Chrome’s Reading Mode will soon let you listen to articles instead of just reading them

Chrome recently switched up its in-development Reading Mode by nixing a super useful toolbar in favor of stuffing all of its options for text, spacing and more into a settings icon. Additionally, unlike Microsoft Edge’s Reading Mode, Chrome’s is stuffed into the right hand sidebar, and doesn’t take over your entire browser window. This means you have to read the web page you’re on in a sliver of your window unless you resize it.

While less than appealing even before its release, I do have some good news to deliver. Chrome is in the process of adding a read-aloud option for you (Currently in Canary). This will allow you to convert articles you visit into audio for listening and multitasking (Great find, Leopeva64!).

If you’re in Canary, you’ll now see a ‘Play’ button at the top center of the window and tapping it will queue up a text-to-speech version of the content. Having this feature added is likely why all of the reading options were shoved into a dark corner of the side bar, but that’s just my guess since it takes up the same screen space that the toolbar previously did.

If you prefer to hear things read to you instead of straining your eyes or just like to do multiple things simultaneously, there are currently Chrome extensions that let you do exactly this. However, Google implementing it natively feels like the right choice, especially as extensions become less and less trustworthy.