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'Read to me' in Book Creator
'Read to me' in Book Creator

Have your book read to you, in multiple languages, with word highlighting

Dan Amos avatar
Written by Dan Amos
Updated over a week ago

If you're reading your book in 'Read mode', or viewing a book that has been published online, you can click a button to have the book read to you. You'll see the 'Read to me' button in the top toolbar.
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Just press the Read to me button and you will hear the book read to you, with each word highlighted as it's read. Audio and video will automatically play too. Click the Stop reading button to stop.

Settings

Click on the cog icon next to the Read to me button to access the reading settings:

Side by side pages - toggle between side by side pages or single page view.

Right to left pages - toggle on to turn pages from right to left

Read words - toggle on/off. You might choose to turn this off if your students have recorded themselves narrating the book.

Voice - Choose the language you would like read in. Some languages have more than one reading voice option, but it depends on which browser you're using.

Highlight words - Toggle on/off.

Play multimedia - Toggle on/off whether or not to play and audio hotspots or embedded video whilst reading.

Turn pages automatically - The pages will turn automatically by default and the book will continue reading. You can also turn this setting off to just read the current page, or you can choose Loop which will continue reading the book over and over again. Loop is great when you're presenting a book for display, perhaps in your school building or parent/teacher conference.

Speed - Use the slider to slow down or speed up the speaking.

Note, when you read a book that you can also edit you have an option to save your settings. Anyone else that reads the book will then see your settings as their default value.

Frequently asked questions

Can't see 'Read to me'? Here's why

The 'Read to me' function does not work in the following browsers/devices:

  • Internet Explorer

  • Firefox

  • Safari on iOS 9 or below

  • Android phones

In addition, if you are using Safari on iOS 10 or higher, media playback is disabled by default (and cannot be altered), so the book will read but any audio or video will not be played.

Can I just have my voice read to me, not the computer?

If you've recorded your own audio onto the page you can toggle off the Read words setting to turn off the computer reading the words. Ensure Play multimedia is toggle on so that your audio recordings are read instead.

Enabling multimedia playback on Safari on a Mac computer

To prevent websites annoying us with auto-playing adverts, recent versions of Safari will block auto-play of audio and video with sound. If you would like 'read to me' to auto-play any audio or video in your book, you can turn this on just for Book Creator books in Safari's preferences, as shown below.

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