MurMur 🗣️ - Free AI Text to Speech (TTS)

MurMur 🗣️ - Free AI Text to Speech (TTS) by Regulus Labs Transform any webpage into an immersive listening experience. MurMur is a free Chrome extension that reads articles, blogs, documentation, Google Docs, and any web content aloud with real-time word-by-word highlighting — so you can follow along as you listen. ## Why MurMur? Reading long articles, research papers, or documentation can be exhausting. MurMur lets you sit back and listen while every word is highlighted in real time, keeping your eyes and ears in sync. Whether you're multitasking, learning a new language, proofreading your own writing, or simply prefer listening over reading — MurMur turns the entire web into your personal audiobook. ## Features ### Read Any Page Aloud MurMur works on virtually any webpage. Click the toolbar icon or press **Alt+Shift+R** and MurMur instantly extracts the article content, strips away ads and navigation clutter, and begins reading. It works on: ### Real-Time Word Highlighting Every word is highlighted as it's spoken. The current word gets a bright yellow highlight and the active paragraph is subtly marked, so you always know exactly where the reader is. Past paragraphs fade slightly to give you a clear sense of progress. ### Two Reading Modes **Overlay Mode** — Opens a clean, distraction-free reader view on top of the page. The article is reformatted in a comfortable reading layout with generous margins, clean typography, and a dark background overlay. Perfect for focused reading sessions. **Inline Mode** — Highlights words directly on the original page without changing the layout. The page stays exactly as it is and MurMur annotates words in place as they're spoken. Great for following along with the original formatting, images, and context. Switch between modes instantly from the control panel — your preference is saved automatically. ### Google Docs Support MurMur is one of the few text-to-speech extensions that works with Google Docs. It uses the canvas annotation API to extract text directly from the document, including: - Full document text extraction from SVG annotation layers - Legacy HTML renderer support for older document formats - Document title detection - Automatic annotation layer initialization at page load Just open any Google Doc and click MurMur — it handles the rest. ### Multiple Voices and Languages MurMur supports a wide range of voices and languages through two TTS engines: **Chrome Built-in Voices** - English (US and UK) — Google high-quality voices - Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch - Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese), Japanese, Korean - Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Polish, and many more - All voices available through Chrome's native TTS engine **Piper AI Voices (Local)** - Hundreds of neural network voices powered by Piper TTS - Runs entirely in your browser — no data sent to external servers - Natural-sounding AI voices for dozens of languages - Available in multiple quality levels (low, medium, high) - Includes voices for less common languages like Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Georgian, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kazakh, Luxembourgish, Nepali, Norwegian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swahili, Swedish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and more **Automatic Language Detection** MurMur automatically detects the language of the page using: 1. The HTML `lang` attribute 2. Content-Language meta tags 3. Trigram-based text analysis for 8 languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Bulgarian) The voice selector automatically filters to show relevant voices for the detected language. ### Adjustable Speed Without Pitch Change Control the reading speed from 0.5x to 3x using the slider or keyboard shortcuts: - **Arrow Up** — Increase speed by 0.25x - **Arrow Down** — Decrease speed by 0.25x For Chrome voices, the rate is applied directly to the TTS engine. For Piper AI voices, MurMur adjusts the `length_scale` parameter at synthesis time, which changes the speech duration without altering the pitch. This means faster playback sounds natural — not like a chipmunk. ### Sentence Chunking Long paragraphs are automatically split into sentence-sized chunks (up to 150 characters) before synthesis. This dramatically improves responsiveness — you hear the first sentence almost immediately while subsequent sentences are prepared in the background. The chunker: - Splits on sentence boundaries (`.` `!` `?`) - Protects abbreviations (Dr., Mr., Mrs., Prof., etc.) from false splits - Preserves decimal numbers and ellipses - Merges short sentences together for natural pacing - Falls back to clause splitting (on `,` `;` `:` `—`) for very long sentences ### Custom Pronunciation Rules (See-Say) MurMur includes 18 built-in pronunciation rules and lets you add your own: **Built-in rules include:** - Dr. → Doctor, Mr. → Mister, Mrs. → Missus, Ms. → Miss - Citation brackets [1], [2] etc. → skipped - Common units: km/h, mph, kg, lbs, ft, oz, etc. - Mathematical symbols and abbreviations **Custom rules:** - Add your own see → say substitutions from the Pronunciation panel - Rules are synced across devices via Chrome storage - Supports whole-word matching and regular expressions - The original text is always displayed unchanged — only the spoken version is substituted - Highlight positions are correctly remapped through an offset map so highlighting stays accurate even after text substitution ### Keyboard Shortcuts Full keyboard control without touching the mouse: | Key | Action | |-----|--------| | **Space** | Play / Pause | | **Left Arrow** | Previous paragraph | | **Right Arrow** | Next paragraph | | **Up Arrow** | Increase speed | | **Down Arrow** | Decrease speed | | **Escape** | Close MurMur | | **Alt+Shift+R** | Toggle MurMur on/off | Keyboard shortcuts are automatically disabled when you're typing in input fields, textareas, select dropdowns, or contentEditable elements. ### Smart Tab Management Only one inst…