Reading mode

Google LLC

About this app

Designed for and with people with low vision, blindness and dyslexia, Reading mode helps improve your screen reading experience with a focus on customizable contrast, text size, text-to-speech, page clutter, and font types. Once downloaded, the app integrates into your quick settings and can be easily accessed across apps and web pages.

Instructions:

To get started:

1. Download and install Reading mode via Play Store
2. Find Reading mode on your home screen and tap to open it
3. Read the tutorial and it will redirect you to the settings at the end
4. In the settings, tap “Reading mode” and toggle on “Reading mode shortcut” to allow Reading mode to access your device
5. Please refer to https://support.google.com/accessibility/android/answer/7650693 to set up different Reading mode entry points

Key Features:

• Focused reading view: Reading mode provides a customizable reading environment without clutter to make it easier to access content and focus
• Text-to-speech: Hear written content read out loud to you at the touch of a button. Choose from a selection of high quality long-form voices. Easily accessible audio control options to rewind, fast forward, and change reading speed on the go
• Adjust font type and size: Toggle quickly between font sizes, styles, colors, and line spaces to customize what’s best for your reading needs
• Quick access: Once downloaded, Reading mode is integrated into the phone interface for fast access
• Multi-language support: Reading mode supports English, French, Italian, and Spanish with additional languages to follow
• Compatible with Talkback: Easily use Reading mode when using your screen reader.
• Designed with privacy in mind: Content is never sent off your phone.

Join the group https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/accessible to provide feedback and receive product updates.

Requirement:

• Available for phones on Android 9 and later
• Currently Reading mode supports English, French, Italian, Spanish

Permissions Notice:
• Accessibility Service: Since this app is an accessibility service, it can observe your actions and window content.

Ratings and reviews

Fantastic app! A couple of notes as it is fiddly to set up first time: To get it to work on my Samsung S24 I had to "force stop" the reading mode app. Then when I opened reading mode it took me through the setup steps again. This time I made sure to select one of the three shortcut methods (somehow missed before). Now it works! For listening in the background, you need to switch off battery optimisation for the app. Otherwise it keeps stopping.

A great little screen reader. Not perfect, but good enough for my needs. The are two improvements I would like: 1) It skips hyperlinks, which is fine unless they're embedded in a sentence 2) I would like a little more granularity in the speed settings (1.5 is too fast, 1.25 too slow) One final observation, it has trouble with words like ChatGPT or OpenAI, but this is a free app so I'm not complaining.

this is a really good screen reader, im on samsung so the pre installed voices are pretty good. you could technically add your own voices but it would take a lot of fiddling. its nice being able to chance speed but you cant make it below 1x and anything above 2x degrades the quality. the worst thing about the app is that it inevitably degrades over time. it stops working in the background and even when full screen it stop starts. the only way to fix this is uninstalling than reinstalling.

What’s new

Bug fixes and performance improvements.