Last weekend, I started exploring text-to-speech services and its current state is surprisingly good. The results sound as natural as a human reading.
I was able to build Read Text, a Chrome extension that reads your content. You can enter content directly, or extract it from the web page. Then it will detect the content language. You can change the language, and select the reader's voice, click play button and start listening.
MP3 Sample: ReadText-NBA-players-react-to-Kevin-en.mp3
Here's a screenshot of the extension
It's currently free to use or download as an MP3 file. One use-case example is to generate voices and embedded into tutorial videos in case you don't want to record yourself
Read Text is available on Webstore https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-text/kaefoohoohjefceijkjcjhkddinmbhbp
Let me know if you have feedback or questions
[27 Jun 2021] Read/Download selected text right from the context/right-click menu (thanks to @palmik feedback)
I tried your extension. My immediate thought of how it should work was that I would select text, righ click and then there will be "Read text" action. I think this would be a great feature to add.
Left a review on your store page :)
I saw your feedback and thanks for the rating.
One of your requests is to sync the mp3 to your phone, is it a little too hassle to download it then sync it to your phone?
(If it does, I'll think of a way to make it easier)
That's a great suggestion. I'll add it sometime this weekend
Thanks, Peter
[Update: 27 Jun] Added option to read/download to the context menu
Other examples of Chrome extensions which try this badly? I'm surprised there isn't a 1+ million-user text-to-speech app already.
Congrats on the launch. I see this can have great potential. How is it different from windows narrative tools?
Also, was thinking, if there was an easy way to send these tot he phone it would be very valuable. Like, people like to listen to something when running and doing other stuffs and this will help them to do that.
Many devices support text-to-speech but they don't sound natural and support fewer languages.
The result of this extension sounds just like a human reading, supporting 33 languages with over 130 voices. In some cases like voiceover for tutorial videos, it'd be much better to have a natural voice than a machine one.
On phone, besides its own tech-to-speech, I saw there are a few apps available. But that still is an interesting case