Readox

People who want to consume articles, PDFs, and other web content often can't or don't want to sit and read, such as while commuting, exercising, or doing household tasks. Standard browsers and PDF viewers don't offer a way to have text read aloud with synchronized highlighting, and scanned documents or images with text are not readable at all without manual transcription. The page cites research claiming listening while following highlighted text improves retention by 28% over reading alone, framing plain silent reading as a less effective option people default to today.

Readox is a Chrome extension that reads aloud web pages, PDFs, and selected text, with word-by-word highlighting in a transcript that lets users click any word to seek. It includes OCR to extract text from images and scanned PDFs, AI summarization to get a brief summary before listening, and configurable keyboard shortcuts for playback control. A Library feature lets users save pages, selections, summaries, OCR output, or pasted text into a queue to revisit later, with Pro adding up to 10 separate collections. The free plan uses browser voices, while Pro adds 28 premium English voices that run on-device with unlimited usage, described as private-by-default.