The internet is filled with great written content, merely sometimes, you simply don't have the time to read everything yourself. That's where a handy but rather hidden Google Assistant feature comes in. When you invoke the Assistant while looking at an article and say something like "Read it," "Read this page," or "Read it to me," it volition give you an audiobook version of the content you're seeing. Y'all can fifty-fifty attempt that with the text correct hither.

While the voice command is all y'all need to know if you desire to jump into the feature existent quick, there are a few things you should be aware of if y'all're interested in using Read It extensively.

Features

When you say the command, you're thrown into a custom browser built specifically for the reading feature. In it, you'll encounter the article in the height two thirds of the interface and playback controls at the bottom. The website automatically scrolls along equally it's being read to you by default. You can jump back and forth via the rewind buttons next to the play button or by tapping the paragraph you desire to listen to. It'south besides possible to accommodate the reading speed down to a tempo of 0.5x or up to three.0x. I personally think 1.2x is the sweet spot, merely that comes downward to your preference.

When you tap the three-dot overflow menu in the top right corner, you're presented with a few more than options. Y'all have a wide option of alternative voices, and it'southward also possible to plough off text sync if you don't want the article to gyre along equally it'due south existence read. And if you come up across foreign text or y'all'd prefer to listen to an English commodity in your native linguistic communication, yous tin can use the third entry to translate text into or from dozens of languages. With recent advances in Google Translate, yous could almost think whatever you're being read was translated by a professional.

Media controls with skipping backward and frontwards option.

Read Information technology becomes especially magical once you plow off your display or open another app while information technology's reading your article. Like with any sound role player, you tin can interruption, terminate, and skip back and forth via a notification. When you tap it, you can also return to the text itself, should you want to follow along with what's currently being read.

Limitations

There are likewise some limitations. The feature simply reliably works in Chrome — if Firefox is your preferred app for surfing, yous'll need to copy and paste URLs over to Chrome. It too looks like a issues that we get-go ran into a year ago still prevents you from invoking the Assistant in some Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi and Brave, so Read It doesn't work there.

Similarly, Read Information technology doesn't work for all apps. I tried it on the New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, Medium.com, and Feedly, simply they all aren't compatible — you'll demand to open up the respective websites in Chrome to get going. That's because developers have to add some actress code to back up the feature, and obviously, nobody seems to be too interested in it. Since the implementation doesn't seem to be that complicated, the demand likely merely isn't there. At to the lowest degree information technology works with Google News and Google's new custom Search browser.

Left & Middle: No ads thanks to Curl, which doesn't deport over to Read It. Correct: No luck at all with NYT, for example.

Paywalls are also a problem for Read It. That's because information technology'southward basically a separate browser with its own cookies, logins, and history, then even when you lot're logged into a website similar the New York Times in Chrome, Assistant will tell you that it can't read text from websites that require a subscription. The same is true for Ringlet, the service that removes ads from some websites like ours for a modest monthly fee. You lot'll have to suffer ads while the commodity is read to you. Similarly, you lot'll come across cookie privacy notices, even if you've already agreed or disagreed in your default browser.

There you have it — while Read It is a joy to use when information technology works, there are some rather odd limitations, fifty-fifty a year after it first launched. If Google wants the feature to be more than widely available, it needs to do a amend job at making it easily discoverable for users and make information technology desirable to add for developers. Let'south hope the company does that sooner rather than later.

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About The Author

Manuel Vonau (1601 Articles Published)

Manuel is a tech enthusiast and Android fan based in Berlin. When he's not writing articles for Android Constabulary, he'due south probably out and about equally a videographer.

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