Read Aloud

This program does what is says for the most part. Import a file, or copy text from a webpage and you **can **have it read to you. But only in Microsoft voices.

The "clipboard monitor" is a good feature, and asks you if you'd like the copied text read now, or ignored. If you copy a URL, ReadAloud opens the webpage, copies the text from it, then starts reading the text.

There is a question that asks "How do I add more voices", but when clicked it goes to a webpage that explains how to change the **language **in WIn 10. I don't want to change the language, all I want to do is use a better-sounding voice that I bought elsewhere.

There's lots of space at the top to add tabs, but you need to go into settings for stuff that could easily be on that top bar instead. I went into overlay mode - which actually reduces the program page size to a small moveable window - and the title overlayed the top line of the text. The title vanishes after a few seconds, but I was surprised at that. Why not have the program page clear, by putting the title bar outside the page? The moveable window is also "always on top", which is - I'm guessing -why it's called an overlay.

The program is fairly straightforward to use, but it feels dated, and is less helpful than it might be. For example, hovering over icons does not produce a tooltip to tell you what the icon is for. If you click on the little triple bar on the top left, the icon names become revealed to the right of the icons. Click on the triple line bar to the top right (yes there's one there too!) and the recycling bin toggles on and off...why?

To add to the confusion, ReadAloud comes from the Microsoft Store, but there is also an add-on (which I haven't tested yet) called "Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader" by Hai Phan. That one states it allows additional voices, for a premium.

Because it is easy to use, looks very simple, can read PDF EPUB TXT and DOCX formats and it works well on windows.