Reviews for Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader
Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader by LSD Software
Review by Firefox user 12914483
Rated 1 out of 5
by Firefox user 12914483, 6 years agomeans absolutely nothing to me without the contextual menu that disappears after firefox closes.
5 star if they fix this issue. The shortcut Alt+p doesn't work the same way as the context menu and therefore can't be considered a replacement. The shortcut has to read the entirety of what was selected before you can make it read something else unlike the context menu button who interrupts the current text being read to start the new one you just selected.
The way I use this addon most of the time is to research subjects I'm unfamiliar with. I make it read while I keep looking at other stuff I'm researching. Most of the time, I understand what I was looking for mid read and I'm ready to TTS the next thing and it's already highlighted so I just right click to open the menu and make it read the next part I'm interested in which it does immediately by interrupting the previous text being read. The shortcut doesn't do that. If it's already reading something and I highlight something else and press alt+p, it just stops reading. If I press it again, it resumes the read of the previous text not the new highlighted one.
Could be solved by adding another shortcut like Alt+n (for next or new) to fix what's described above.
Another problem I have with this addon is that if you use more than one language, the voices options and choices become pretty much useless. In my case I want the addon to read both English and French texts sometimes. The only way to do this is to choose the Auto select option in the voice choices. Doing so give you a random voices for both languages and you have no say in what voice you want for each language. They seem to be chosen randomly as far as I can tell. The English male voice I got is one I hate and can't stand listening to, same for the french female voice I randomly got but that one is a little less annoying. If I select any other voice instead of the auto select option, then I'm stuck being only able to read one language because that same voice I chose butchers the other language it's not designed to read. I could go to the options and select the voice I want each time I switch between languages but who the hell would wanna do that?
5 star if they fix this issue. The shortcut Alt+p doesn't work the same way as the context menu and therefore can't be considered a replacement. The shortcut has to read the entirety of what was selected before you can make it read something else unlike the context menu button who interrupts the current text being read to start the new one you just selected.
The way I use this addon most of the time is to research subjects I'm unfamiliar with. I make it read while I keep looking at other stuff I'm researching. Most of the time, I understand what I was looking for mid read and I'm ready to TTS the next thing and it's already highlighted so I just right click to open the menu and make it read the next part I'm interested in which it does immediately by interrupting the previous text being read. The shortcut doesn't do that. If it's already reading something and I highlight something else and press alt+p, it just stops reading. If I press it again, it resumes the read of the previous text not the new highlighted one.
Could be solved by adding another shortcut like Alt+n (for next or new) to fix what's described above.
Another problem I have with this addon is that if you use more than one language, the voices options and choices become pretty much useless. In my case I want the addon to read both English and French texts sometimes. The only way to do this is to choose the Auto select option in the voice choices. Doing so give you a random voices for both languages and you have no say in what voice you want for each language. They seem to be chosen randomly as far as I can tell. The English male voice I got is one I hate and can't stand listening to, same for the french female voice I randomly got but that one is a little less annoying. If I select any other voice instead of the auto select option, then I'm stuck being only able to read one language because that same voice I chose butchers the other language it's not designed to read. I could go to the options and select the voice I want each time I switch between languages but who the hell would wanna do that?
1,065 reviews
- Rated 5 out of 5by P R Merrill, a day agoMy eyesight is failing *AMD) and this extension has saved my life. It's only fault is it won't read text that isn't really text but a picture of text. quite a few folks use that method on wed sites and ads. I will just skip those. Thanks for being there for us.
- Rated 3 out of 5by Martina, 5 days agoUsed to work great, I do not mind robotic voices as long as my eyes get a rest. But last few days it is barely usable, it is not reading paragraph I click on, but it reads everything from the start, or does reads whole paragraphs on every section I click. It used to skip immediately where I wanted. It does not stop when I click stop, nor pause. It highlights different sections than it reads. Removing and adding the add on again did not hep. On average, I rate 3 stars due to previous good experience, but it is no longer usable for me.
- Rated 4 out of 5by Nahuel, 5 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Tyler, 6 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Peter, 6 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Kambiz, 10 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by DiegoC, 12 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by anthony.fordjr, 14 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by MozBruttoDev, 15 days ago
- Rated 3 out of 5by k0ns0l, 17 days agoIt appears I can no longer install a custom voice :/
Activity log is showing "TypeError: Error in input stream" even after a 100% install status. - Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 18740215, 19 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18739799, 19 days ago
Developer response
posted 20 days agoPlease right click the Read Aloud icon and choose Options, then you can choose from a variety of voices, including the new Piper voices powered by machine learning.- Rated 5 out of 5by Dedy Hidayat, 20 days ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by techguru12, a month agoJust robotic terrible voice which is there whatever I choose, reinstalling ... nothing works!! awfull
- Rated 1 out of 5by Hashimx10, a month agoeven talkit from windows 98 is still much better than this one.
- Rated 3 out of 5by MC, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18462716, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Jonsmon, a month agoThis addon works quite well on my PC.
For those complaining about the robotic sounding voice... Try switching to "GoogleTranslate English" voice or one of Google's other voices. - Rated 3 out of 5by Firefox user 18418147, a month agoIt's gotten worse. It still works, but it randomly stops sometimes then you only have to start over at the top of the text. It used to be able to read things to me in the background but it only does that for a few paragraphs and then stops again. Basically, it's buggy and used to work better.