TtsReader 🗣️ | Smart Offline Text-to-Speech Reader

TtsReader is a cross-platform, offline TTS app built with Kotlin Multiplatform and Jetpack Compose, using the Kokoro TTS model through sherpa-onnx via JNI. It offers intelligent sentence-by-sentence speech with real-time highlighting — no internet or cloud required.

---

✨ Key Features

🖥️ Kotlin Multiplatform Desktop App (Jetpack Compose UI)
🎤 Offline TTS using Kokoro + sherpa-onnx + JNI
📖 Smart Sentence Playback: one sentence at a time with buffering
🔦 Live Highlighting: currently spoken sentence is highlighted
🌐 Chrome Extension Support:
- Right-click selected text → “Play with TtsReader”

🚀 Getting Started

📦 Windows Installer

Download the prebuilt .msi:

TtsReader.msi

🔧 Requirements

JDK 17+
Git
Chrome (for browser extension)

🛠 Run from Source

git clone https://github.com/ys-pro-duction/TtsReader.git
cd TtsReader
./gradlew run

🌐 Browser Extension

(Optional) browser extension for sending selected text to the desktop app.

Chrome extention

Download: chrome-extension.zip
Extract it
Open Chrome → chrome://extensions
Enable Developer Mode
Click “Load unpacked” → select extracted folder
Select text on any webpage → right-click → “Play with TtsReader”

Firefox addon

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ttsreader-text-to-speech/

TtsReader desktop app must be running in the background.

🎙️ How It Works

Text is broken into sentences using punctuation
The app:
- Plays 1 sentence at a time
- Buffers the next 2 sentences for seamless delivery
- Highlights the active sentence in the UI
Playback uses native Kokoro ONNX models via JNI

📦 Models

First launch will download required models to:

~/.TtsReader/
├── model.onnx
├── tokens.txt
├── config.json

TtsReader — Read your text aloud, smoothly and intelligently, all offline.