Chrome on Android can read web pages out loud in-app.

2024-06-17

Google is launching a new feature called "Listen to this page" that allows users to have web pages read out loud in the Android Chrome browser. This feature includes playback controls similar to those found in music or podcast players, allowing users to pause, change reading speed, scroll forward, or skip 10 seconds at a time. Users can also customize the voice and language used. According to Google's help page for this feature, it supports multiple languages including English, French, German, Arabic, Hindi, and Spanish. To check if you have this feature, go to a page with a lot of text and click the menu with three dots, then select "Listen to this page" which should appear just below the "Translate" option. You can also ask Google Assistant to read web pages out loud for you and even have them translated into other languages during the process. However, choosing this option will take you out of Chrome and into the Google app, whereas the new option keeps you within the browser. Google is also testing this feature on the desktop version of Chrome. The Safari browser on iPhone has a similar feature called "Listen to Page" which uses Siri's voice to read web pages and includes many of the same controls as Google's feature. I only saw this new feature when using the Chrome beta version, but this is normal as Google typically rolls out its releases in stages. According to 9to5Google, they spotted this feature in version 125 of the Android Chrome app.