Each paragraph lights up as it's read. Transparent overlay on the native Apple Books app — your book looks exactly the same, plus a highlight.
Automatically turns pages when the current page is finished. Continuous listening across chapters with no manual intervention.
Natural AI voices. Auto-detects book language. English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Spanish, and many more.
0.5x to 3x playback speed. Commute, exercise, cook — adjust to your pace.
Free download. Grant Accessibility permission when prompted.
Any book — free ePub, purchased title, or book sample.
The floating Read button appears. Click it — your book reads aloud with paragraph highlighting and auto page-turn.
Apple Books is the default ebook reader on every Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It has a clean interface, syncs across devices, and offers a massive library of free and paid books. But Apple never gave it a proper text-to-speech feature. There's no 'Read Aloud' button anywhere in the app. If you want to listen to a book in Apple Books, Apple's answer is: buy the audiobook version (if it exists) or use VoiceOver.
VoiceOver is Apple's screen reader, designed primarily for users with visual impairments to navigate macOS. It can technically read Apple Books content aloud, but the experience is painful for casual reading: the default voice sounds robotic, there's no visual tracking of which paragraph is being read, you can't click a paragraph to jump there, and VoiceOver often reads UI elements (page numbers, toolbar buttons) mixed in with book content. macOS also has Speak Selection (System Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content), but it requires manually selecting text each time and uses the same system voices.
CastReader for Mac takes a different approach. Instead of fighting VoiceOver's accessibility-first design, it uses macOS Accessibility APIs purely to extract text and character positions from Apple Books. It then generates natural AI audio (Kokoro voices, 40+ languages) and overlays a transparent paragraph highlight on the native app window. The result is a seamless reading experience: you see your book exactly as Apple designed it, plus a gentle highlight that moves with the narration. Auto page-turn means you can listen to an entire book hands-free. Speed control from 0.5x to 3x lets you match your pace. Click any paragraph to jump there instantly.
CastReader works with every book in Apple Books — free ePubs from Project Gutenberg, purchased titles from the Book Store, book samples, and even PDFs you've added to your library. It doesn't modify the book file or bypass any DRM. It reads the same text your eyes see on screen, and it's free to use.
Apple Books itself has no built-in TTS button. macOS has VoiceOver and Speak Selection (System Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content), but these use robotic system voices with no paragraph tracking. CastReader for Mac adds natural AI voices with paragraph highlighting and auto page-turn to Apple Books.
Download CastReader for Mac (free), open any book in Apple Books, and click the floating Read button. CastReader reads aloud with natural voices and highlights each paragraph as it goes. For iPhone/iPad, use iOS Speak Screen (swipe down with two fingers from the top).
Yes. CastReader reads the text displayed on your screen via macOS Accessibility APIs. It works with free ePubs, purchased books, book samples, and PDFs opened in Apple Books.
Yes — CastReader is free to use, no signup. CastReader Pro (optional) adds premium ultra-realistic voices, more listening hours, voice cloning, and AI document analysis. Every book in Apple Books becomes listenable.
Yes. CastReader converts any Apple Books text into spoken audio with natural AI voices. No need to buy the audiobook version separately. Your entire Apple Books library becomes free audiobooks.
CastReader uses Kokoro AI voices — 40+ natural voices across multiple languages. They sound human, not robotic. CastReader auto-detects the book language and selects the appropriate voice.
CastReader for Mac works with Apple Books on macOS only. On iPhone/iPad, you can use iOS Speak Screen (Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Speak Screen, then swipe down with two fingers).
macOS Speak Selection reads selected text with system voices — you must manually select text each time. CastReader reads the entire book automatically, highlights each paragraph, turns pages, and uses natural AI voices. No manual selection needed.
Download the CastReader app to listen to your uploaded documents anywhere.
Hard numbers — not vibes — from authoritative sources
$2.22 billion
US audiobook sales in 2024, up 13% year-over-year (Publishers Weekly / Audio Publishers Association)
Source →51%
of US adults have listened to an audiobook in 2025 — roughly 134 million people (APA Consumer Survey 2025)
Source →2.2 billion
people globally with near- or far-vision impairment (WHO Fact Sheet, 2024). TTS is the primary access path for digital reading content.
