Drop a pin anywhere in your text with the button on the playback bar — it marks your cursor, or your exact spot in the speech if you're mid-read. Jump back, rename, or start playback from any bookmark below.
Drag & drop, or click to browse (.txt, .md, .pdf, .docx)
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Rendering audio…
AuraRead Feature Guide
Everything this app can do, in one place. Tip: the "Tools" button opens My Documents, Compare Voices, Display Settings, and Bookmarks — each opens as a panel with its own ✕ close button, no need to reopen the menu to dismiss it.
Getting text in
Type, paste, or drag & drop
Drop a .txt, .md, .pdf, or .docx file onto the drop zone, or click it to browse. Text extraction works even for compressed/complex PDFs.
Import from URL
Paste an article link to pull in its readable text. Some sites block automated fetching — those will show an error rather than garbled HTML.
Scrub Text
Strips markdown syntax, links, footnote markers, and citations (including multi-author forms like "(Smith & Jones, 2021; Kim et al., 2019)") — plus PDF/ebook artifacts like line-wrap hyphenation, standalone page numbers, repeated running headers/footers, and stray HTML entities — while preserving paragraph breaks.
Playback
Speak / Pause / Resume / Reset
Standard playback controls. Pause truly pauses (tracked by word position) rather than relying on the browser's native pause, which is unreliable on some systems.
Double-click a sentence
Jumps playback to start reading from that sentence instead of the beginning.
Word or sentence highlighting
Toggle in Display Settings — follow along word-by-word, or highlight the whole current sentence.
Resume banner
If you close the tab mid-document, reopening it offers to resume from where you left off.
Exporting to MP3
1. Click "Export MP3"
Found on the playback bar. A one-time walkthrough appears the first time — it explains what's about to happen before your browser's permission prompt shows up.
2. Choose "Entire Screen" and enable system audio
Your browser will ask to share your screen. Pick "Entire Screen" (not a tab or window — speech only plays through system-level audio), and make sure "Share system audio" is turned on. That checkbox is the whole trick; without it you'll get silence.
3. Let it read through
The text plays out loud in real time while it's being captured, so a 5-minute article takes about 5 minutes to export. Any other sound your computer makes during that time gets recorded too, so it's best to stay quiet on other apps/tabs until it's done.
4. Your MP3 downloads automatically
Once reading finishes, the recording is converted to a real MP3 file and saved to your downloads — no further steps needed. Cancel anytime with the ✕ next to the progress bar.
Good to know
Reliable on Windows or ChromeOS with Chrome/Edge. On macOS it needs Chrome 141+ and macOS 14.2+, plus a separate one-time OS permission grant. Firefox and Safari don't support system audio capture at all — the option won't appear.
Bookmarks
Drop a bookmark
Tap the bookmark icon on the playback bar anytime — while reading, paused, or just with your cursor somewhere in the text. It marks that exact spot and gives it an automatic label from the surrounding words.
Bookmarks panel
Open it from the Tools menu to see every bookmark in the current document. Click one to jump your cursor there, hit ▶ to start reading from it immediately, or rename/delete it.
Bookmark rail
Small dots along the right edge of the text box show where your bookmarks sit in the document — hover for the label, click to jump straight there.
Voices
Favorites & grouped list
Star your favorite voices to pin them to the top. The rest are grouped by language (English and Spanish first, then alphabetically by language).
Compare Voices panel
Preview two voices individually, or play the same sample in both back-to-back to compare them directly.
Rate & pitch
Adjustable independently of voice choice, and remembered between visits.
Organizing your work
My Documents
Save the current text under a title, then reload, rename, or delete it later — handy for keeping a small library of articles.
Display Settings
Adjust text size and line spacing for easier reading, independent of playback settings.
Before you export…
Exporting works by recording your computer's audio while your text is read aloud. Here's exactly what to expect:
A share prompt will appear. Your browser will ask permission to share your screen — this is normal, it's how it captures the audio (speech doesn't play through the tab itself, only through your system's audio).
Choose "Entire Screen" — not a specific tab or window, since audio only comes through at the system level.
Turn on "Share system audio" (sometimes labeled "Share audio") — this step is easy to miss, and without it the export will be silent. Note: this will pick up any other sound your computer makes during the recording, too.
Click Share to begin. The text will start reading aloud right away — that's the recording happening in real time, so leave this running until it finishes.
The MP3 downloads automatically the moment it's done reading. No extra steps.