Forum Discussion
Read Aloud: An option to read only selected text instead of whole page.
For Now, Read Aloud is working like charm. It would be much better if there was an option to read only "selected text" on the webpage [instead of whole page, which is set by default]
9 Replies
- Does this really not exist? I'm new to Windows after using Mac for the last 15 years.
On Mac, I leverage the ability to have the OS speak *only selected text* many times per day. I select text and then smash OPT+ESC and voila, macOS reads only my selected text. The narrator doesn't read anything else, and I don't ever want it to.
On Windows, I don't want to have to run Narrator in order to have text read aloud, but I don't mind if I have to configure it to start every time I log in. I absolutely do mind if it's also reading non-selected text out loud or if it starts reading anything I select without me specifically telling it to start reading; I can't find a way to turn off these two behaviors and honestly I shouldn't have to turn them off anyway. I should be able to enable/disable every single behavior at my discretion.
What I do want - no, NEED - is to be able to select text and then use a simple key command, like CTRL+ESC or ALT+ESC to read the selected text.
Already today this is a major productivity drain for me. Major bummer. If what @CarlyCarlisle says is true and this is a regression, I'm shocked it hasn't been fixed more than two months later. - Still not implemented? Look at how Apple does screen reading in macOS and iOS... so much better and intelligent. Offline too. They actually spend some money on quality voices years ago and you can easily use them, download higher quality ones, and text-to-speech only the selected text, detects the language (mixed too) and even assign a hotkey to it. WOW...
- I just accessed the Read Aloud feature for the first time today. It's great! And it can become greater if we could select to read aloud certain parts of a webpage. Right now, I need to wait and hear the rereading of titles and menu heading wordings each time.
Thanks once again to the team for great work! - Elliot Kirk
Microsoft
Thank you for the suggestion, Deleted. I will forward it on to the team that does Read Aloud.
- I see this post was over 3 years ago. Has the feature been added yet? If so, how do we do it. I haven't found that option yet. Thanks for your help.
Not that I'm aware of. You might try this: start the reader by selecting Read Aloud from the Settings menu. As soon as the Reader begins speaking, highlight the text that you want read. The Reader should jump to the highlighted text. When it's finished with your text, close the Reader to stop it.
Elliot Kirk thank you so much! I use text to speech to proofread emails and other documents. Hopefully, we will be able to read aloud the selected text like the classic version of Edge. Thanks for listening.
