AI Runs on your device
Listen to your text
Paste an article, an essay or notes and have it read aloud with the voices built into your device, or with Kokoro, a natural AI voice that runs right in your browser.
Text to speech
Text never leaves your device · Free, no sign-up · No length limit
How to read text aloud
- Type, paste or open your text.
- Choose your browser's voices, or the AI voice and download it once.
- Pick a voice and a speed, then select Play, or download the audio as a WAV file.
An AI voice on your device
Kokoro is an open-source text-to-speech model with 82 million parameters that sounds close to a person reading. Scissor Text downloads it once from its own server, about 115 MB, and runs it in your browser with WebAssembly, so your text is never sent to a speech service.
Your device's own voices
The browser voices come from your operating system. Safari on Apple devices, Edge on Windows and Chrome on Android include natural-sounding voices for many languages, and they start instantly with nothing to download.
Questions about Text to speech
Is my text uploaded?
No. Kokoro runs in your browser tab, and the browser voices are produced by your device. Some browsers also offer online voices, which they mark as such; the page itself never sends your text anywhere.
Can I download the audio?
Yes, with Kokoro: select Download WAV to save the whole text as an audio file. Browsers do not let a web page record their built-in voices.
How big is the Kokoro download, and is it kept?
About 115 MB, downloaded once from text.scissor.studio. Your browser keeps it, so next time it loads in seconds and works offline. You can remove it at any time from the tool.
Which languages does Kokoro speak?
English, with American and British voices. For other languages, use the browser voices.