ReadBeam - Read Aloud & Focus Reading with TTS

ReadBeam is a focus-first text-to-speech reader. Select text on any webpage and listen while a soft dim overlay keeps the sentence you are on lit and the rest of the page out of the way — no flashing highlights, no clutter. ★ FOCUS MODE — DIMS THE PAGE AROUND THE CURRENT SENTENCE Unlike other TTS readers that just read aloud, ReadBeam dims everything on the page except the sentence currently being spoken. Your eyes stop skimming. You stop checking tabs. You actually finish the article. ★ RESUME WHERE YOU LEFT OFF Close the tab, come back tomorrow. The popup shows how far you got and picks the reading back up at that sentence. If the page has changed since, ReadBeam says so instead of guessing. ★ EXPLAIN THIS — YOUR OWN API KEY, WORD OR SENTENCE Hit a word or a sentence you don't know? ExplainThis defines it in place, without leaving the page. Bring your own OpenAI or OpenRouter key — the request goes straight from your browser to the provider, and never passes through our servers. ★ FOCUS SCORE — EVERY SESSION GETS A 0-100 SCORE When you stop reading, ReadBeam calculates a Focus Score based on duration, drifts (when your eyes leave the page), and recoveries. Build a daily streak by hitting your goal. It turns "I should read more" into a habit you can measure. ★ READING INSIGHTS — TRACK YOUR FOCUS OVER TIME Open the popup to see today's focus time, a 7-day bar chart, your current streak, and recent sessions. All data stays on your device — no account, no cloud, no tracking. ★ SHARE CARD — EXPORT YOUR FOCUS SCORE AS PNG Finished a great reading session? Export a clean PNG of your Focus Score to share with friends, study groups, or your accountability buddy. ★ WORKS EVERYWHERE — ARTICLES, WIKIPEDIA, DOCS, BLOGS, LONG-FORM POSTS ReadBeam runs on any webpage with selectable text, and works offline in 40+ languages using your browser's built-in voices. Want a premium voice? Connect your own OpenAI, ElevenLabs or Deepgram key. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ HOW IT WORKS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1. Select any text on a webpage (a sentence, a paragraph, or the whole article). 2. Hover the purple dot that appears near your selection. 3. Click "Read from here" or "Read selection". 4. ReadBeam starts reading. The page dims around the current sentence. 5. Use the floating toolbar to pause, skip sentences, or stop. 6. When you stop, your Focus Score and session summary appear. 7. Next time you open the page, the popup offers to continue from where you stopped. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • Alt+P — Play / Pause • Alt+, — Previous sentence • Alt+. — Next sentence • Alt+E — Explain the current sentence • Alt+I — Save a thought to revisit later • Esc — Stop reading ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHO IT'S FOR ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • Deep readers who want to rebuild attention in an age of infinite scroll • Students and researchers plowing through long articles, papers, and Wikipedia rabbit holes • People with ADHD who lose focus mid-article and want a gentle nudge back • Readers with dyslexia or visual fatigue who prefer listening while their eyes rest • Language learners practicing pronunciation and reading comprehension • Busy professionals catching up on newsletters, blogs, and documentation during commutes ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FAQ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Q: Do I need to create an account? A: No. ReadBeam works the moment you install it. No login, no email, no cloud sync. Q: Is it free? A: Yes. TTS reading, Focus Mode, Focus Score, Insights and Share Card are all free, with no daily limit. Coaching is the only paid feature — it's optional, and everything above stays free without it. Q: What languages are supported? A: Any language your browser has a voice for. Chrome ships with voices for 40+ languages on Windows, macOS, and Chrome OS. Pick your preferred voice in the popup settings. Q: Can I use better voices than the built-in ones? A: Yes, optionally. Connect your own OpenAI, ElevenLabs or Deepgram key and the request goes directly from your browser to that provider. We are not in the path. Q: Does it work on PDFs? A: ReadBeam works on any webpage with selectable text, including HTML-based PDF viewers and Google Docs. Native PDF files opened in Chrome's built-in viewer may need "Open with Google Docs" first. Q: Is my reading data sent anywhere? A: No. Every session, score, and streak is stored locally in your browser via chrome.storage. It never leaves your device. Clear your browser data and it's gone. Q: Does it read the whole page automatically? A: No — you select what you want to read. ReadBeam never auto-scans or auto-reads a page. You stay in control. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PRIVACY ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ReadBeam is built privacy-first: • No accounts, no login, no email collection • No analytics SDK, no tracking scripts, no cookies, no cross-site identifier • All reading, attention and coach data stays in chrome.storage.local on your device • Reading aloud uses your browser's built-in voices and happens entirely on your machine • You can optionally connect your own API key for cloud voices or Explain — those requests go straight from your browser to the provider you picked (OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Deepgram or OpenRouter) and never pass through our servers • Our own server is used for exactly three things: verifying a Pro license, counting plays of a fixed-text voice demo, and — only if you turn it on in Settings — one anonymous weekly report of counts. It never receives anything you read. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ReadBeam is open about what it is: a quiet reading companion. It shows up when you need to focus, disappears when you don't. No banners, no popups, no upsells. Just you and the words.