Highlight Reader: read-aloud that highlights the page as it reads
A Chrome extension that reads any web page aloud in a natural voice and highlights each sentence where it is, on the page, not in a side panel. No account. One payment.
What it does
- Select text, or press one key, and it reads from there in a natural voice.
- The sentence being read is highlighted on the page itself, so your eyes and ears stay in the same place.
- Speed, voice and highlight colour are three clicks away. Nothing is behind a login.
Why this, why now
Several popular readers recently moved reading into a side panel, and the on-page highlight went with it. People asked for it back. This extension is built around that one thing: the highlight stays on the page.
What it is not
Not a subscription, not an app you sign up for, not a PDF studio. It reads web pages. If a free reader already does what you need, keep it — we would rather say that here than after you have paid.
What the payment covers — and what is already free
The voices are free. Chrome ships its own text-to-speech, including network voices that sound natural, and the extension uses them at no charge. We are not selling you a voice you already have.
What a paid add-on would add is word-level highlighting together with a natural voice. The voices Chrome hands an extension report only the start and end of each utterance — we checked every voice available on our test machine and not one reports word or sentence boundaries — so a highlight built on them moves a sentence at a time. Cloud voices report every word. One payment of $4.99 would cover 12 months of:
- a highlight that follows each word, not each sentence;
- no pause between sentences (with the free voices, each sentence is a separate utterance, and you hear the join);
- more languages than your machine happens to have installed.
Fair use is 150,000 characters a month — roughly a book a month. No automatic renewal. Sentence highlighting and Chrome’s own voices stay free after the twelve months, for good.
Price and terms
$4.99, one payment, now. Nothing more is due when it ships. No date is promised: you get one email when it ships.
Full refund, no questions, at any time before delivery. If we do not reach enough reservations to make it worth building, we refund everyone and say so publicly. You are not taking a risk we are not taking.
Pre-order for $4.99Not ready to pay?
Leave an address and we will tell you when it ships — and nothing else. No newsletter, no sequence, one message.
We store the address and the date. Nothing else, and it is not shared. Reply to the one message you get and we delete it.