How a page
finds its voice.
A few words about how Chickadee works,
and what happens when you press play.
Chickadee turns the words on a web page into speech, right on your computer. The voice comes from a small, open speech model inside your browser. Your reading stays with you.
- The pagetext from your browser
- The speech modelruns on your machine
- A voiceone sentence at a time
Your first listen.
Install Chickadee, open an article, and press ⌥ R on Mac or Alt R on Windows. You can also open the extension from your toolbar and use its read button.
The first time, Chickadee downloads the speech model: about 310 MB. Give that first download a little time. The model is saved in your browser, ready for the next read.
As the voice speaks, the current sentence lights up on the page. Pause, skip, or adjust the speed with the controls at the bottom. To begin partway through, right-click a word and choose “Read aloud from here.” You can choose a different voice in the extension’s toolbar menu.
A small model, close to home.
The voice is made by Kokoro-82M, an open speech model. Chickadee runs it using your computer’s graphics hardware through a browser feature called WebGPU.
It works through the page sentence by sentence, preparing the next few while the current one plays. The article stays where it is, with each spoken sentence highlighted in place. You can follow along with your eyes, or just listen.
Nothing you read is uploaded.
The extension processes page text inside your browser. There is no Chickadee speech server receiving your articles, and the extension has no analytics or tracking. It accesses a page when you ask it to read.
An internet connection is needed for the initial model download. Once the model is cached, speech works offline on pages you already have open or available offline. If that cache is cleared, the model will need to download again.
Your voice and speed preferences are saved through Chrome’s settings storage and may sync across your devices. For the details, including how this website differs from the extension, read the privacy policy.
A few things to know.
You’ll need a Chrome-based browser, such as Chrome or Edge, and a computer with WebGPU support. Chickadee checks before downloading the model and tells you if your setup cannot run it. Speech generation uses your computer’s resources, so performance depends on your hardware.
Start with a regular article page. Browser settings pages and other protected pages cannot be read by the extension. Offline speech also cannot open an article you haven’t loaded yet.
Chickadee is free and open source. Because your computer makes the audio, there is no per-read speech server bill, subscription, or API key. You can look through the source or report a rough edge.