Google has introduced a new feature called "Listen to this page" in the Android version of the Chrome browser, allowing webpages to be read aloud with playback controls like pause, adjust reading speed, scrub forward, and skip ahead or back by 10 seconds.
Users can customize the reading experience by changing the voice, language, reading speed, and playback options, with support for languages like English, French, German, Arabic, Hindi, and Spanish.
To access the feature, users need to navigate to a text-heavy webpage, tap the three-dot menu, and select "Listen to this page" below the Translate option.
While Google Assistant can also read webpages aloud and translate them, the new "Listen to this page" feature keeps users within the Chrome browser, unlike the Assistant which redirects users to the Google app.
Similar features have been tested on Chrome desktops, and Safari for iPhone offers a counterpart called "Listen to Page" with comparable abilities using Siri's voice and playback controls.
The new feature was initially observed in the beta version of Chrome, indicating a phased rollout by Google to users.
Sources: The Verge, TechEDT, Daily Guardian
This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.
