Auvrenth Text-to-Speech Reader

Auvrenth Text-to-Speech Reader adds a listen button to your posts and pages. Visitors press play and the article is read aloud by the voices already built into their browser.

It needs no account, no API key and no monthly cost, and it stores no audio files on your server. The speech is made on the visitor’s own device, so nothing is sent to an outside service.

For visitors

• Play, pause and stop. Stopping keeps the visitor’s place: the button turns into Resume and carries on from the word where reading stopped, where the voice reports its position.

• Skip to the previous or next sentence, or click the progress bar to jump ahead.

• Reading speed control, and a language and voice switcher whose choice is remembered.

• The sentence being read is highlighted in the article, and the page scrolls along with it. Scrolling by hand pauses the following for a few seconds.

• A mini player stays at the bottom of the screen when the player scrolls out of view while listening.

• Keyboard friendly: the left and right arrow keys skip sentences while the player has focus, and every button has a tooltip and a screen reader label.

For site owners

• Choose the post types, and show the player before or after the content.

• Set a default language, voice, speed and pitch, and test them right from the settings screen.

• Uses a voice that matches your site language when the browser has one.

• Turn sentence highlighting, page scrolling, the mini player and the language switcher on or off.

• Match your site with the play button color, the play icon color and the title and control color.

• Hide the player on single posts, or place it anywhere with the Auvrenth Player block or the [auvrenth_tts] shortcode.

• Change what is read aloud with the auvrenth_tts_text filter.

The player only appears in browsers that support speech synthesis, which covers all current versions of Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox. Sentence highlighting needs a browser with the CSS Custom Highlight API: current Chrome, Edge and Safari, and Firefox 140 or later. Everything else works without it.

Auvrenth Player block and shortcode

Add the Auvrenth Player block (in the block inserter under Media, or search for “Auvrenth”), or [auvrenth_tts] in a post, page or Shortcode block, to show the player exactly where you want it. It reads the post it is placed in.

• The editor shows the player as visitors will see it, and the block sidebar changes that one player only: the button label, default speed, sentence highlighting, page scrolling, the mini player, and the play button, play icon and text colors. Anything left on “site setting” follows the settings screen.

• The block also has the usual margin and HTML anchor settings.

• Works on any post type, even ones not ticked under “Show on” in the settings.

• When a post contains the block or the shortcode, the automatic player is skipped there, so the player never shows twice.

• Set “Player position” to “Only where I add the [auvrenth_tts] shortcode” to turn off automatic placement everywhere and use the block or shortcode only.

• The block and shortcode show nothing when the player is hidden for that post in the editor, or when the post is password protected.