TapTTS

About

TapTTS lets you listen to any text on the web with a simple keyboard + mouse gesture, designed to be fast, reliable, and distraction-free.

How it works

- Hold Ctrl (Windows/Linux) or Command (⌘) (macOS) and move your mouse over text to highlight what will be read.
- Click while holding the modifier key to start reading the highlighted text aloud.
- Double-tap the modifier key:
  - If something is already reading, it stops all speech globally.
  - If nothing is reading but you have text selected, it reads the selection.
- Or use the right-click context menu: select any text, choose "Read Selected Text".

Key features

- Tap to listen – Quickly turn any article, blog post, email, or document into audio without copying text into another app.
- Smart language handling:
  - Auto-detects the language for common languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Greek).
  - Optional manual language selection when you want full control.
  - Per-language voice overrides: pick a specific voice per language while keeping a global default.
- Local voice only – Uses only voices installed on your system for maximum reliability and privacy. No remote/cloud TTS services.
- Global stop that actually works – The "Stop Current Speech" button in the popup and the double-tap shortcut stop speech across tabs and even after navigation, so speech never gets stuck on an old page.
- Simple, focused settings:
  - Choose a default voice and per-language voices.
  - Adjust speed, pitch, and volume.
  - Option to keep reading when you switch tabs or windows.

Accessibility and productivity

TapTTS is designed for:

- Users who prefer listening over reading.
- People with visual impairments, ADHD, dyslexia, or eye strain.
- Anyone who wants to listen to longer articles while multitasking.

Privacy

- TapTTS runs entirely in your browser using the built-in Web Speech API.
- It does not send page content to external servers for text-to-speech.
- Settings are stored using Chrome's sync storage so your preferences follow you across devices (if sync is enabled).

Permissions

- activeTab – to read text from the pages you are on when you invoke the extension.
- storage – to remember your voices and settings.
- contextMenus – to add the "Read Selected Text" entry to the right-click menu.

TapTTS aims to be a small, dependable companion for turning web pages into speech with as little friction as possible: hold the key, click the text, and listen.