- Everything was locked behind a ~$30/month subscription (wasn't ready for that).

- Or the voices sounded robotic and painful to listen to.

Since I'm a software engineer, I decided to just build my own solution, a Chrome extension that reads articles or any text out loud in a human-like voice. That's how Qariyo.com was born.

Some friends liked it too, so I thought: why not make it public? When I built it, I kept things simple: - Read the article out loud without breaking the flow, so it should work as a widget inside the page and not opening a new tab/page.

- Don't make me wait for the entire article to be converted before listening. I want to start as quickly as possible, without interruptions.

- No extra fluff (Snoop Dogg reading the article for you, etc. I don’t care). Just read the article out loud.

- And please, no subscriptions. I want to pay for what you use.

Reading modes :

- Full Page Mode: Open any webpage you want to listen to, click play, and let the Qariyo's TTS engine read the text aloud. Pause, rewind, fast-forward, or skip paragraphs by clicking any paragraph on the page.

- Text Selection Mode: Click the Text Selection Mode button, highlight any text on the screen with your mouse, and listen as Qariyo reads only the selected text.

It's still an MVP, but it works well. If you want to try it, I'd love to hear your feedback!