BB WaveNet

Expanded version of WaveNet for Chrome that awesomely transforms selected text into high-quality natural sounding audio. Aimed to help individuals with difficulty reading such as dyslexia, ADHD, to consume knowledge more efficiently through taking advantage of Google's awesome text-to-speech engine. To this aim, WaveNet for Chrome created by Michael Poirier-Ginter, has done a fantastic job.

I took his code, and design, hope that he doesn't mind, and implemented my own features that I found beneficial for me. I thought some users out there might find this customized tool useful. I also updated the extension to comply with the new manifest v3 requirements (thus version 5.1 vs Ginter's 5.0). Limitation remains the same as 5.0 when the user needs to get their own apiKey, instructions included (although slightly outdated; I might update the instructions in the near future)--although outdated, if you are patient and keep trying, you'll likely find it, I struggled finding it too, but I did finally found it.

My extension is different from the original as described below:

1) All captured text and synthesized audio are sent to 1 separate window (the TTS Panel). As manifest v3 no longer allows extensions to play audios in the background. The TTS Panel has some advantages in visual controls: --To activate text-to-speech: (a) select text in the browser, right-click -> "queue", (b) set your desired shortcuts from chrome://extensions/shortcuts, or (c) press 'F2' on your keyboard (which I don't remember ever used in my life) -- sorry this is hard coded -- may implement more flexible options for shortcuts compared to Chrome browser's scheme, in the future if popular demands. --On the TTS Panel, --navigate "speaking" sentence using 'arrow keys' then 'enter' or left-click to select, click again to play/"speak". --'K' or 'F2' to pause/play, --'alt' + left-click to toggle captured text and "phonetics" text (generated from a manual phonetics dictionary). Without it "MR angiography" would be read as "Mister angiography"; phonetics version would be "M R angiography"; "blood pressure is 108/60 mm Hg" would be read as "blood pressure is 1 hundred and 8 sixty-th m m H g"; the phonetics version would be "blood pressure is 108 over 60" (no millimeters mercury) before it gets sent to Google's API to obtain the audio file. In case you encounter a weird sounding word/case, it could be my fault, or Google's fault. The "phonetics" text will let you know who to blame. Phonetics dictionary is hard coded, but you can turn it off. If you're on Windows and want to see the dictionary, go to: "%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions" in File Explorer to find the extension and modify the javascript files as you see fit, and run as your own "developer" extension. You'd have to learn Regular Expression to efficiently and widely capture your use cases. --'[' (open bracket) key to slow down and ']' (close bracket) to speed up by 0.25x on the fly. At install, I set my personal preference to 1.75x. 1.0x is way too slow to maintain my attention span. --Left-click on any sentence to replay without having to make new requests to Google's WaveNet TTS API. Thus, save you some request costs, as the apiKey is obtained from a trial allotment or paid Google's platform. Click again to pause. Audio will advance to next sentence automatically. --If you are too busy to get your own apiKey, or set up and maintain your paid Google's platform for the purpose of using this extension, I am happy to set it up and provide you the apiKey +market maintenance fee rate (same as what apple charges--30%). Google charges $16 USD per 1million characters per month after a 90day trial. This is low priority for me because you can get it yourself and sign up a new account every 3 months, but if there is demand, I'll re-prioritize.

2) Near future features would include saving the TTS Panel's page to a single HTML file, and you can listen again offline, even on browsers without BB WaveNet installed. For now, you can download all the audio media files as Opus encoded OGG files for each sentence at 1.0x, regardless of your speed settings. The purpose is to retain the flexibility to play at different speed offline. OGG files are native to Chrome and androids, and they can be played in VLC's playlist quite well, at the speed you desire.

3) Near future features will also include queuing texts from the computer's clipboard. This will allow you to listen to texts from offline apps that allow you copy texts.