How to have an EPUB book read aloud on a computer

Short answer: several free readers can read an EPUB aloud with text-to-speech. In Chrome, Quire EPUB Reader reads with the voices installed on your computer and turns the pages as it goes. calibre’s viewer and Thorium do the same as desktop apps, and on a Mac, Apple Books can speak any page.

This is a synthetic voice reading the text, not a narrated audiobook.

Updated 15 October 2026. Quire details are from its source code and test suite; calibre, Thorium and Apple Books details follow their own documentation.

Read aloud in Chrome with Quire EPUB Reader

Quire is our extension. Read aloud is built in and free.

Open the book where you want to start
Open the book in Quire EPUB Reader and go to the page you want to hear.
Start read aloud
Press R or click the speaker button. Reading starts at the first paragraph on screen.
Follow along
The paragraph being read is highlighted, pages turn by themselves, and reading carries on into the next chapter.
Set the speed and voice
The player has a speed menu from 0.8× to 2×, a voice menu, and pause and stop buttons. Your choices are remembered.

Which voices it uses

Quire only uses voices installed on your computer. Browsers can also offer online voices, and Quire deliberately skips those, so the text of your book isn’t sent anywhere to be spoken. The sound therefore depends on the voices Windows, macOS or ChromeOS provides. If no local voice is installed, Quire says “No local read-aloud voices are available. Install a system voice, then try again.” You can add voices in your system’s speech or accessibility settings.

Limits: there’s no way to save the speech as an audio file, and Quire hasn’t yet been tested with screen readers. Our automated tests check that the player starts and highlights the right paragraph; how a voice sounds is down to your system.

calibre’s e-book viewer

calibre’s manual says its viewer “can read book text aloud”, highlighting the current word or sentence. It can use the Piper neural speech engine or your operating system’s voices; change the engine and voice with the gear icon in the read-aloud controls. You can also add a Read aloud button to the bar that appears when you select text, to hear just a passage.

Thorium Reader

Thorium, free for Windows, macOS and Linux, has read aloud. It also supports Media Overlays: some EPUBs include a recorded narration synchronized with the text, and Thorium plays it in step with the words on the page. EDRLab says Thorium works with screen readers including NVDA and JAWS on Windows and VoiceOver on a Mac, so it is the strongest choice if you rely on assistive technology.

Apple Books on a Mac

For books that have Apple’s Read Aloud feature, click the Play button in the toolbar and choose how pages turn from the menu beside it.
For any book, go to the page and choose Edit › Speech › Start Speaking. This uses the Mac’s own voices.

Choosing one

Hands-free listening to a whole book in the browser: Quire, which keeps turning pages and chapters for you.
A neural voice that runs on your own computer: calibre with its Piper engine.
Books with built-in narration, or a screen reader: Thorium.
A quick listen on a Mac with nothing to install: Apple Books.

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