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ken107 / read-aloud

An awesome browser extension that reads aloud webpage content with one click
https://readaloud.app
MIT License
1.36k stars 233 forks source link

Regular switching between languages is a pain #342

Open frumble opened 1 year ago

frumble commented 1 year ago

I like this add-on and I’m using it daily. But it is a PITA when I have to switch languages. As I‘m reading as much English as German articles, the ~5 clicks to change the voice are 2 clicks too much, but the worst part is picking my preferred voice from the enormous list.

My recommendation: Please implement a favorite voices section that allows me to select a few preferred voices directly from the reading overlay, next to the A-/A+ buttons.

ken107 commented 1 year ago

Please go to Options and in the Voice dropdown choose "Auto select". Then click the Filter icon to the left of the Voice dropdown. It will open the language preferences page where you can select a preferred voice for each language. It will also trim down the list of available voices.

frumble commented 1 year ago

Cool, that’s actually great! You need to explain this better in the UI! Still not quite satisfactory for me personally, as I like to switch between voices of the same language to hear a variety of voices, which prevents fatigue. That’s why I suggested a drop-down menu with a personal selection of favorite voices.

jirikrepl commented 1 year ago

Hi, @ken107 @frumble, the extension is very nice but this is a real PITA:D

I think the best option would be if the extension would automatically recognize language from the text (maybe with some Google Translate API call) and then this language would be selected.

You could have the option to select language manually or language would be automatically recognized.

When selecting manually, I also think it would be nice to have a dropdown menu to quickly select a favorite language. I agree that the language filtration process is not very intuitive, I couldn't have figured it out if I had not read your comment @ken107

frumble commented 1 year ago

@jirikrepl The "Auto select" option actually does the automatic language switching. The only thing missing is a drop-down menu of few personal favorite voices in your language to have some variety and a better hinting at the "Auto select" feature in the UI.

jirikrepl commented 1 year ago

Great, thank you. It really works:) This is my settings for two languages:

Screenshot 2023-09-19 at 18 32 34
frumble commented 1 year ago

Great, thank you. It really works:) This is my settings for two languages:

Screenshot 2023-09-19 at 18 32 34

You can register a free account on Google Cloud and use the better Neural2 and WaveNet voices with lots of free characters per month (1 Mio for WaveNet equals ~400 pages.)