Read Aloud

1. Download the zip above and unzip it. You get a folder called mes-read-aloud. Keep it somewhere permanent (Documents is fine): the browser reads the extension from that folder.
2. Open the extensions page: chrome://extensions in Chrome, brave://extensions in Brave, edge://extensions in Edge.
3. Turn on Developer mode (a switch at the top right, or on the left in Edge).
4. Click Load unpacked and choose the unzipped mes-read-aloud folder.
5. Click the puzzle-piece icon in the toolbar and pin MES Read Aloud.

Chrome may show a "disable developer mode extensions" notice when it starts: choose Cancel / Keep. Brave and Edge usually do not. Until the extension is listed in the Chrome Web Store, updates are manual: download the new zip, replace the folder and press the reload arrow on the extensions page. Firefox is not supported yet.

• Read the page: click the toolbar icon and choose Read this page, press Alt+Shift+R, or right-click and choose Read this page aloud. It reads the main article and skips menus, sidebars and footers.
• Read from a spot: click inside a paragraph first, then start. Reading begins at that sentence.
• Read a selection: select some text, then use the popup, the shortcut or the right-click menu.
• The player floats at the bottom of the page: previous / next sentence, pause, speed, voice and setup. Click the progress bar to jump. Double-click any word to start reading from it.
• Keys while the player is open: Space pause or resume, ← / → previous / next sentence, ↑ / ↓ speed, Esc close.

• Highlighting on the page itself. The current word and sentence are marked with colours you choose. The page is not changed: the highlight is drawn by the browser, so layouts, links and selections keep working.
• Smart text finding. Reads the article content, skipping navigation, hidden text, code blocks and (if you like) tables. Or switch to everything visible.
• Setups. Save different voices, speeds and highlight styles for different purposes or people (it ships with Default, Study and Quick listen), switch in the player or the popup, pin a setup to a site, and export or import them as text.
• Your browser's voices. It picks the best installed voice for the language of the text automatically, or you choose one. The same engine as the MES Speed Reader, which also reads aloud.
• Speed from 0.5x to 4x, pitch and volume, an estimate of the time left, and scrolling that follows the reading and backs off while you scroll yourself.

The voices come from your browser and operating system, so what you hear depends on them. Edge has very natural built-in Microsoft voices, Chrome offers Google voices, and Brave uses the voices installed on your computer. A voice marked online in the settings is run by the voice provider, so the text being read is sent to them; pick a voice without that label to keep everything on your computer. Voices that do not report word positions still get the sentence highlighted, and the word highlight then follows an estimate (the player says so).

Permissions: activeTab and scripting let the extension add the reader to the page you are on, only when you ask; storage keeps your setups; contextMenus adds the right-click items. It does not ask to read your data on all websites.

It cannot read browser pages (chrome://), the Web Store, or the built-in PDF viewer, and text drawn inside images or canvas is not text to the browser. Text inside embedded frames can be read by selecting it and using the right-click menu.