Google continues to implement new functions in its web browser in its version for the Android operating system. This time the last feature they are testing is the possibility for Chrome read web pages so you can listen to them, as if they were an audio book.
This is still an experimental feature, so it is not yet enabled by default in the final version of the browser. But it is still possible to use it. At Xataka Android we have tested it and it works very well read and narrate web pages in Spanish.
How to Enable Read Aloud Mode in Chrome for Android
Enabling this “secret mode” in Chrome for Android is really simple, it does not require any tedious process. The only downside is that, as a feature still in development, it is not yet available in the final version of Chrome for Android, which means it is necessary download and install Chrome beta (available on Google Play Store).
More precisely, the speech synthesis mode It is available in Chrome version 121, which is still in beta. The latest stable version of the browser is Chrome 120.
Taking this into account, once Chrome Beta is downloaded, we follow the following steps:
- In the address bar, type: chrome://flags/#read-aloud
- Press “Go”
- Activate this function by switching to “Enabled»
It’s important to remember that the chrome://flags menu is full of experimental features and advanced settings. we should avoid changing or modifying anything else.
Once the mode is activated, it is necessary to restart the browser. Now Chrome for Android can read the contents of any web page aloud. For that, proceed as following :
- Go to the web page you want to read (or rather listen to)
- Tap the three-dot button in the upper right corner
- Click on “Listen to this page»
The browser will start dictating all the content of the web page. In our tests, with articles from Xataka Android, Chrome starts by reading the title and immediately afterwards says “Publishing from Xataka Android”, indicating the web page on which you are reading the article, then continues with the rest of the text.
The text-to-speech playback tool appears as a small bar at the bottom of the browser, with quick access to a button to pause playback and another to deactivate this mode. But if we press this bar we can access an extended version of the browser with more options, which allows you to scroll the playback time, move forward or backward a few seconds and even change the playback speed (as slow as 0.5x and as fast as 4x).
By clicking the three-dot button in the lower right corner, you can access some configuration options, including enabling or disabling the browser to highlight the word or phrase currently playing, and change voice type. Among the alternatives, we have male and female voices for Spanish from Europe or Spanish from Latin America (called US Spanish in the app).
This is undoubtedly a very interesting and useful mode, which we hope to see debut in the final version of Chrome for Android soon. It is an interesting tool for, for example, listen to these very long articles while we do other things task at the same time, in the best style of a podcast or audiobook.
By | 9to5Google
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