project2 min read
whisperian: hands-free web reading with synced highlights
A Chrome extension that reads web articles, selected passages, and local PDFs aloud using the Vaani TTS API with word-level visual highlighting. Read with your ears without losing your place.
After shipping tg-vaani, I got hooked on listening to long-form writing instead of squinting through it. But Telegram is a destination you have to send things to.
If you're already in the browser staring at a technical deep dive, a blog post, or a 40-page PDF, switching context to paste links into a chat bot breaks flow.
Whisperian brings that same engine directly into Chrome.
What it does
Click the extension icon on any page, or hit a shortcut. Whisperian extracts the article body, strips navbars and ads, splits the text into natural paragraphs, and starts streaming synthesized speech.
The killer feature is visual sync: as the voice plays, words and active sentences light up in real time on the actual webpage. You can look back at the screen at any second and know exactly where you are.
- Click-to-seek: Click any paragraph to jump speech playback right there.
- Selection reading: Highlight any gnarly paragraph, right-click, and listen to just that excerpt.
- Local PDF reader: Drag and drop offline papers or manuals into a built-in reader view that extracts readable text without mangling headers.
- Minimal footprint: Zero clutter overlay, pure keyboard-first controls.
Stack
Manifest V3 extension built with TypeScript and Vite. It hooks into the Vaani TTS backend, handling streaming audio playback, word-boundary timing events, and DOM range highlighting across arbitrary website layouts without breaking page styling.
Install
Published live on the Chrome Web Store.