Google Launches Chrome Webpage Reading Feature

2024-06-18

Google is rolling out a new feature called "Listen to this page" that allows you to have web page content read to you in the Android Chrome browser. The feature comes with playback controls similar to those found in music or podcast players, allowing you to pause, change reading speed, fast forward or rewind, or skip 10 seconds at a time. You can also customize the voice and language used by the feature. According to Google's help page on this feature, it supports multiple languages including English, French, German, Arabic, Hindi, and Spanish. To see if you have the feature, go to a page with a lot of text and click the three-dot menu and "Listen to this page," it should appear just below the "Translate" option. You can also have Google Assistant read web page content to you and even translate it into other languages during the reading process. However, choosing this option will take you to the Google app instead of staying in the browser, while the new feature allows you to stay within the browser. Google is also testing this feature on the desktop version of Chrome. Safari on iPhone has a similar feature called "Listen to Page," which uses Siri's voice to read web pages to you and has many controls similar to Google's. I only saw the new option when using the beta version of Chrome, but this is normal as Google often rolls out its releases in stages. According to 9to5Google, they saw the feature in version 125 of the Android Chrome app.