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CastReader — Free Text to Speech Chrome Extension

The only Chrome extension that reads Kindle Cloud Reader books aloud. No other TTS tool works on Kindle — Speechify, NaturalReader, and Read Aloud all fail. CastReader uses OCR to extract text from Kindle's encrypted font rendering, something no other extension can do.

Text to Speech with Real-Time Highlighting

Text to Speech — Read any webpage aloud with paragraph highlighting

Send to Phone — Kindle Books as Audiobooks

Send to Phone — Turn any Kindle book into an audiobook on your phone

Why CastReader?

Every TTS extension fails on Kindle Cloud Reader because Amazon encrypts text into custom font glyphs rendered as images. CastReader is the only tool that solves this:

  1. Intercepts Kindle's render pipeline to capture layout data
  2. Runs tesseract-wasm OCR to extract text with word-level bounding boxes
  3. Generates natural speech with Kokoro TTS engine
  4. Syncs word-level highlight to audio playback in real time

This same approach works on WeRead (微信读书), which renders text on Canvas — another platform where every other TTS tool fails.

Features

Kindle Text to Speech

  • Works on every Kindle book in Kindle Cloud Reader (read.amazon.com)
  • OCR-based extraction bypasses Amazon's font encryption
  • Word-level highlight synced to audio
  • Automatic page turning

Send to Phone

  • One tap to send an entire Kindle or WeRead book to your phone
  • Listen as an audiobook — no Audible subscription needed
  • Works via Telegram — no extra app required
  • Auto-turns pages and syncs chapters in real time

Universal Text to Speech

  • 15+ site-specific extractors: Notion, Google Docs, arXiv, Medium, Substack, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and more
  • Universal extraction: Readability-based algorithm works on any webpage
  • Paragraph highlighting: Real-time visual tracking as you listen
  • Smart content detection: Skips navigation, ads, and boilerplate

Free to Start

  • 40+ languages with automatic detection
  • No signup or account required to start
  • Free tier with standard voices; CastReader Pro unlocks premium ultra-realistic voices and more listening
  • We don't store your page content

Install

Browser Link
Chrome Chrome Web Store
Edge Edge Add-ons
Firefox Firefox Add-ons

How It Works

You open a Kindle book in your browser
  → CastReader extracts text (OCR for Kindle, DOM for regular pages)
  → Kokoro TTS generates natural speech
  → Audio plays with real-time paragraph + word highlighting
  → "Send to Phone" syncs the entire book to your phone as an audiobook

Supported Platforms

Platform Method Status
Kindle Cloud Reader tesseract-wasm OCR + render interception ✅ Full support
WeRead (微信读书) Canvas text extraction via fetch interception ✅ Full support
Notion DOM extraction
Google Docs DOM extraction
arXiv DOM extraction
Medium / Substack DOM extraction
ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini DOM extraction
Any webpage Readability + heuristic extraction

FAQ

Why don't other TTS extensions work on Kindle? Amazon renders Kindle text using encrypted custom fonts — the actual characters in the DOM are scrambled. Standard DOM-based text extraction gets gibberish. CastReader uses OCR on the rendered page images to get the real text.

Is this legal? CastReader is an accessibility tool. It reads aloud content you've already purchased, similar to your phone's built-in screen reader. No content is downloaded or redistributed.

How does Send to Phone work? Click "Send to Phone" in the extension popup. CastReader syncs the book chapter by chapter to a web player accessible on your phone. It auto-turns pages on desktop and streams content in real time.

Do I need Audible? No. CastReader generates speech from the text of books you already own in your Kindle library. No Audible subscription needed.

Is it really free? Yes — free to start, no account required. The free tier uses the open-source Kokoro TTS engine. CastReader Pro (optional) unlocks premium ultra-realistic voices, more listening time, and AI features like Read & Explain.

Links

License

MIT

About

CastReader — Read aloud & AI-explain any webpage. The only TTS that works on Kindle Cloud Reader, plus PDFs, Notion & ChatGPT. Send-to-Phone streaming, 40+ languages, free to start.

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