---
title: Listen to your first reading
description: Paste a piece of text, press Listen, follow along.
category: get-started
order: 1
last_verified_at: 2026-04-29
status: published
---

# Listen to your first reading

Paste a piece of text. Press Listen. Follow along while it reads
to you. This page is the short tour.

## What you need

A current browser on a computer or phone — Chrome, Safari,
Firefox, or Edge in their last couple of major versions. Reading
runs right there in the browser; nothing needs to be installed.

## Paste your text

The home page is a single page. It says **Paste or type
anything.** Drop in an article you copied from somewhere, a
markdown file's contents, an email, or a whole novel. Plain text
works. Markdown works.

Long pastes are welcome. The reader doesn't wait for the whole
text to be ready before it starts — it begins speaking the first
part while the rest is still being prepared.

## Press Listen

The button below the text area says **Listen**. Press it. The
first time, the page takes a moment to set itself up; the next
reading starts faster.

While it gets ready, the page tells you what it's doing in plain
words. When it's ready, the voice begins, and the current word is
gently highlighted as it speaks.

## Follow along and steer

While listening:

- **Spacebar** pauses and resumes.
- **Left and right arrows** skip back or forward by fifteen
  seconds.
- **Click any word** to jump there.

The reading area follows the spoken word so the current line
stays near the top of your view. If you start scrolling on your
own, the reader stops following and lets you read at your own
pace until you ask it to follow again. Your hands win.

## Pick a voice

The player has a voice picker. It plays a short sample of each
voice when you tap it, so you can pick one by ear instead of by
name. Switching applies to whatever the reader hasn't spoken yet.

## What happens when you close the tab

A reading you started in your browser stays in your browser. It
is there when you come back tomorrow, and it is there after a
restart. It does not follow you to another device, and clearing
your browser's data removes it. The library page shows which
readings only live on this device, so you always know.

## When something doesn't go right

The reader tells you in plain words when something goes wrong. A
failed reading is never silent — the page says what happened and
what you can do next.

If a reading stops in the middle and a reload doesn't fix it, the
place to tell us is the bug tracker:
[github.com/aybabtme/telereader.ai/issues](https://github.com/aybabtme/telereader.ai/issues).

## What this feels like when it works

You paste an article, press Listen, and shortly after, a voice is
reading it to you while the words follow along. You close your
laptop, finish the walk, and come back to a list of the readings
you've started. That is the product.

## Next

- [Reader controls in detail](../reading/the-reader)
- [Pick a voice](../reading/voices)
- [Save readings across devices](./save-to-library)