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 (click an address to copy it, then paste it into the address bar: browsers do not let web pages link to these): 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 and can be dragged anywhere (it remembers where you put it). It has previous / next sentence, pause, speed, A− / A+ to make the page's text smaller or larger, a dark / light page button (it lasts while the player is open and is remembered per site; if MES Dark Mode is already darkening the page it steps aside, so the two never cancel each other out), voice and setup, a button that turns the highlighting on or off, and one that minimises it to a small bar. 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, H highlighting on / off, M minimise, Esc close.

• Google Docs: open the Doc and press Read this page. Docs draws its pages itself, so the extension reads the Doc's text from Google with your own login and the words are followed in a text box above the player. For long Docs, press Allow Google Docs in the popup once: the extension may then fetch the Doc's text straight from Google (nothing goes through mes.fm).
• PDFs: the browser's own PDF viewer cannot be read by any extension. With a PDF open, press Read this PDF in the popup (or right-click a PDF link and choose Read this PDF / Word file aloud): it opens in the extension's reading page, with the word and sentence highlighted and the reading starting at the page you scroll to. Scanned PDFs (pictures of pages) have no text to read.
• Word files (.docx) just download, so use Read a PDF or Word file… in the popup and drop or choose the file. Old .doc files need saving as .docx first. Nothing is uploaded.
• PDFs on your computer (an address that starts with file://): switch on Allow access to file URLs once. Open chrome://extensions (brave://extensions, edge://extensions), click Details under MES Read Aloud and turn on Allow access to file URLs. Without it, just choose the file in the reading page.
• On this site, the PDF Editor and the Word Viewer have their own Read aloud button, no extension needed.

• 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 from a searchable list grouped by language (type a name, language or country; press ▶ to hear a voice). 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; files on your computer are only opened if you switch on Allow access to file URLs. Two kinds are asked for only when you choose: Google Docs (docs.google.com and googleusercontent.com, for the Doc's text) and a website you open a PDF from that blocks other pages. It does not ask to read your data on all websites.

It cannot read browser pages (chrome://) or the Web Store, and text drawn inside images or canvas is not text to the browser (PDFs and Google Docs are handled as described above). Text inside embedded frames can be read by selecting it and using the right-click menu.