Coming soonFree
Reads any web page aloud, word by word. Each word lights up on the real page as it's spoken, with no reading mode, no pop-up player, and nothing on the page moving.
Chrome extensionAnyone who reads on the web
Coming soon to the Chrome Web Store
See how it worksWorks in Chrome on Mac, Windows, Linux, and ChromeOS. No account. Nothing collected.
Privacy
No account, no analytics, and no servers. Your settings stay in Chrome.
The extension can't see a page until you start it on that tab, and it keeps no record of what you read.
The built-in voices and the voices on your computer speak without anything leaving it. Online voices send the spoken text to their provider through Chrome.
Glint Reader reads the page you already have open. There’s no reading mode, no pop-up player, and no cleaned-up copy of the article. The current word and sentence light up on the real page, so you can glance at a chart or a table and find your place again in a second.
Highlighting paints over the page without changing it, so nothing moves, reflows, or breaks. The only thing added is a small pill in the corner that shows your speed.
How it works
An article, a report, documentation, or a long email in your browser.
Or click the toolbar icon. On a Mac it's Option+Shift+R. Reading starts at the top of what you can see.
Each word lights up as it's spoken. Click any word to jump there. Press the shortcut again to stop.
Reading picks up from the word you click, so you can skip the intro or go back to the part you missed. Links still work as links, and Alt+click reads a link instead of opening it.
Select some text before you start, and reading begins there. Or select some text and right-click. Read aloud reads just that text. Read aloud from here starts there and keeps going.
Speed runs from half speed up to the fastest your voice can really go. On-device voices often reach 4x or more. Google's online voices top out near 3.75x, and their word highlighting is estimated.
The pill in the corner shows your speed. Hover it to change speed, open settings, or stop, with each key shown above its button.
Glint Reader comes with four natural voices. They run entirely on your computer, with exact word highlighting, and they work even where Chrome has no voices of its own, such as the Flatpak build of Chrome on Linux.
You can also choose any voice in Chrome or on your computer. Voices that report each word give exact highlighting, and the settings page groups them for you.
One click measures how fast your voice can really go, silently, so the speed steps never promise more than the voice can do. You can choose your own highlight colors too.
Keyboard
Keys work only while it's reading, and never while you're typing in a field.
| Keys | Action |
|---|---|
| Alt + Shift + R | Start or stop on this tab |
| Space | Pause or resume |
| → ← | Next or previous sentence |
| ↓ ↑ | Next or previous paragraph |
| = - | Faster or slower |
| 0 | Back to 1x |
| Esc | Stop |
Questions
No. Highlighting paints over the text with Chrome's highlight feature, so the page's layout and content stay exactly as they were. The only thing added is the small pill in the corner.
Pick a voice listed under “On this device, with word highlighting” in the settings. These give exact word tracking and the highest speeds. The four built-in voices are always there, marked “Glint built-in”, and they speak English. On a Mac, the Enhanced and Premium voices you can download in System Settings sound best too.
Each voice has a real top speed, past which it doesn't get any faster. Glint Reader measures it and stops the speed steps there, so the number you see is the speed you hear.
Chrome's built-in PDF viewer, pages drawn on a canvas such as Google Docs, Chrome's own pages, and the Chrome Web Store. Text inside embedded frames can be read only by selecting it and right-clicking. If it can't start, the toolbar icon shows a red !. It does read text inside web components and email bodies like Karbon's.
Yes. Open the settings page and choose “Change the start shortcut”, or go to chrome://extensions/shortcuts.
No. It's free, with no account and no upgrade.
Yes. Glint Reader is free and open source under the GNU GPL, version 3. The source code is on GitHub.
Support
Email max@navica.llc with the page you were on and what happened. I read every message.
I build small, focused tools around how accounting firms really work. Tell me where your team loses time, and we'll see what's worth building.