Supertonic Reader

Background text-to-speech for Windows.
Press Ctrl + Alt anywhere and the active window is read aloud to you.

Quick Start • Browser Extension • How It Works • Hotkeys • Troubleshooting

✨ What It Does

Supertonic Reader is a silent background TTS app for Windows — inspired by Willow but for reading instead of dictating.

Runs silently in your system tray (no window clutter)
Works in any app: Chrome, Edge, VS Code, Terminal, Word, Notepad, etc.
Uses Supertonic 3 for fast, high-quality local speech synthesis (no cloud, no API keys)
Sentence-level control: hover and click any sentence to read from there
Global hotkeys work everywhere — even when the app has no focus

🖼️ Inline Sentence Buttons

Inside Chrome and Edge, the extension wraps every sentence with a small play button that appears on hover. Click any sentence to start reading from exactly that point.

The currently-read sentence is highlighted in green and the page auto-scrolls to keep it in view.

🏗️ Architecture

Supertonic Reader uses a hybrid native + browser extension design because Windows UI Automation cannot reliably extract text from modern browsers.

Component	Handles
Native App (`run.py`)	System tray, global hotkeys, TTS synthesis, audio playback, toast notifications, sentence scrubber
Chrome Extension (`extension/`)	DOM text extraction, sentence splitting, inline play buttons, HTTP communication with native app
Desktop Apps	Native app extracts text directly via Windows UIA
Browser Pages	Extension extracts text and POSTs it to `localhost:8765`

🚀 Quick Start

1. Clone or download

git clone https://github.com/t957095/supertonic-reader.git
cd supertonic-reader

2. Run setup (one time)

.\setup.bat

This will:

Create a Python virtual environment
Install all dependencies
Register the app to auto-start on Windows boot
Launch the app for first-time voice selection

3. Use it

Press Ctrl + Alt in any window. The app reads the text aloud.

🔌 Browser Extension (Chrome / Edge)

For the best experience in browsers, load the companion extension:

Open chrome://extensions/ (or edge://extensions/)
Turn on Developer mode (toggle in the top right)
Click Load unpacked
Select the extension folder inside this project
Done — the extension works across all Chrome profiles

Why an extension? Chrome and Edge do not expose page content to Windows accessibility APIs. The extension is the only reliable way to read web pages across all sites.

⌨️ Hotkeys

Keys	Action
`Ctrl` + `Alt`	Start reading from the top (or stop if already reading)
`Ctrl` + `Alt` (double-tap)	Show the sentence scrubber bar
`Ctrl` + `Alt` + `Shift`	Show the sentence scrubber bar
`Ctrl` + `Shift` + `S`	Open the floating sentence panel (browser only)
`Ctrl` + `Shift` + `P`	Toggle the browser extension panel

Sentence Scrubber

A thin bar appears at the top of your screen with numbered dots — one per sentence. Click any dot to jump to that sentence. It auto-hides after 5 seconds.

⚙️ Settings

Right-click the green 🎙️ tray icon → Settings

Setting	Description
Voice	10 built-in voices: `F1`–`F5`, `M1`–`M5`
Speed	0.70× – 2.00× playback speed
Language	Auto-detect or force a language (`en`, `es`, `fr`, `de`, `ja`, `ko`, `zh`)
Auto-start	Launch automatically when Windows boots

Settings are stored in the Windows registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SupertonicReader\Settings.

🛠️ Manual Start (for developers)

If you prefer not to use setup.bat:

python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python run.py

Requirements

Windows 10/11
Python 3.12+
A working audio output device
~150 MB free disk space for the Supertonic 3 model (auto-downloaded on first use)

Python Dependencies

PySide6>=6.5.0
pynput>=1.7.6
Pillow>=10.0.0
supertonic>=1.2.0
sounddevice>=0.4.6
numpy>=1.24.0
pywinauto>=0.6.8
pyperclip>=1.8.2
psutil
pywin32

🧪 Troubleshooting

"Could not find text in this window"

Make sure the window you want to read is focused before pressing the hotkey
For browsers: ensure the extension is loaded (see Browser Extension)