Rilo — Read Aloud

Rilo — Read Aloud is a Chrome extension that reads web pages and PDF documents out loud, highlighting each sentence as it is spoken so you can follow along or look away.

What this application does

Rilo — Read Aloud is published by Eslam Anwar and distributed through the Chrome Web Store. After you install it and press play on a page, it identifies the article text, converts it to speech, and plays it back while highlighting the sentence currently being read. It can do the same for PDF files, which Chrome's built-in viewer cannot read aloud. You can save notes from selected text, choose between four voices, and adjust the reading speed.

Why the application asks you to sign in with Google

Speech is generated on a paid service, charged per character. Rilo uses Google Sign-In with the openid scope only — the narrowest permission available — so that it can tell one user's usage from another's and apply a fair daily limit. Rilo receives an anonymous account identifier and never your email address, name, profile picture, contacts, or any other data from your Google Account, and it has no access to any other Google service.

Without a verifiable identity, anyone who found the address of Rilo's speech server could spend that budget until the service stopped working for everybody. You can revoke Rilo's access at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions.

Features

Articles Finds the article on a page and skips navigation, adverts and comments.
PDFs Renders pages locally and reads them in order. Files are never uploaded.
Read-along highlighting The sentence being spoken is highlighted in place, without altering the page.
Picks up where you stopped Your position is remembered per page, even after a reload.
Notes while you read Select any text and save it. Notes stay in your browser.
Four voices, adjustable speed US and UK, male and female, from 0.5× to 2×.

How your data is handled

Sentences you ask Rilo to read are sent to Rilo's own speech server to be turned into audio, and are not kept afterwards. PDF files are never uploaded — only the sentence text is. Your notes and reading position never leave your browser. Nothing is sold, and nothing is used to train AI models.

Full details are in the privacy policy. For help or to report a problem, see support.