READ2ME reads the active file aloud with high-quality Piper neural voices that run 100% offline — no cloud, no API keys, nothing ever leaves your machine. It highlights every sentence and word as it speaks, so you can follow along, proofread by ear, or rest your eyes.
Everything runs on your machine. The synthesis is neural, the latency is sub-second, and your text never touches a server.
Karaoke for your code. The current sentence is anchored to its exact audio duration while the word sweep tracks along in real time — perfect for proofreading by ear or following dense docs without losing your place.
No cloud, no API keys, no network needed after setup. Your words stay on your machine — always.
Play, pause, stop, and a voice picker live right in the status bar. Start from your cursor or read a selection.
Step from 0.5× to 3× in 0.25 increments. Click the value to snap back to 1×. Your choice persists across sessions.
Syntax is stripped — no "star star" read aloud — and code blocks are skipped with a spoken marker instead of dictated.
US & UK English, multiple speakers. Switch voices from the picker and the read restarts from the current sentence in the new voice. Drop any Piper .onnx into the voices folder to add your own.
Click into any Markdown source in Cursor or VS Code.
⌃⌘R starts from your cursor. Audio begins within ~1 second.
The sentence and word highlight sweep in time with the speech.
Pause, change speed, or switch voice — without leaving the editor.
Five Piper neural voices ship out of the box. The picker lists any model in your voices folder, so adding more is just dropping two files in.
// Browse 45+ languages at rhasspy/piper-voices — drop the .onnx + .onnx.json into tts-voices/
# 1 · Python env $ python3 -m venv .tts-venv $ ./.tts-venv/bin/pip install -r tts-requirements.txt # 2 · Download the neural voices $ ./fetch-voices.sh # 3 · Build + install the extension $ cd tts-extension $ npx --yes @vscode/vsce package --no-dependencies $ cursor --install-extension read2me-*.vsix
Free, private, and fast. Install READ2ME and let your editor read to you.