PDF Read Aloud – Obsidian Plugin

Reads your open PDF files aloud using your device's built-in text-to-speech. No API key, no internet connection, no paid service required.

Features

• Play / Pause / Stop controls
• Skip forward / back by a configurable number of sentences (default 5, adjustable up to 20)
• Read from click — enable click mode, then click anywhere in the PDF text layer to start reading from that point
• Read selection — highlight any text in the PDF, then press "Read selection" to read only that portion
• Right-click context menu — right-click inside any PDF to get quick access to "Read from here" and "Read selected text"
• Progress bar — shows how far through the document you are; click to jump to any position
• Speed control (0.5× – 2.0×)
• Voice selector — uses all voices installed on your system
• Status bar indicator — shows current sentence and page number while reading
• Command Palette support for all actions

Installation

Via Community Plugins (recommended)

1. Open Obsidian Settings → Community Plugins
2. Turn on Community Plugins if not already enabled
3. Click Browse and search for PDF Read Aloud
4. Click Install, then Enable

Manual installation

1. Go to your Obsidian vault folder
2. Navigate to .obsidian/plugins/
3. Create a folder named pdf-read-aloud
4. Download main.js and manifest.json from the latest release and copy them into that folder
5. In Obsidian: Settings → Community Plugins → find PDF Read Aloud and enable it

macOS tip: Press Cmd+Shift+. in Finder to show hidden folders like .obsidian.
Windows tip: Enable Show hidden items in File Explorer.

How to Use

Basic playback

1. Open a PDF file in Obsidian
2. Click the 🔊 icon in the left ribbon or open the Command Palette and run PDF Read Aloud: Open control panel
3. Press ▶ to start reading from the beginning
4. Use ⏸ to pause, ⏹ to stop, ⏮/⏭ to skip sentences

Read from a specific position

1. Click Read from click in the control panel (or run the command)
2. Click anywhere in the PDF text — playback starts from the nearest sentence

Read only selected text

1. Highlight text in the PDF
2. Click Read selection in the control panel, or right-click inside the PDF and choose Read selected text

Right-click menu

Right-click anywhere inside the PDF viewer for quick access to both Read from here and Read selected text.

Settings

All settings are available under Settings → PDF Read Aloud:

Setting	Description	Default
Speech rate	Reading speed (0.5× slow → 2.0× fast)	1.0×
Pitch	Voice pitch	1.0
Volume	Volume level	1.0
Skip size	Number of sentences to skip forward/back	5
Voice	System TTS voice to use	System default

Notes

• Works with text-based PDFs only. Scanned or image-only PDFs will have no readable text.
• Uses the browser's built-in Web Speech API — completely free, works offline, no account needed.
• Voice availability depends on your operating system and installed language packs.

Changelog

1.1.0

• Fixed voice dropdown not populating when panel opens before voices are loaded
• Skip size is now configurable (1–20 sentences) from the panel and settings
• Removed all innerHTML usage for improved security
• Improved _deepFind to skip DOM nodes and avoid false positives
• Better per-page error handling during text extraction — one bad page no longer aborts the whole document
• Context menu items no longer use emoji in titles (per Obsidian style guidelines)

1.0.0

• Initial release