Source →78%
of audiobook listeners multitask while listening — commute, chores, exercise (Audiolibrix Great Audiobook Survey, 2024)
Source →27.2 minutes
average single-trip US commute in 2024, up from 26.8 (US Census ACS via Statista). That's nearly an hour each day of audio-only time.
Source →effect size 0.35
measured comprehension lift from TTS for reading-disabled students across 22 studies (Wood, Moxley, Tighe & Wagner, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 2018)
Source →15.5 million
US adults with ADHD per CDC 2024 — about half diagnosed in adulthood (CDC MMWR, October 2024)
Source →Every Chrome Web Store review below is verifiable at the link in each card. We don't hide negative feedback — we answer it within 24 hours.
“This is 1 of the best TTS and its smooth. If this is truly free i'll keep this 100%. Every other TTS says its free but has a secret. They interrupt or they just say better ai voices pay. But i like this voice. I've tried loads and this is 1 of the best ones that actually says free.”
“Works perfectly on vivaldi. One suggestion though. I wish it had a play button appear next to a paragraph when we hover over it. Just like in the case of speechify.”
“Extremely user friendly short keys. Placed forward backward and speed up down as Natural as it could be. Voices are great and smooth. I would recommend it over many hyped products.”
“At the very least it's better than many paid TTS models. Still not as good as ElevenReader or LAP, but maybe the best free model for TTS.”
“So glad I can finally switch voices! The default was fine but I found one I actually enjoy listening to for hours. Small thing, huge difference.”
“Best one i found, user friendly, and great voice over.”
“ChatGPT's long answers are finally listenable. Let it generate while I listen — doubles my productivity. Love the inline button next to each response.”
“I tried using this add-on to listen to an ebook on the O'Reilly learning platform, and it works smoothly. However, it always restarts from the first paragraph whenever I scroll or select a different paragraph. Please consider adding a bookmark or checkpoint feature so users can mark where the reading should begin.”
↪ Founder reply
Replied by CastReader founder Yan Xu within 48 hours: acknowledged the issue, shipped a bookmark feature in the following release. Reviewer's verbatim feedback drove the v1.2 roadmap.
“Need to highlight text and select it.”
“Hard to select text.”
↪ Founder reply
Replied by CastReader founder Yan Xu within 24 hours: apologized, asked which site/browser the issue occurred on, provided a workaround using the keyboard shortcut, and offered direct support at support@castreader.ai.
We re-test, re-write, and ship continuously. Every entry has a real date.
Rewrote landing pages with verbatim Chrome Web Store testimonials, real audiobook market data, and tested-12-extensions methodology. Every claim now has a sourceable link.
Telegram audio streaming now auto-turns pages reliably across Kindle Cloud Reader and Apple Books. Reduces session interruptions by ~70% in internal testing.
Wrote up the OCR pipeline: how CastReader handles Amazon's 184 random font alphabets and 361 unique glyphs per Kindle book. Shared in dev.to.
Native macOS app reads Kindle for Mac with word-level highlighting. Floating player + system-wide hotkeys. No browser needed.
Ranked #10 in Daily, 99 upvotes, 4 community comments shaped the v1.2 roadmap.
Switched from older TTS engines to Kokoro neural voices. User reviews shifted from 'usable but robotic' to 'enjoy listening for hours' (verbatim from review by patrick chiang).
OCR success rate improved from 78% to 89% on English-language Kindle books. Multi-column page detection added for academic PDFs.
I built CastReader because I owned hundreds of Kindle books and couldn't listen to them on my morning runs without buying separate Audible copies. The technical problem — Amazon's Cloud Reader font encryption — turned out to be solvable with OCR. The product problem — making it actually pleasant across phones, desktops, and 40+ languages — took two years of iteration. We're a small team. I answer every Chrome Web Store review personally (see testimonials above — including the 3-star and 1-star ones). If something's broken or missing, email support@castreader.ai.
— Yan Xu, founder
Last reviewed: · CastReader Team — reviewed against 2025 testing data
Free to use. No signup.
★★★★★ 4.7 · Free to start · No login · Optional Pro