Read PDF aloud

Have any PDF read aloud in Chrome

Last updated

Audhio reads your PDF out loud and highlights each word as it goes. It skips the stuff nobody wants read to them, like page numbers, [12]-style references and the References list at the end.

30 free minutes a month. No credit card.

First, the honest answer

Do you need an extension to read a PDF aloud?

Not always. Microsoft Edge and Adobe Acrobat Reader both have a free read aloud button for PDFs. If you already use one of them, try it first.

Where they get painful is anything with citations. They read the PDF as it is, so page numbers and every "(Smith and Lee, 2020)" get read out loud too, and a research paper turns into a list of names and years. That's the part Audhio leaves out.

Three steps

How to have a PDF read aloud

  1. 1

    Add Audhio to Chrome and sign in with Google.

  2. 2

    Open the PDF in Chrome, from a link or from your computer.

  3. 3

    Click Read with Audhio in the bottom right corner. It opens the PDF in Audhio and starts reading.

Clicking the Audhio icon in your toolbar does the same thing. On Pro, you can have PDFs open in Audhio by themselves, so there's nothing to click.

Research papers and textbooks

What Audhio skips when it reads

Skipped text stays on the page where you can see it. It just isn't read out loud.

  • Page numbers
  • Headers and footers that repeat on every page
  • Sideways stamps in the margin, like the arXiv line down the side of a paper
  • Numbered references like [12]
  • Author-year citations like (Smith and Lee, 2020)
  • Footnote marks
  • Email addresses
  • The table of contents
  • The References list and the index at the back
  • Copyright and permission notices

What it doesn't handle yet: two-column layouts, tables and figure captions get no special treatment, so those parts can sound off. Scanned PDFs have no text to read, and password-locked PDFs don't open yet.

A few more things

There are four voices, and you can go anywhere from 0.75x to 3x. All of that is on the free plan.

The same player reads web pages and Google Docs. See how Audhio reads web pages.

What it costs

30 minutes a month is free, and there's no separate PDF limit. PDF listening counts toward those 30 minutes. If you need more, Pro is $9.99 a month or $99 a year, and you can listen as much as you want.

If money's tight, email lex@audhio.com and ask for Audhio Access. It's free Pro, and you don't have to prove anything.

Questions

Questions people ask

Can it read a PDF saved on my computer?

Yes. Drag the file into Chrome, or open it from your downloads, then click Read with Audhio. The first time, Chrome makes you give Audhio permission to open files from your computer. Audhio shows you the button for it.

Does it work on scanned PDFs?

No. A scanned PDF is a photo of a page, so there's no text in it to read. Audhio tells you when that's the case.

Is there a free way to have a PDF read aloud?

Audhio is free for 30 minutes of listening every month, PDFs included, with all four voices. No credit card. Microsoft Edge and Adobe Acrobat Reader also have free read aloud for PDFs. They read the PDF as it is, page numbers and citations included.

Does Audhio keep my PDF?

Not with your name on it. When you press play, the text goes to Audhio's server and to ElevenLabs (the company that makes the voices) to turn it into audio. The audio and its text get saved for up to 90 days, so the same text loads faster next time. That copy isn't tied to you or your account. Audhio also logs basic usage, like when reading starts and the address of the page you were on, but never the text itself. The privacy policy at audhio.com/privacy has all of it.

From the blog

Reading help, if you want more

Try it on your next PDF.

Open a PDF, click Read with Audhio, and follow along.

Add to Chrome

30 free minutes every month. No credit card.