How to have anything on your screen read aloud, in your language
Windows can already read English to you, free, and it is good at it.
So this page is mostly about the three cases where that stops working, and what
to do about them.
Try the free tools first
If you are reading an English article in a browser, Microsoft Edge has Read
Aloud built in, and it is genuinely good. Word has one too. Windows has Narrator.
None of them costs anything, and for English text in a browser or a Word document
you do not need us.
People go looking for something else when one of three things happens.
Where the built-in readers stop
Your language is not on the list. The natural sounding
voices cover a familiar handful. If you want Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi or
Swahili, you either get nothing or you get something you cannot listen to for
more than a minute.
The text is a picture. A scan, a photo of a page, a
screenshot, a PDF that will not let you select anything. Read Aloud works on
selectable text, so when there is none, there is nothing for it to read.
It is not in a browser or Word. A chat window, a form, an
error message, a desktop app, a game. The reader lives inside one program and
the thing you want read is in another.
What Beepsme does instead
It looks at your screen rather than at a document. That one difference is what
removes all three problems at once: it does not care whether the words are text or
pixels, or which program they are in. It pulls out the actual reading material and
skips the navigation bars, menus and adverts around it.
Three things you can ask for, in any of 41 languages:
"Read this page to me."reads what is on screen, out loud
"Read this to me in Urdu."an English page, spoken in Urdu
"Summarize this in Urdu."the gist, not the whole article
یہ صفحہ پڑھ کر سناؤthe same request, spoken in Urdu
Anything you can copy works too. Copy a paragraph from anywhere and say
"read the clipboard", which is the quickest route when the page is busy.
It stops when you speak
This sounds small and it is the difference between a reader you tolerate and one
you actually use. You do not have to find a stop button. Start talking and it stops,
because being interrupted is the normal way a person is read to.
What it does not do
It reads what is visible. Not the whole file. It reads the
page you are looking at, and then you scroll. For a long PDF that means working
through it screen by screen.
A bad scan is still a bad scan. Faint, skewed or very small
print can be misread, and it will read the mistake confidently.
It needs an internet connection. The voices that are worth
listening to run in the cloud. There is no offline mode today.
Windows 10 and 11 only at the moment.
It is a synthetic voice. Good enough for a long article,
not a substitute for a human narrator reading a novel.
Common questions
Can I get a PDF read aloud in Urdu or Hindi on Windows?
Yes. Beepsme reads what is on your screen out loud in 41 languages, including Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and Swahili. The built-in Windows and Edge readers cover a much smaller list, which is the usual reason people go looking for something else.
Can it read a scanned page or a photo of a page?
Yes, and this is the case the built-in readers cannot do at all. Read Aloud needs selectable text. Beepsme looks at the screen instead, so a scan, a photo of a book, a screenshot or a locked PDF all work the same way.
Can it read an English article to me in my own language?
Yes. Ask for it in the language you want and it translates before it speaks, so an English page comes back in Urdu. You can also ask for a summary instead of the whole thing, which is usually what you want for a long article.
How do I make it stop reading?
Just talk. It stops the moment you speak, anywhere in the app, so you do not need to find a button. Say stop to end it, or ask a question and it answers that instead.
Does it read the whole document or only what I can see?
Only what is visible on screen. It reads the page you are looking at, then you scroll and ask again. This is a real limit and worth knowing before you point it at a hundred page PDF.
See how Beepsme worksBeepsme opens to users shortly. Windows 10 and 11, with a
three day free trial and no card at the start.