Listen Carefully

Listen Carefully reads any web page aloud with real-time word-by-word highlighting. Your eyes follow along as each word lights up on the page. No accounts, no data collection, no external services.

Built for people with ADHD, dyslexia, visual processing differences, or anyone who retains more when reading and listening together.

READING MODES
- Full Page: reads the main content, skipping navigation and ads
- Selected Text: highlight a section and listen to just that
- Pick Section: click any element on the page to read it
- Read From Here: click a starting point and it reads to the end

FOCUS MODE
Dims the surrounding text so only the active text, sentence, or line is visible. Designed for those who benefit from reduced visual noise.

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
Play, pause, stop, skip sentences, and adjust speed without touching the mouse. Right-click anywhere and select "Read from here" to start instantly.

VOICE SELECTION
Access every voice installed on your system, including Windows 11 natural voices and macOS Siri voices, grouped by language. The extension uses your operating system's speech engine. Offline playback depends on which OS voice you select.

KOKORO TTS (OPTIONAL)
Connect to a local Kokoro-FastAPI server for higher quality natural voices. 67 voices across 9 languages, with precise word-level highlighting on English voices via API timestamps. Runs entirely on your own machine and only ever connects to localhost.

CUSTOMIZABLE
Highlight colors with presets, word marker styles, adjustable speed, volume, and pitch. Auto-scroll follows the active word down the page. Filter out code blocks, image captions, or links. Per-site CSS selector overrides for content detection on sites that don't follow standard semantic HTML.

LOCAL FILES
Read local HTML and text files when "Allow access to file URLs" is enabled in your browser's extension settings.

PRIVACY
Everything runs locally in your browser. No API keys, no telemetry, no analytics, no network requests to external servers. Settings are stored on your machine. The Kokoro backend, when enabled, only connects to localhost. Offline playback depends on your OS voice selection.
The extension requests two permissions: storage (to save your settings) and contextMenus (for "Read from here"). Kokoro's optional localhost permission is requested only when you enable it in settings.

EARLY VERSION
This is an independent project under active development. If you run into a bug or have a suggestion, reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub.
Open source on GitHub: https://github.com/s-kerdel/listen-carefully