Make your Android phone read articles, books, news and more… – Gadget Hacks

For the avid multitasker, listening to audiobooks and podcasts is the ultimate way to passively absorb knowledge while performing other activities — but there are other options. You can turn any text written on your Android phone into speech read aloud to you, so there’s virtually no limit to what you can audibly absorb from your headphones or speakers. .

You can have your Android smartphone read almost anything aloud to you, whether it’s an e-book, a webpage, an online news article, an email , short story, PDF document, text file or other form of written work. Even better, you have options, and some work better depending on the type of text being converted to speech.

Method 1: Ask the Google Assistant

Google Assistant is the most convenient way to get your Android smartphone to read books, stories, news articles, and other text-based materials.

Make sure you have the latest version of Google Assistant, as well as the Google app, to keep things running smoothly. You can install or update them from the Google Play Store (links: Google Assistant | Google). If this is your first time using Google Assistant, you need to train it to hear your voice and configure other settings.

Now just go to a reading selection and say something like the following using “Hey Google” or “OK ​​Google”. You can also invoke Google Assistant via hardware (eg power button, Quick Tap) or other software shortcuts (eg swipe from corner, Google search widget), depending on your Android device.

• “Read my screen.”
• “Read.”
• “Read it.”
• “Read this page.”
• “Read aloud.”

Google Assistant will launch a UI with player controls and begin reading the selection aloud, highlighting words in blue as you go. Some apps are better optimized for text-to-speech; You’ll know when Google Assistant shows a “Play” button after activating it.

The three-dot menu at the top gives you access to additional options, such as “Read aloud”. Go for a British accent if you want to make the reading hour stylish. You can also turn off the “Text Sync” option if you don’t want Google Assistant to highlight words when reading.

At the bottom is a reading speed control that you can adjust to make Google Assistant read slower or faster, from 0.5 to 3.0 times normal speed.

Method 2: Enable TalkBack or Select to Speak

If you’re not a Google Assistant user, there’s another option built into Android itself called TalkBack. Go to Settings -> Accessibility -> TalkBack, then turn on the TalkBack switch to try it out. Also enable the TalkBack shortcut option so you can turn the service on and off by holding down both volume keys simultaneously.

The downside of TalkBack is that it’s designed to help visually impaired people navigate their devices. When you select a block of text, TalkBack adds a green box around the text and reads everything in it. However, when you tap an item on the screen, it is selected and described aloud. Any action now requires a double tap, and tapping with three fingers opens the TalkBack menu.

You can also try the “Select to Speak” tool in Accessibility settings if you have that option. It’s a little less clunky to use, and you can toggle it on or off via an on-screen accessibility button or by swiping up with two fingers from the bottom of the screen. You can set your shortcut preference in “Accessibility Shortcuts”, “Accessibility Button/Gesture” or similarly named settings. When you activate it, tap on the block of text and it will start reading.

Method 3: Use read aloud in Google Play Books

If you’re using the Google Play Books app, you can have it read your books and it works better than the options above. The other methods are designed to read the screen itself and will stop when they get to the end of the paragraph or article, but Play Books can turn pages automatically and continue reading.

To get started, open any book on any page. Swipe down from the top to reveal the three-dot menu, tap it and select “Read Aloud”. The app will start reading, highlighting each sentence as it goes.

Method 4: Try third-party options

You are not limited to the above methods created by Google; There are plenty of third-party solutions if you want different voices, more realistic speech, easier controls, and other features. Some are free, while others are paid services. Popular apps include Narrator’s Voice, Pocket, Speechify, T2S, Talk, Text to Speech, TTS Reader, and Voice Aloud Reader.