How Elocute works
- Upload a PDF, EPUB, Markdown, TXT or HTML file, paste a link to one, or paste any text.
- Elocute extracts the text and cleans it for narration: page numbers, repeated headers and footers, broken hyphenation and citation markers are stripped, chapters are detected.
- Press play. Your browser's own text-to-speech engine reads the book aloud with live word highlighting, chapter navigation, speed control up to 4× and a sleep timer. Your position saves automatically.
Frequently asked questions
Is Elocute really free?
Yes. The speech is generated by your own browser, so there are no server TTS costs to pass on. No ads, no trial, no account required.
Which formats can I listen to?
PDF, EPUB, Markdown, HTML and plain text up to 80 MB, a link to any of those, or any pasted text: articles, papers, fanfiction, documentation, anything long enough to be worth listening to.
Does my reading position sync?
Progress always saves in your browser. Create a free account and your books and positions follow you to any device.
Which browsers sound best?
Microsoft Edge and Android Chrome ship excellent free neural voices. Desktop Chrome is decent, Safari is good on Apple hardware, Linux browsers fall back to espeak.
Is my book stored anywhere?
Only the extracted text and your reading position are stored, never audio and never the original file. The text is encrypted in your browser before it is sent, with a key derived from your password, so nobody but you can read it. You can delete a book from your shelf at any time. Details on the privacy page.