Text to speech for ADHD: hear it, keep your place
Speakybara reads the text on your screen aloud and shows which sentence is playing, so a distraction does not cost you your place.
The email is forty lines long and it is half past four. Press the hotkey, drag a frame around the text and press Enter — it starts reading, and the read-along window keeps pointing at the sentence. Step away, come back, click a sentence, and carry on.
Why is a long text so hard to get through with ADHD?
Reading a page asks for one long, unbroken stretch of attention, and that is the part that slips. Hearing a sentence while you also see it gives your attention two things to hold on to instead of one.
That moves the effort from decoding the letters to understanding what they say. It is not about reading faster, and it is not a treatment: Speakybara does not diagnose anything. It reads text aloud, and for a lot of people that makes a long document easier to stay with.
It runs from the tray or the menu bar and shows nothing on your screen until you ask it to, so nobody at the next desk sees it running.
- The forty-line email at half past four
- The PDF that is due tomorrow morning
- The chat thread you half-read at lunch and never went back to
How do you get Speakybara to read something aloud?
Press the hotkey, drag a frame around the text in any window, and press Enter: it starts reading, with nothing to choose first. Would you rather skip the Enter? Turn off Frame stays after dragging under Settings › Capture, and it starts the moment you let go.
Speakybara is a free app for Windows and Mac that turns any part of your screen into text you can copy or listen to: press a hotkey, drag a frame, done.
Because it reads the screen and not the program, it works on a scanned PDF, an image in an email, a screenshot a colleague pasted in chat, a dashboard, a remote desktop window — anything you can see.
- One hotkey: frame the text, press Enter, and it reads
- Works in any program, because it reads the screen
- Sits in the tray or the menu bar between uses, out of the way
What happens when your attention drifts mid-sentence?
The read-along window keeps showing which sentence is playing, so when you look back you are not hunting for your place. Click any sentence in it and reading continues from there.
You choose how much you see while it reads: the full window with the sentence highlighted and the words turning white as they are said, a small compact window in a corner, one subtitle bar along the edge of the screen, or audio only with nothing shown at all.
Speed runs from 0.8x to 1.75x, and a change takes effect mid-sentence, so slowing down for a dense paragraph does not mean waiting for the next one to catch up.
- Full window with the sentence highlighted
- Compact window in a corner of the screen
- Subtitle bar, like captions on a film
- Audio only, nothing shown on screen
Can it explain or summarise a text instead of just reading it?
Yes. Frame the text and choose explain or summarise, and you get the simpler version or the short version, read back to you the same way.
Summarize gives you the shape of a long report before you commit to reading all of it. Explain rewrites a dense paragraph in plainer words. Translate and improve writing sit in the same menu.
These run on your own AI key, or on a local model you install and run yourself, such as LM Studio or Ollama. None of it is needed to have text read aloud.
- Explain — plainer words for a dense paragraph
- Summarize — the gist before you read the rest
- Your own key, or a local model on your own machine
Is this a screen reader, or a medical tool?
Neither. Speakybara is a read-aloud tool: it reads the piece of screen you point it at, on request, and it does not diagnose or treat anything.
NVDA, Windows Narrator and VoiceOver on the Mac drive the whole computer by voice, for people who are blind. Speakybara sits next to them for the times you want one specific piece of text read back; it does not replace them.
If you need more than reading aloud — spelling help, study tools, a full literacy suite — Read&Write, Kurzweil and ClaroRead do more than Speakybara, and are worth a look.
- A companion to NVDA and Narrator, not a replacement
- No diagnosis, no treatment claim
- If your employer or school can arrange reading support, it is worth asking
Where does my text go, and what does it cost?
Recognition happens on your own computer, and Speakybara is free to download and use. Text only leaves your machine if you pick an online voice or an online AI, and by default the image stays on it.
By default, Speakybara sends your screen nowhere. The capture is recognised by the text recognition already built into Windows or macOS, on your own computer. Choose an online voice and the sentences go to the service behind that voice, such as Microsoft or Google, to be spoken; the image does not. Explain and summarise with an online AI send the text to that AI. The local voice (Piper) works fully offline. The one exception is off unless you switch it on: with Explanations may look at your screen and an online AI, asking for an explanation of a step sends a picture of your screen to that AI.
Speakybara does keep a list of what you have read, as text, on your own computer, with a small preview image of each capture, so you can find a passage again later. You can switch the history off in the settings, and the preview image off on its own.
Free means the local Piper voices, which come with the app on Windows and are a one-time download on a Mac, the voices built into Windows or macOS, the free Microsoft Edge voices on Windows, or Google's voices with your own key. Speakybara Complete is the same app for a yearly fee: we run the Google voices for you, so there is no Google Cloud project or billing to set up yourself. Nothing is locked or watermarked in the free version.
- Free — local Piper voices, offline, no account
- Free — Google or Microsoft voices with your own key
- Speakybara Complete — we run the Google voices for you
How to listen to a long text instead of pushing through it
- Select — press the hotkey and drag a frame around the text, in any window.
- Listen — press Enter and it starts reading; the read-along window shows the sentence.
- Continue — after a break, click the sentence you left and carry on from there.
FAQ
Many people find that hearing and seeing the same sentence makes it easier to stay with a long text, because attention has two things to hold on to instead of one. That is a plain reading-and-working effect, not a medical or therapeutic claim.
No. NVDA, Windows Narrator and VoiceOver on the Mac drive the whole computer by voice, for people who are blind. Speakybara is a read-aloud tool: you point it at a piece of the screen and that gets read. It works alongside a screen reader rather than instead of one.
Yes to all three, plus things copy and paste cannot reach: a scanned page, a screenshot, the subtitle of a paused video, a remote desktop window. If it is visible on your screen, you can frame it.
Yes. Downloading and using it costs nothing, with the local Piper voices or with Google or Microsoft voices on your own key. Speakybara Complete is an optional yearly plan where we run the Google voices for you; the app itself is the same.
Recognition happens on your own computer, with the text recognition already built into Windows or macOS, and the capture is then discarded; only a small preview stays behind in your history. If you choose an online voice, such as Microsoft's or Google's, only the sentences are sent to be spoken, and an online AI gets the text you ask it about; by default the image is not sent anywhere. A local Piper voice without an online AI keeps everything on your machine, and the history Speakybara keeps, preview included, stays on your computer and can be switched off.
More on text to speech and ADHD reading focus
People arrive here searching for text to speech for ADHD, read aloud for ADHD, ADHD reading focus, or simply ADHD can't focus on reading — different words for the same moment: getting through a long text without losing the thread halfway down the page. The same approach helps if you are dyslexic, if you are reading in a second language, or if your eyes are done for the day, because it moves the same kind of effort off the page. Speakybara covers that one moment and works alongside the tools you already use, rather than replacing them.
Try it on the next long text you have to get through
Free for Windows and Mac. A local voice works straight away, with no account and no card. Add your own Google key later if you want the higher-quality voices.
Download for Windows and MacLast updated September 12, 2026