Google Chrome's Useless Reading Mode To Get a Useful Audio Upgrade

Google Chrome is adding a read-aloud option to its reading mode, allowing users to have articles read to them like an audiobook. Android Police reports: Google is actively working to bring additional features to its reading mode, and a handy read-aloud option is already on the way for the Chrome browser. As the name suggests, read aloud basically reads out the entire article, as if you're listening to an audiobook, with text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities. Again, a few mainstream browsers and apps like Pocket already have the feature, but Google Chrome is only now rolling it out through the Canary channel.

When you open an article in Chrome Canary's reading mode on the desktop, you will see a new option, as spotted by browser expert Leopeva64. You can use this tiny play button to get the browser to read the article aloud for you. In the video sample shared by the user, you can hear what the narration sounds like -- and it isn't very pleasing. The voice output sounds pretty robotic as it used to be in the early days of TTS conversions, which is especially ironic coming from Google, which has some of the most natural-sounding voice models at its disposal. This clearly indicates that the read-aloud feature is in its early stages of development and will take some time before it becomes ready for prime time.

Great, now I can listen to all those ads!

[Tony Isaac]

Instead of dancing, jiggling, obnoxious ads on screen, advertisers will find ways to be part of the narrative in this audio reading mode.

Re:

[pete6677]

I just wish the reading mode would block out all the extraneous bullshit.

Re:

[Malays2b0wen]

Textise.net - this is what I use when a page does not know how to behave and all I want is the text. The downside is that it does not work with all pages because some sites use a Java loader for the article text content itself in order to 'protect' us from skipping all the unwanted shit on those pages.

Re:

[Malays2b0wen]

"Instead of dancing, jiggling, obnoxious ads" This is actually a concern for people who are prone to seizures. I can't believe that people are still harping on about the long dead HTML blink tag, but I hear very little about moving ads which are far worse.

Mozilla Firefox

[iridium213]

My browser's reader mode laughed out loud at this news, and said "well, about time!"

Re: Mozilla Firefox

[Flavianoep]

IIRC, back in 2008, Konqueror already did that.

Browser expert

[Rostis]

"you will see a new option, as spotted by browser expert Leopeva64"

We must be running out of titles...

Too little...

[Barny]

... too late. Just got done dumping Chrome thanks to a hardware acceleration bug with high res video playback (flashing squares of corruption).

Yes, Google's own browser was failing to render video from their own website.

Re: Too little...

[Anamon]

It's not an isolated incident. No other browser I've used has as much trouble rendering and handling Google Maps as Chrome (on all of Windows, Linux and Android).

"Useless"?

[dfm3]

I realize the clickbait title comes from TFA, but I seriously rolled my eyes at this. The first sentence of the article literally reads, "helps declutter web pages to let you see articles without any annoying ads or popups". It's a godsend on some news websites.

Re:

[sconeu]

Came here to say the same thing.

Just Read

[Dan East]

I've been using the Just Read [google.com] Chrome extension for a few years now. Most of the time it gets the job done (you know, those websites that show a dialog telling you you're using an ad blocker that you need to disable... this extension lets you read the content). Unsurprisingly it doesn't work here on Slashdot though.