Reading a selection aloud

What this does

Task menu ▸ Read selected text aloud

Reads the selected text aloud. No file is produced – if you want one, use Create Audio.

While it is playing the entry is called Stop reading, so clicking again stops it.

The control window

• Voice – which voice reads.
• Elapsed – how long it has been reading.
• Pause / Resume / Stop / Start over.

The status line shows "Sentence N of M" – so you can see how far it has got and how much is left.

Right at the beginning it says: "Preparing audio - you can only cancel for now." During that phase Pause and Resume do not yet work. On longer passages it takes a moment.

What it is worth doing for

Reading aloud is a good proofreading tool. Hearing it catches things the eye skips over: a doubled word, a sentence with no ending, a phrasing that does not work when spoken.

For text that will be delivered aloud – speeches, introductions, addresses – it is the only reliable length check.

When it will not work

• "No selected text to read aloud." – select first.
• "No LiteLLM text-to-speech model available." – no speech output is set up for your account. Your administrator does that.
• "Reading aloud could not be completed." – usually a connection problem; try again with a shorter passage.