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 customisable 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 customisable 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, colours and line spaces to customise 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 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 and Spanish

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

Ratings and reviews

Useful app with significant limitations. In short it seems impossible to resume a document in certain circumstances. For instance if you pause while reading long web pages and then the phone enters sleep mode, the position in the document is lost, and the overlay containing the play functions are gone. This makes it hard to listen and resume, which becomes extremely frustrating.

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 fantastic. With Google news articles it is pretty flawless. Allowing you to bypass all the annoying pop-ups, ads, and obstructive webpage furniture, and read the article itself in a clear and concise manner. With other venues there is some glitches around html links, but having the option to toggle it in or off at will allows you to go back to the original page if necessary. EDIT: I ended up uninstalling because the irritation of the floating button was too much

What's new

Initial release of reading mode.