Listen to web novels with the screen off
Turn off the screen, put the phone in your pocket and keep listening. Reader Friend reads the chapter, opens the next one and keeps going until you stop it or the sleep timer does.
Get it on Google Play Add to Chrome
The problem with browser read-aloud
Built-in read-aloud tools usually stop when the screen locks, and they never open the next chapter. You end up waking the phone every few minutes. For long serials with hundreds of chapters that gets old fast.
How Reader Friend keeps going
- Background playback on Android while the screen is off.
- Auto next chapter on most novel sites, with no per-site parser to configure.
- Story text only: menus, author notes you filter out, comments and ads in the page are skipped.
- Sleep timer and playback speed control.
- On-device voices (Supertonic, Kokoro) that sound natural and run offline, plus system and cloud voices.
Step by step
- Install Reader Friend from Google Play.
- Open the site you read in the in-app browser and go to a chapter.
- Press play, set a sleep timer if you like, then turn the screen off.
- Turn the screen back on to pause, skip or change the voice.
Tips
If names are read strangely, add a pronunciation rule once and it applies to every chapter. If a site shows a notice at the top of each chapter, add a text filter to skip it. On a computer, the Chrome extension does the same in a sidebar while you use other tabs.
FAQ
Why does text-to-speech stop in my browser when the screen is off?
Most browsers pause speech when the screen turns off or the tab goes to the background. On Android, Reader Friend keeps playing in the background, so it keeps going like a music app.
Will it move to the next chapter while the screen is off?
Reader Friend opens the next chapter when the current one ends and keeps reading, so a whole evening of chapters plays without touching the phone.
How do I stop it automatically at night?
Set the sleep timer before you start. Playback stops after the minutes you choose, which is handy when you listen in bed.
Does it work without internet?
With the on-device voices, speech is generated on your phone, so you can listen offline once the chapter page is loaded. Cloud voices need a connection.
Get it on Google Play Add to Chrome
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