The very popular accessibility-driven text-to-speech feature that graces every corner of technology is going to be integrated into Google Chrome for Android in short order. you may alreadyask Google to read aloud almost any story on your Android phonethrough Assistant, but it’s proven to be less useful over time. In fact, theReading Mode app by Google, which is designed for individuals with low vision, blindness, and dyslexia, has become a better alternative for being read to. Google is integrating a version of the tool directly into Chrome soon, and it has the potential to make listening to words on the web fairly simple.
As spotted by9to5Google,Chrome 120has a flag —chrome://flags#read-aloud— that can only be enabled on Android. However, to actually use the feature, you have to useChrome 121, which has just moved to the stable branch in early release, but is largely still only available as a beta. If you’re using Chrome 121 and enable the flag on Android, however, it’s a pretty awesome experience.
Upon pressing the “Listen to this page” option in the overflow menu, a seamless bottom bar module appears that shows you the page title and website you’re currently on, as well as a pause/play button with a timeline. When this node is tapped, it expands to around 40% of the screen with more information and buttons. It shows the length of time it will take to read the article, two buttons to skip forward or behind 10 seconds, an overflow button that lets you highlight text, automatically scroll, and change voices, and it lastly lets you change the playback speed. That speed can be adjusted to a variety of times (0.5x, 0.8x, 1x, 1.2x, 1.5x, 2x, 3x, and 4x). Playback will continue if you lock your phone with Chrome still open or browse other tabs, but it’ll stop when using another app or closing Chrome (which is annoying).
Source:9to5Google
We’ve talked a lot about the overflow menu on Chrome that seems to becomemore and more cluttered with each version. There’s a lot of extra gunk up there that’s visible, and then there’s even more hidden in the three-dot menu. That’s where the “Listen to this page” tool can be found when enabled.
We’re fans of more easily-integrated accessibility options, so Google adding this directly into Chrome is sweet. However, just like with its older Google Assistant-based Read Aloud feature, having to deal with limitations like notbeing able to listen to pages when using different appsis annoying. Hopefully, that’s worked on over time.Chrome is one of our favorite web browsers on Android, and with it being the one that ships with the OS by default, there’s no wonder why it’s the most-utilized. However, we still think Mozilla Firefox is the best experience, andMozilla recently enabled third-party extension support on Android. Chrome adding its own “read aloud” feature isn’t going to tip the scales for most, but it’s a nice addition to enrich the already great user experience.
