Read Aloud — Complete: Listen to the Web, Everywhere

In our fast-moving world, even twenty minutes of screen time can feel exhausting. What if you could listen to the web instead of reading it? That’s exactly what Read Aloud — Complete aims to deliver: a fully-featured, cloud-enabled text-to-speech solution letting you turn any webpage into audio and keep listening — on your browser, your phone, anywhere.

Why it matters

Whether you’re commuting, multitasking, or simply easing screen-fatigue, listening is a powerful alternative to reading. And for accessibility, it opens the web up in new ways. With Read Aloud — Complete, you turn passive reading into active listening:

• Capture web text from inside your browser via a Chrome extension.
• Send it to a backend service that handles text-to-speech.
• Stream or play the result on your mobile device, like a podcast.

Inside the architecture

Under the hood the system is elegantly simple yet powerful:

• Chrome Extension: Scrapes or receives highlighted text from any webpage and sends it to the backend. (From the folder extension/ in the repo.)
• Backend (Python + FastAPI): Accepts text via REST (/synthesize), runs a TTS engine, and returns a URL for the generated audio.
• Mobile App (React Native / Expo): Displays a list of audio items and plays them. Works on iOS and Android.

Features you’ll love

• One-click: highlight text → “Read Aloud” → stream.
• Cloud syncing: pick up listening where you left off on any device.
• Supports high-quality TTS engines (and is built to be extensible across providers like OpenAI, Azure, AWS).
• Cross-platform mobile support, playback controls (play/pause/seek), persistent history.

Getting started

👉 Explore the full project on GitHub: https://github.com/kunwarmahen/read-aloud-complete

• Backend — Install and run in backend/ folder:

cd backend 
python3 -m venv venv 
source venv/bin/activate 
pip install -r requirements.txt 
./quickstart.sh

Server runs by default at http://localhost:8000.

• Chrome Extension — In Chrome: go to chrome://extensions, enable developer mode, load unpacked folder extension/. Set API_URL in config.js to your backend URL.
• Mobile App — In mobile/ folder:

npm install 
npx expo start

• Open via Expo Go or simulator, set environment variable (or edit config/constants.js) to point to backend.

And you’re off — highlight text on a webpage, send it, and then listen on your phone.

What’s next? Roadmap

This project is still evolving, and there are great features on the horizon:

• A queuing system for long-form articles.
• Multi-voice support (different voices, languages).
• Offline caching of audio files.
• Bookmark-syncing, user accounts, personalized library features.

Why you should give it a try

If you’re looking to build a productivity or accessibility tool, or simply want a personal “listen” mode for the web, Read Aloud — Complete provides an end-to-end base that works today and grows with you. Even if you just want to prototype a listening-first experience, there’s value here.