On your phone, WeRead (微信读书) can play books aloud. At your computer, weread.qq.com goes silent — no read-aloud button, and text drawn on canvas that ordinary TTS extensions can't even see. CastReader fixes both: it extracts the real chapter text and reads it aloud in natural AI voices.
Canvas rendering breaks every other read-aloud extension — here's how this one gets through
WeRead's mobile app has a listening mode; open weread.qq.com at your desk and it's simply gone. CastReader adds the missing read-aloud layer right in your browser.
WeRead draws book text onto an HTML canvas instead of putting it in the DOM. TTS extensions that scan the page for text open a chapter and find nothing to read.
A specialized main-world content script intercepts WeRead's chapter-data requests and captures the text before it's painted. No OCR, no misread characters — clean, accurate paragraphs every time.
Highlight markers sit on top of WeRead's canvas, so the paragraph being read lights up. Drifted off? One glance finds your place — click any paragraph to jump there.
Chinese books get a natural Mandarin voice; open an English title and the voice follows automatically. 40+ languages, no manual switching, no robotic word-by-word narration.
Send to Phone hands playback to the CastReader iOS or Android app with one click, and the chapter keeps going from the same spot.
Standard voices are free with no signup. CastReader Pro adds premium ultra-realistic voices, more listening hours, voice cloning and AI document analysis.
Add the free extension to Chrome or Edge. No CastReader account needed.
Log in to WeRead as usual and open any chapter from your shelf.
Click the CastReader icon and playback starts, with the current paragraph highlighted right on the canvas.
Pause, set 0.5×–2× speed, switch voices — or send playback to your phone and keep going.
WeRead (微信读书) is Tencent's reading app, and on a phone it's a complete experience — including listening. On a computer, the story changes: the web reader at weread.qq.com shows your shelf and your progress, but offers no read-aloud at all. After a workday of staring at screens, the place you'd most like to rest your eyes is the place WeRead stays silent.
There's a technical reason no ordinary TTS extension can step in. WeRead's web reader paints book text onto an HTML canvas — the words never exist in the DOM as selectable text. Extensions that work by scanning the page or reading your selection open a chapter and see, effectively, a picture. CastReader takes a different route: a main-world content script intercepts the chapter-data requests and captures the real text before it's drawn. No OCR step, no misread characters, paragraphs in clean reading order.
In use, it behaves like the listening mode the web version never shipped. The current paragraph is highlighted by an overlay on top of the canvas, so your eyes can follow or wander; click any paragraph to replay an argument you half-heard. The floating player handles pause, voice switching and 0.5×–2× speed — nonfiction at 1.5× turns an evening chapter backlog into one sitting. Leaving the desk? Send to Phone hands the same spot to the CastReader app for the commute.
The honest boundaries: CastReader works with books you can open in the web reader; the occasional app-only title stays out of reach. You log in yourself, scanning with WeChat as always — CastReader never sees or touches your account. It sends only the chapter text you're reading to the voice API for audio, doesn't store chapters, and doesn't track what you read.
Getting started is free: install the extension, open a book, and standard voices work with no signup. If you start listening through whole books, CastReader Pro unlocks premium ultra-realistic voices and more listening hours.
Everything about listening to WeRead with CastReader
WeRead (微信读书) renders book text on HTML canvas instead of putting it in the DOM. Standard TTS extensions search the DOM and find nothing. CastReader intercepts the chapter data before canvas rendering.
A specialized main-world content script intercepts WeRead's fetch requests for chapter data, capturing the text before it's drawn to canvas — clean and accurate, with no OCR involved.
No. The mobile app has a listening feature, but the web reader at weread.qq.com ships no read-aloud at all — that's exactly the gap CastReader fills in the browser.
It's not a replacement for the app — it's the equivalent the web version is missing. You get read-aloud at your computer, with the same natural AI voices CastReader uses on every site.
Yes. CastReader overlays positioned highlight elements on top of the canvas. Each paragraph lights up as it's read, and clicking any paragraph jumps playback there.
Any book you can open on the web version (weread.qq.com) works, whatever the genre. Mobile-app-only titles can't be opened on the web, so they stay out of reach.
You log in to weread.qq.com yourself, with the usual WeChat scan. CastReader needs no account of its own and never accesses your WeRead or WeChat login — it only processes the chapter text on screen.
Yes. The floating player handles pause, 0.5×–2× speed, and voice switching — with multiple natural Chinese voices to choose from.
Yes — Send to Phone hands playback to the CastReader iOS or Android app, continuing from the same paragraph.
Long chapters and long books are fine. Free-tier listening uses standard voices; if you listen for hours every day, CastReader Pro adds more listening time and premium ultra-realistic voices.
Yes — CastReader is free to start, with standard voices and no signup. CastReader Pro (optional) adds premium ultra-realistic voices, more listening hours, voice cloning, and AI document analysis.
Yes. CastReader is available on both Chrome and Edge.
40+ languages with natural AI voices. Chinese books get natural Mandarin, and if you open an English title the voice matches automatically.
Only the extracted chapter text is sent to our voice API for audio generation. CastReader doesn't store your chapters and doesn't track what you read.
Troubleshooting guide for when playback won't start
Hand any desktop listening session to your phone
Web novels on 起点中文网, read aloud
Read Kindle Cloud Reader books aloud with OCR decoding
Press Quickread and have the page explained in your language — key points marked by a moving pen
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 start, no signup — standard voices included, CastReader Pro for premium ultra-realistic voices and more listening hours. Install, open a chapter, press play.
★★★★★ 4.7 · Free to start · No login · Optional Pro