Tired of reading on your Windows PC? Here is a superb and free Text-To-Speech (TTS) solution to read text out loud



TIRED EYES

My eyes were getting tired of the screen after extended periods of interacting with the computer screen daily. I was looking for an alternative to improve my experience with using the computer. 

The first option I tried was to use the built in windows narrator. It didn't work quite well because it kept reading every dialog box on the screen. It also kept reading menu items and things I really didn't want to be read out loud.

So I sought to explore other free TTS solutions. But most of the free ones had the limitation of. using only the available windows text-to-speech voices which are largely mechanical and robotic sounding. The Windows Narrator had natural sounding voice but the TTS apps somehow could not access it to use. Instead, they used the default windows. text to speech voices which are not pleasant to listen to.

The TTS app options that had natural sounding voices were commercial. This was quite frustrating that in 2025 there appear to be no easy way to listen to written content on a windows PC in a natural voice. However I did not give up.

ENTER SIMPLE TTS READER

After days of searching I chanced on the solution Simple TTS Reader from a Reddit post. Simple TTS Reader is a nifty little app that simply reads whatever you copy to the clipboard. 

While Simple TTS Reader is great, there is the challenge of reading everything that goes to the clipboard, which may not be desirable. Here are some solutions found to this.

STOPPING THE TTS FROM READING THE CLIPBOARD

Since the TTS reader minimizes to the system tray, It's quite easy to quit it and doesn't distract you.

To improve the ease of accessing it, find the "system tray icons" settings and set it to always show the TTS reader icon.


With the icon always visible in your system tray area, all you need to do is to click on it to display it and quit it. You may also add it to your taskbar for easier launching when it is off.

Note that there is no option to pause the tts app temporarily. It will read everything you copy to the clipboard when it is on.

STOPPING THE TTS READER FROM READING OUT LOUD

If you do not desire to quit the TTS reader, but rather just want it to stop reading something you have copied to the clipboard out loud (e.g. something you just copied to paste elsewhere), you can do the follow:

Proceed to paste what you copied. After pasting what you copied to wherever you copied it to, just highlight one word or an empty space and copy that. The TTS reader will proceed to read the word you have just copied. If you copied an empty space between two texts, the TTS reader will be quiet. If it's one word, it will read just that one word and go quiet.

Note that since Simple TTS Reader uses the Windows Narrator voices, you can select a natural sounding voice. If a natural sounding voice is not one of the options, you can open Windows Narrator which will allow you to download new voices.

I hope you have found this useful.

Link to download Simple TTS Reader

AN ALTERNATIVE TTS READER THAT ALSO WORKS WELL

A seemingly more elegant text to speech (TTS) option which also has natural sounding voices but also a user interface for managing copied text (paste to read), documents and even e-books is NaturalReader. This application has natural sounding voices that work independent of the windows operating system installed voices. It is however a web based app that has been wrapped as a windows software and might require internet connection to work. It has a free and commercial tier with two free natural voices in the free tier. Note that there is no option to automatically read copied text in NaturalReader, you have to paste the text in natural reader to read it out loud.

SPEECH TO TEXT (STT) OR VOICE TYPING

Also checkout LillySpeech or try the Windows Voice Typing (Windows Key + H) if you are looking for a Speech To Text / Voice Typing / Dictation solution

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