OpenRead

Listen to the web, at your pace. Local voices, focused reading, no subscription.

Free, open-source text-to-speech with local voices and word highlighting. IMPORTANT: This early release requires a Mac and the free OpenRead local helper. Install and start the helper from https://getopenread.vercel.app before using the extension. Python 3.11–3.13 is needed; first setup downloads about 586 MB of model files plus packages. The extension does not bundle the voice models. Windows and mobile setup are not supported in this release. Listen at your own pace • Read the main article or selected text aloud. • Follow the current word on the original webpage. • Choose expressive Kitten TTS voices or other local voices. • Adjust speed, pause, resume and skip passages from the toolbar. • Keep controls out of the way while you listen. A local reading workspace The helper also opens PDFs, EPUBs, Word documents, scans and pasted text, with a local library, bookmarks and audio exports. Optional local AI tools need separate setup. Your words stay on your device Reading text is sent only to your local helper at 127.0.0.1. No OpenRead account, cloud speech service, advertising or subscription. Setup downloads models and packages from their upstream providers. Free by design Source code: https://github.com/ahmednajaf/openread Contributions and accessibility feedback are welcome. Donations are completely optional and do not unlock features. Some pages cannot be read, including browser-internal pages and protected viewers. Article extraction and voice word timings can be imperfect. English works best.