HumanReadTTS
HumanReadTTS

Read anything aloud
on your Mac

Drop in a PDF, a Word file or an ebook and hear it read in a natural voice, in English, Chinese, or both.

Free, open source, and completely offline. Your documents never leave your Mac.

Download for macOS

Requires macOS 15 or later on an Apple Silicon Mac · Installation help

Three steps to your first document

There is no account to create and nothing to configure. Install it, open a file, press the space bar.

1

Install it

Open the downloaded file and drag HumanReadTTS onto your Applications folder. The first time you open it, hold Control and click the icon, then choose Open.

2

Open a document

Drag a PDF, Word file, EPUB, Markdown or text file onto the window. Pictures of text work too, and are recognised automatically.

3

Press the space bar

Reading begins, and the sentence being spoken is highlighted as it goes. Double-click any word to start from there instead.

The app mid-read: the document list on the left, the document in the middle with the sentence being spoken highlighted, and the playback bar along the bottom.
Mid-read. The sentence being spoken is highlighted, with the exact word picked out inside it.

What it does

Built for people who read long, dense documents: research papers, reports, and books.

Voices that do not grate

Optional voice packs give you 28 English voices and 6 that handle English and Chinese equally well. They run on your Mac, so they keep working offline.

English and Chinese in one document

When a document mixes the two, the voice switches language by itself, sentence by sentence. Nothing to set up.

Built for research papers

Two-column layouts are read in the right order, and citation numbers, LaTeX leftovers and figure captions are skipped instead of read out.

Follow along as it reads

The current sentence is highlighted and the exact word being spoken is picked out. Scroll away to check something and one button brings you back.

Easier on the eyes

Sepia and night reading surfaces, adjustable spacing, a line-focus ruler, and the OpenDyslexic and Atkinson Hyperlegible typefaces included.

A study tool as well

Option-double-click a word for an on-device translation, hear it spoken, and save it with its sentence. Export the lot to Anki as flashcards.

Read from anywhere

Select text in Safari, Mail or anywhere else and press Command + Shift + E to hear it, without opening a file.

Listen like a podcast

Media keys and AirPods controls work, a sleep timer stops it after a set time, and you can save any document as an audio file for later.

The playback bar, showing skip back, play, skip forward, elapsed and remaining time, a skip counter, the speed control, the voice name, and a settings button.
Every playback control sits in one bar along the bottom: position, what is being skipped, speed, and the current voice.
The Learning settings tab, showing the tap-to-translate switch, the target language, three saved words with translations and example sentences, and an Export to Anki button.
Words you look up are saved with the sentence you found them in, then exported straight into Anki.
The reader showing the Sepia surface: a warm, paper-coloured page behind dark text.
Sepia and Night surfaces, adjustable spacing and dyslexia-friendly typefaces make long sessions easier on the eyes.

Nothing leaves your Mac

Most reading apps upload your document to a server to turn it into speech. This one does not, which means you can use it on drafts and unpublished work.

Ready to try it

Free, and it takes about two minutes to get to your first document.

Download for macOS

New to it? Start with the user manual.