Serious Notification - Speak Alerts Aloud

Serious Notification speaks your Chrome browser notifications aloud so you never break focus to check what came in. Most notifications are not worth your attention. This extension lets you set keywords — type "urgent, meeting, payment, deadline" and only notifications containing those words get spoken aloud. Everything else stays silent. Your browser becomes a voice notification reader that filters the noise and surfaces what actually matters. Built for people who do focused, heads-down work. Developers in the middle of a build. Writers in Pomodoro mode. Designers in a deep creative session. Remote workers on video calls. Instead of glancing at the screen every time an alert arrives, you keep your eyes and your attention where they belong. The extension reads the notification aloud only when something genuinely needs you. HOW IT WORKS 1. Install the extension — no account required, no broad-access warning at install 2. Open the popup and click "Turn on to hear alerts" — Chrome will ask for site access once, in context, after you understand what the extension does 3. Type your keywords (urgent, calendar, payment, boss, deadline — whatever counts for you) 4. Adjust voice speed to your preference 5. Keep working 6. When a browser notification arrives that matches your keyword, it is read aloud automatically 7. Your focus stays intact. Your important alerts never go missed. Leave the keyword field empty to hear every notification aloud. Add keywords to filter down to only the ones that matter. FEATURES — Speaks Chrome browser notifications aloud using built-in text-to-speech (no API, no cost, works offline) — No broad-access warning at install — site access is requested in context, only when you click "Turn on to hear alerts" — Keyword filter: hear only notifications that match your words — Works with no keywords set: speaks all notifications aloud by default — Scheduled quiet hours — set active hours so the extension stays silent at night or on weekends (e.g. 9 AM to 6 PM only) — Do Not Disturb — pause all voice alerts for 30 minutes with one tap, auto-resumes — Per-site rules — only speak notifications from specific sites like Slack or Calendar, ignore everything else — Stop speaking instantly — silence mid-speech with one tap if a notification catches you off guard — Notification history — see the last 10 notifications that were spoken — Hide popup for filtered alerts — optional toggle to suppress native popups for alerts that do not match your keywords — Adjustable voice speed from 0.5x to 2x — On/Off toggle to pause voice alerts instantly — Works across all websites that send browser notifications — access is granted once through the popup — Test Voice button so you hear it immediately after setup — No account, no login, no subscription required — Fully local: nothing leaves your browser, your keywords and settings never go anywhere WHO THIS IS FOR Developers Stay in the zone during builds and code reviews. Set keywords like "failed", "error", "urgent" and hear only the alerts that actually need you — without looking away from your editor or breaking a train of thought. Remote workers On a call and cannot look at the screen? Keyword-filtered voice alerts let you catch critical messages without interrupting your conversation. No tab switching, no checking. Writers, students, and deep focus workers Pomodoro sessions, study blocks, deadline sprints. You silence your environment but you still cannot miss a payment notification or a meeting reminder. The extension reads it to you. Multi-screen and multi-tab workers Stop hunting through a dozen tabs to find the notification that just arrived. You heard it. You know exactly what it said. Accessibility A simple, hands-free voice notification reader for anyone who benefits from spoken browser alerts without a full screen reader. PRIVACY Serious Notification does not collect, store, or transmit any data. Your keywords and settings are saved locally using Chrome's built-in storage API and never leave your device. No analytics. No tracking. No servers. No third-party services of any kind. PERMISSIONS At install, this extension requests two permissions: Chrome Storage — saves your keyword list, voice speed, and on/off preferences locally on your device. Nothing is synced or transmitted. Scripting — required to register content scripts at runtime after you grant site access. This permission alone cannot read, access, or modify any webpage. It only becomes active after you explicitly click "Turn on to hear alerts" in the popup. When you click "Turn on", Chrome shows its native permission dialog asking for access to all websites. This is the only moment broad access is requested — after you have already opened the extension and chosen to enable it, not as a warning before you even try it. Once granted, the extension intercepts browser notifications before they fire, checks them against your keywords, and speaks the ones that match. This requires page-level access because the browser Notification API lives on the window object and must be reached from within the page context. It does not read your email, does not access your browsing history, and does not transmit anything outside your browser.