# Basic Text-to-Speech

> Reads articles aloud with a natural voice that runs on your own computer, highlighting each sentence as it goes. No account, no cloud, no tracking.

Canonical page: [https://chrome-stats.com/d/basic-text-to-speech](https://chrome-stats.com/d/basic-text-to-speech)

## Overview

- **ID:** `basic-text-to-speech`
- **Platform:** Firefox
- **Type:** Firefox add-on
- **Status:** Available
- **Publisher:** Razmik
- **Category:** other
- **Daily users:** 3
- **Weekly downloads:** 2
- **Version:** 0.1.0
- **Last updated:** 2026-10-14
- **First published:** 2026-10-11
- **Size:** 15 MB
- **Data as of:** 2026-11-13
- **Store listing:** [Firefox Add-ons Store](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/basic-text-to-speech/)
- **Website:** [https://github.com/razmikb/basic-text-to-speech](https://github.com/razmikb/basic-text-to-speech)

## Description

Press the toolbar button on any article and Basic Text-to-Speech reads it aloud.
<ul><li><strong>A natural voice that runs on your computer.</strong> It uses Piper, an open-source neural voice, inside the add-on itself. The page you are reading is never sent anywhere.</li><li><strong>Follow along.</strong> Each sentence is highlighted as it is read, and the page scrolls with it.</li><li><strong>Reads the article, not the clutter.</strong> Menus, ads, sidebars, share buttons and reference lists are skipped. </li><li><strong>Simple controls.</strong> A small bar on the page lets you pause, skip &amp; change speed. Drag it anywhere; it fades out of the way while reading.</li><li><strong>Right-click to choose.</strong> "Read selection aloud" reads just the text you selected; "Read from here" starts at the sentence you clicked.</li><li><strong>Six English voices</strong> to choose from in Settings.</li></ul>
<strong>About the voice download.</strong> The first time you read, the voice (about 60 MB) is downloaded once from Hugging Face and kept in Firefox. That is the only thing this add-on downloads, and nothing is ever uploaded.

<strong>Not supported:</strong> PDFs (Firefox does not allow add-ons inside its PDF viewer) and Firefox's own pages.

Basic Text-to-Speech is free and open source (GPL-3.0). If you find it useful, you can support its development with the Contribute button on this page — every feature stays free either way.

## Rankings

- #60,163 — Overall
- #61 — text to speech
- #65 — speech to text
- #68 — speech

## Permissions and access

### Permissions

- `activeTab`
- `menus`
- `scripting`
- `storage`

### Content script matches

- `<all_urls>`

## Safety

- **Risk impact:** Moderate risk impact
- **Risk likelihood:** High risk likelihood

### Analysis details

- Allows access to all websites, posing a significant security risk as it can monitor and modify data from any visited site.
- This extension was recently updated in the past month. New updates may not be stable or safe.

> Some risk analysis details are omitted from this free response. [Upgrade to view the full analysis](https://chrome-stats.com/pricing).

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Source: [Chrome-Stats](https://chrome-stats.com/d/basic-text-to-speech)