# Free Text to Speech Online: Read Text and PDFs Aloud > Paste text or open a PDF, Word or EPUB file and hear it read aloud, each sentence highlighted. Free, no sign-up, no limit; files stay on your device. https://www.kortex-notebooklm.com/tools/text-to-speech [Free tools](/tools) # Text to speech. Listen to any text. Paste text or open a PDF, Word file or ebook. Pick a voice and press play. Each sentence lights up as it is read. There is no account, no meter and no limit. - Free, no sign-up - Runs in your browser. Your files never leave your device. - Updated November 10, 2026 ## How do I turn text into speech for free? Paste your text or open a file above, pick a voice and press play. Kortex Text to Speech uses the voices built into your browser and device. So it costs nothing, needs no sign-up and has no daily limit. It highlights each sentence as it reads. 1. Type or paste into the box, or choose **Open a file** for a PDF, Word document (.docx), EPUB ebook, Markdown or text file. You can also drop a file on the box. 2. Pick a language and a voice. Press **Hear it** to try one. Voices marked _natural_, _premium_ or _enhanced_ sound the most like a person. 3. Set the speed. Most people start at 1× and settle somewhere between 1.2× and 1.5×. 4. Press play, or the space bar. Click any sentence to jump to it. ## Can I follow along and skip around? Yes. The sentence being read is shaded. With voices that report their timing, the word is highlighted too. The text scrolls to keep up. If you scroll away, a button brings you back. Use the arrow keys or the skip buttons to go back or forward a sentence. Drag the position bar to jump further. | Key | What it does | | --- | --- | | Space | Play or pause | | ← and → | Previous or next sentence | | Esc | Stop | | − and + | Slower or faster | | E | Back to editing the text | ## Can I download the audio as an MP3? No. Browsers speak with your device’s voices but do not let a web page record them. So there is no audio file to save, here or on any site that uses the same voices. Sites that do offer MP3 downloads use their own paid voices on their servers, which means uploading your text. On a Mac you can make a file yourself. Save your text as `notes.txt` and run `say -f notes.txt -o notes.m4a` in Terminal. **Listen to your notebooks as a podcast.** Kortex turns Gemini Notebook’s Audio Overviews into a podcast feed you can play in any podcast app. [Add to Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/kortex/hdapplggdhndkblofffknpmnnnnbncbn) ## How do I get better voices? The voices you see are the ones your browser and device have, so they differ between a Mac, a Windows PC and a phone. Most systems can download better ones for free. Install them, then reload this page. They appear in the list. ### Mac 1. Open System Settings, then Accessibility, then Spoken Content. 2. Next to System voice, open the list and choose Manage Voices. 3. Pick your language and download voices marked Enhanced or Premium. They run on your Mac, so nothing is sent anywhere. ### iPhone and iPad 1. Open Settings, then Accessibility, then Spoken Content, then Voices. 2. Choose your language and download an Enhanced or Premium voice. Safari can then use it. ### Windows 1. Open Settings, then Time and language, then Speech. 2. Under Manage voices, choose Add voices and pick your language. 3. For the most natural sound, open this page in Microsoft Edge. It adds Microsoft’s online “Natural” voices. Edge sends the text to Microsoft to speak it. ### Android 1. Open Settings and search for “Text-to-speech output” (it is under Accessibility on most phones). 2. Choose Speech Services by Google as the preferred engine, then open its settings. 3. Under Install voice data, pick your language and download the voice you like. ### Which voices keep my text on my device? Voices marked _on device_ run on your computer or phone, so your text never leaves it. Voices marked _online_, such as Chrome’s “Google” voices and Edge’s “Natural” voices, are spoken by your browser’s maker, and the browser sends them the text. Kortex never receives your text either way. Tick “Only voices that run on this device” to hide the online ones. ## Why does it read one sentence at a time? Because long passages break some voices. Chrome’s online voices can stop after about 15 seconds of speech. This bug has been reported for years ([Chromium issue 679437](https://crbug.com/679437)). Reading sentence by sentence avoids that. It lets you jump to any sentence. It also means a 300-page book starts as fast as a paragraph. ## Questions Is this text to speech really free, with no limit? Yes. There is no sign-up, no daily limit and no character meter. The voices belong to your browser and device, so there is nothing for us to charge for. It reads up to 3 million characters at a time, about the length of a long novel. Does my text leave my device? Your device reads the files you open, and Kortex never receives your text. Voices marked “on device” keep everything on your computer or phone. Voices marked “online”, such as Chrome’s Google voices and Edge’s Natural voices, are spoken by your browser’s maker, so the browser sends them the text. Tick “Only voices that run on this device” to hide those. Can I download the speech as an MP3? No. Browsers speak with your device’s voices but do not let a web page record them, so there is no audio file to save. Sites that offer MP3 downloads use their own voices on their servers, which means uploading your text. On a Mac, the Terminal command say -f notes.txt -o notes.m4a turns a text file into audio. Which files can it read aloud? PDF, Word (.docx), EPUB, Markdown, HTML and plain text files, up to 300 MB. A scanned PDF has no text inside, so run it through Image to Text (OCR) first. For a password-protected PDF, remove the password first. Save old .doc files as .docx. Why do the voices sound different on another computer? Each browser lists the voices installed on that device, plus its own online ones. A Mac with downloaded Premium voices, Edge on Windows and a recent Android phone usually sound best. The guide on this page shows how to add better voices on each system. Does it remember where I stopped? Yes, on this device. Your browser saves your voice, speed and the sentence you reached. Open the same text or file again and it offers to continue from there. The tool keeps the text itself only if you tick “Keep my text on this device”. Why is only the sentence highlighted, not each word? Word highlighting needs the voice to report where it is, word by word. Most voices on your device do. Many online voices do not, so with those the tool highlights the current sentence instead. ## More free tools - [**PDF to Speech** Open a PDF and press play. Your place is saved if you stop.](/tools/pdf-to-speech) - [**QR Code Generator** Make QR codes for links, Wi-Fi, contacts and more. Add your logo.](/tools/qr-code-generator) - [**Merge PDF** Join PDFs into one file. Reorder and rotate pages in your browser.](/tools/merge-pdf) - [**Split PDF** Split a PDF by page, range or size. Or pull out the pages you need.](/tools/split-pdf) - [**PDF to Text** Get clean text or Markdown out of any PDF, page by page.](/tools/pdf-to-text) ## Listen to your notebooks as a podcast. Kortex turns Gemini Notebook’s Audio Overviews into a podcast feed you can play in any podcast app. [Add to Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/kortex/hdapplggdhndkblofffknpmnnnnbncbn) No card needed.