We all like to take the occasional—or frequent—break from reading, especially when reading words on screens that aren’t very large; when reading words that are a little too small; or when reading something incredibly mundane, boring, and long. In these situations, if you’ve had difficulty in finding a friend to read for you, just get your Android device to do it.
With Chrome Reader, an app developed by XDA Senior Member mety333, you can get your Android device to read text on web pages very easily. As the name suggests, this will only work if you have the page opened in the Google Chrome browser. But other than that, there aren’t any other pre-requisites needed before you have your own talking Android phone or tablet.
The way it works is simple. Open up the Chrome Reader and tap ‘Activate.’ Then, open up Google Chrome and navigate to the page you want to be read out loud. The reading activates as soon as you highlight text and copy it. If you’ve had enough and the app hasn’t finished yet, just shake the phone and the reading will stop.
Additionally, mety333 has a number of things planned for Chrome Reader in the future, including support for Android 2.3, support for more browsers, and an option to record the the reading as an audio file. The newest version of Chrome Reader has been made exclusive to XDA forum users, and can be downloaded from the original forum post. So if you would like to give this a whirl, head over to the forum thread for more information.