When comparing Natural Reader vs Read Aloud, the Slant community recommends Natural Reader for most people. In the question“What is the best text to speech software for Mac and iOS?” Natural Reader is ranked 5th while Read Aloud is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Natural Reader is:
Formats include: Microsoft Word, PDF, eBook (ePUb), text, and RTF files, webpages.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Reads many formats
Formats include: Microsoft Word, PDF, eBook (ePUb), text, and RTF files, webpages.
Pro Prices reflect arrogance
It could be a perfect suite of voices if macOS could in extension include them when working on alternative apps or browsing, etc. You could if you preferred go along for the Standard Offering but as set forth before, Natural Reader ought to include macOS users and with recognition other than imposing Google Chrome as the default.
Pro Simple but effective playback controls
You can click on a any sentence and the voice will jump to wherever that sentence is and continue on from there. Forward and back button is for one sentence. Shortcuts are available as well for pause/read, forward/back by one sentence.
Pro Simple but effective playback controls
Pressing the addon icon in the extension bar will read aloud everything on the page, unless you have some text selected, in that case it will only read what is selected. Pressing the arrow icons on the extension will advance or back track one paragraph worth of reading material.
The extension also employs editable shortcut combinations which can be triggered in Chrome or Globally.
Pro Voice options are impressive
For a free product, the voice options are quite good with a number of premium options from Google and Amazon.
Cons
Con No Safari Support
Great options although it could be more affordable. It is not as if most average consumer is financially strong enough to afford all? If prices were lower, their premium offers could sell like other very successful great ideas.
Con Free version available, but upgrades are costly
$69.50, $129.50, or $199.50, does not appear to be a lifetime purchase, there seems to be a limit on how many images that can be used with the OCR function within the different tiers.
Con Few hotkeys, not user configurable
The shortcuts/hotkeys that exist are simple and work well, but they are not user configurable which might be a problem for some. The app is more GUI driven, a travesty since accessibility is a big attraction for people seeking software like this.
Con Unstable on MacOS High Sierra
Encountered stability issues on MacOS High Sierra. Changing voices or opening a .docx Word document can cause crashes.
Con Extension / Add-on limited to browser
Its function is limited to reading whatever text is selected or readable in your web browser.
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