Local Read

Select text and listen. A friendly read-aloud companion with offline voices, a speaker bubble, and a mini player.

Give your eyes a break. Local Read reads selected text aloud using voices available locally on your device. Select a passage on a web page, click the Read aloud bubble, and listen. You can also use the right-click menu or a keyboard shortcut. No account, subscription, or API key is required. LISTEN YOUR WAY • A speaker bubble appears beside selected text on supported web pages. • Pause, resume, stop, or move between sentences. • Adjust reading speed from 0.5× to 2×. • Switch to a small, separate player window while you keep browsing. • Paste copied text from documents or pages that restrict extensions. • Choose local voices for English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Voice availability and quality depend on your device. LOCAL BY DESIGN Local Read has no analytics, advertising, developer-operated speech server, or cloud voice fallback. It does not upload your reading text to the developer. The extension detects text selections locally to show its speaker bubble. When you ask it to read, it passes that text to Chrome's speech engine. Voice and speed preferences are saved locally. Text briefly passes through Chrome's session storage and is kept in the player while it is open, rather than saved as a reading history. System voices are preferred. Only voices Chrome identifies as local are offered. If you select a voice supplied by another installed speech-engine extension, that engine processes the text under its own behavior and privacy terms. GET STARTED 1. Pin Local Read to your Chrome toolbar. 2. Select text on a web page and click Read aloud. 3. Use the gear in the player to choose voices or adjust preferences. The default reading shortcut is Command+Shift+Y on Mac or Ctrl+Shift+Y on Windows. You can view or change shortcuts at chrome://extensions/shortcuts. Chrome may leave a shortcut unassigned when it conflicts with another extension. GOOD TO KNOW • Offline speech requires a compatible local voice to be installed on your device. • Chrome settings, the Chrome Web Store, the built-in PDF viewer, and some embedded pages restrict extension access. Copy the text and use Paste & listen when needed. • Image-only text needs OCR first; OCR is not included. • The current sentence is shown in the player. Local Read does not highlight the spoken sentence in the original page. • The player is a separate Chrome window, not an always-on-top overlay. • Incognito use requires Allow in Incognito. Local-file access requires Allow access to file URLs. • After an update, the extension restores its bubble on already-open pages where Chrome grants site access. You can limit site access or turn off the bubble in Settings. Read a little. Listen a little. Keep your place.