Download CastReader for Mac (.dmg). Grant Accessibility + Screen Recording permission once — Electron apps like VS Code need screen capture for word-level alignment.
Drag-select any text in VS Code — markdown paragraph, function docstring, Copilot chat output, terminal panel line.
A small play button appears next to your selection. One click — audio starts and the highlight glides word-by-word inside the actual VS Code window.
VS Code does not ship a native read-aloud feature on macOS. Extensions exist but none offer word-level highlight on the real editor surface. Install CastReader for Mac (.dmg), grant Accessibility + Screen Recording permission, then select text in VS Code and click the floating ▶. Audio starts and highlight glides across your actual code.
VS Code is an Electron app — its text is not exposed through macOS Accessibility APIs the way native apps like Terminal or Xcode are. CastReader uses Vision-framework OCR on a small region around your selection to align audio to the real pixels. Screen Recording permission is required for that OCR path.
Yes. Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium, and other Electron-based VS Code forks all use the same selection + clipboard mechanism, so CastReader handles them identically. See the dedicated pages for Cursor and Windsurf for fork-specific notes.
Yes. Select any visible text in the Copilot Chat panel or any chat-style AI output and click ▶. For inline suggestions (ghost text), accept the completion first, then select and listen.
Works. CastReader reads whatever VS Code is currently rendering on your Mac screen, regardless of whether the files live locally or on a remote host. The underlying storage does not matter.
CastReader reads the literal characters in your selection. For a function signature it will speak 'open paren, arg, comma, arg, close paren'. Most users select prose — markdown, comments, chat output — not raw code, but it is your call.
Zed uses a custom text renderer without AX exposure — not currently supported. Sublime Text uses system text views and works via the AX path. Neovim in Terminal.app is fully supported through the terminal page.
Yes. CastReader auto-detects CJK text and switches to native Mandarin, Japanese, or Korean voices. Mixed-language selections switch voice at sentence boundaries.
Yes — CastReader is free to use, no signup. Download the .dmg and start reading. CastReader Pro (optional) adds premium ultra-realistic voices, more listening hours, voice cloning, and AI document analysis.
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
Install once. Select any text in VS Code. Click ▶. Listen.
★★★★★ 4.7 · Free to start · No login · Optional Pro