Microsoft Edge read aloud, on any page you’re on

Right-click anywhere on the page and choose Read aloud, or press Ctrl+Shift+U (Cmd+Shift+U on a Mac). To start from a particular paragraph, highlight it, right-click, and choose Read aloud selection. Use the Read aloud bar at the top of the page to pause, skip, or open Voice options.

Ctrl+Shift+U on Windows, Cmd+Shift+U on a Mac. Press it again to stop. If nothing happens, click once inside the page so the keyboard focus isn’t in the address bar, then try again. ArticleAudio uses Shift+Tab to read the text you’ve highlighted.

Start Read aloud, then select Voice options in the bar at the top of the page. Choose a voice and drag the speed slider. Voices labeled Online (Natural) need an internet connection. ArticleAudio offers five AI voices and speeds from 0.5× to 2.5×, and remembers your choice across sites.

Common symptoms are Read aloud skipping sentences, stopping mid-sentence, or not starting at all. The usual causes are an out-of-date Edge, no internet connection (so the natural voices disappear), and pages Edge struggles to parse, such as web apps, logged-in dashboards, and long chat threads. Update Edge, restart it, and try a plain news article. If it works there, the problem is the page. Highlighting the text first, or opening the page in Immersive Reader (F9), often helps. A read aloud extension like ArticleAudio reads the text you select regardless of how the page is built.

Yes. Open the PDF in Edge, then select Read aloud in the PDF toolbar or press Ctrl+Shift+U. For PDFs, Edge’s built-in Read aloud is a good option.

Not with the built-in feature. Edge Read aloud plays live in the browser and has no download option. ArticleAudio lets you download any listen as an MP3 after the audio has been generated.

edge-tts is an unofficial, open-source Python library that sends text to the same online service Edge’s Read aloud voices use and saves the result as audio. It is a developer tool, not a Microsoft product, and it can break if Microsoft changes the service. If you just want to listen to webpages in Edge, you don’t need it: use the built-in Read aloud or a read aloud extension.

If Edge’s built-in Read aloud does what you need, it’s free and already installed. An extension is worth it when you want a play button on AI chat replies and emails, one-key playback for selected text, MP3 downloads, or the same tool in Chrome and Firefox. ArticleAudio focuses on those, with natural AI voices.

ArticleAudio is free to try with 1,000 words of audio and no credit card. Premium removes the word limit. An individual Premium license works on up to 3 devices or browser installations, so you can use it in Edge and Chrome at the same time.

No. Both turn text into speech, but neither announces buttons, menus, or form fields. If you need full screen-reader support, use Windows Narrator or another dedicated screen reader.