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readthis | Text to Speech CLI Tool

readthis is a command-line text-to-speech tool powered by Kokoro-82M. Feed it plain text, a URL, piped input, or your clipboard, it extracts the content and reads it aloud. Audio generation and playback run on separate threads, so speech starts almost immediately rather than waiting for the full text to be synthesised.

Source Code

To install readthis,

uv tool install --python 3.12 git+https://github.com/realpacific/readthis

Usage Instructions​

The readthis supports multiple input methods:

  1. Read plain text by providing it directly as an argument:

    readthis "Hello, this is a test"

  2. Read from a URL by passing a webpage link to automatically extract and read the content:

    readthis https://example.com/article

  3. Read piped or multiline input:

    echo "First line.\nSecond line." | readthis

    cat article.txt | readthis

  4. If no argument is provided, the tool reads text directly from your clipboard:

    readthis