for me on mobile. Every time I click 'sign in', nothing appears T_T, lowkey frustrating. And apart from the offline voices, all of the voices don't work when I'm running on data. They do work when I'm using someone elses hotspot tho :(. Frustrating since I usually want to use mobile TTS when I'm out and about.
1,203 reviews
- Rated 2 out of 5by Dilesh Fernando, 2 days agoread aloud is a good extension but the robotic voice sucks
- Rated 3 out of 5by Firefox user 19538464, 7 days agoRead Aloud has been great, but recently (about 20/10/25) the usual English options all got replaced by a lower quality robotic voice. And while Piper is an option and was recommended, none of the options were suitable for me now matched the higher quality reading of the voice I was familiar with. Please can this be undone? This extension is near unusable for me. I just wish to give my user experience on these voices
- Rated 5 out of 5by Commanden, 8 days ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by zari, 19 days ago
- Rated 2 out of 5by That One Guy, 22 days agoI really like it on Firefox, but it really fails on Thunderbird, I hope you can update the Thunderbird version and get it working as well as the Firefox version.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Caroline, 23 days agoNão lê um monte de tipo de página, todas que precisei no máximo lia o titulo.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Ovolya, a month ago
- Rated 2 out of 5by William Nettles, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Enno, a month ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 19294083, 2 months agoThis is the same technology as existed in win XP.
- Rated 5 out of 5by ndb, 2 months agosince they introduced the piper voices it got a lot better. it's not perfect, but it's WAY better with the piper voices now.
- Rated 2 out of 5by Firefox user 17317368, 2 months agoTried to use it in Firefox on Mint: The voices are straight out of a horror movie. Not close to reality a bit and horrifying at the same time. There is one called female whisper, and it sounds like a witch whispering to you in a dark forest in a dead of night while you are sleeping.
- Rated 4 out of 5by GollumsRing, 2 months agoExcellent extension. It would be great if it could omit pronouncing the citations at the end of sentences as well as being able to pause after a period in the sentence. Also, if it could avoid reading hyperlinks, that would be cool too. Otherwise, its 5 stars
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 17902605, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 15037318, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Cassidy, 2 months agoyou have to use the piper voices extension/expansion thing but this extension has saved my grades
- Rated 3 out of 5by Firefox user 14664315, 2 months ago
- Rated 2 out of 5by Firefox user 19005157, 2 months agoIf you get the addon on mobile it severely limits the voices you can use, you can't even login to your account to access the premium voices or what you paid for. It's obvious that this was made with desktop and laptop use only.