Speakable

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Speakable adds a play button to your articles that reads the content aloud using the browser’s built-in speech synthesis engine. No external API keys, no usage costs, no third-party services.

Features:

Play / Pause / Stop controls
Adjustable playback speed (0.75x – 2x)
Progress bar with sentence counter
Voice, pitch, volume, and speed settings from the admin dashboard
Enable/disable per post type (Posts, Pages, Products, etc.)
Customizable button color with live preview
Gutenberg block — place the player anywhere in your content
Sticky mini-player that follows users while scrolling
Mobile-optimized with large touch targets
Accessible: ARIA labels, roles, keyboard navigation, and live regions
Zero external dependencies — no third-party scripts, fonts, or services

Gutenberg Block:

Search for “Speakable Player” in the block inserter to place the player at any position in your content. The block automatically disables global auto-insertion for that post to prevent duplicates.

How It Works:

The plugin filters post content to inject a player bar (or use the Gutenberg block)
JavaScript extracts article text and splits it into sentences
Each sentence is spoken using the Web Speech API
Sentence-by-sentence playback avoids Chrome’s known timeout bug

Source Code and Development

This plugin is fully GPL. The maintained development location is:

https://github.com/devshagor/speakable

The human-readable source for every shipped file is also bundled inside the plugin itself:

Block editor source: src/blocks/speakable-player/index.js and src/blocks/speakable-player/editor.css
Block render template (server-side): src/blocks/speakable-player/render.php
Block metadata: src/blocks/speakable-player/block.json
All PHP classes are unminified and live under includes/
All admin/frontend CSS and JS are unminified and live under assets/

The contents of build/blocks/speakable-player/ are produced from src/blocks/speakable-player/ using @wordpress/scripts.

To regenerate the build output:

npm install
npm run build

This runs wp-scripts build --webpack-src-dir=src/blocks --output-path=build/blocks. The npm run start command provides a development watch mode.

Upload the speakable folder to /wp-content/plugins/
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
Go to Speakable > Settings to configure voice and display options
Visit any single post to see the player

سوالات متداول

Does this plugin require an API key?

No. It uses the browser’s built-in Web Speech API which is completely free.

Which browsers are supported?

Chrome 33+, Safari 7+, Firefox 49+, Edge 14+, and most modern mobile browsers.

Can I place the player anywhere I want?

Yes. Use the “Speakable Player” Gutenberg block to place the player at any position within your content. When the block is used, global auto-insertion is automatically skipped for that post.

Why do voices sound different on different devices?

Voices are provided by the operating system, not the plugin. Available voices vary by OS (macOS uses Siri voices, Windows uses Microsoft voices, Android uses Google TTS, etc.).

Can I choose which post types show the player?

Yes. Go to Speakable > Settings > Display tab and select which post types should show the player.

Does the player appear on archive pages?

No. The player only appears on single post/page views, never on archives, search results, or the homepage.

Will this slow down my site?

No. The plugin only loads its small CSS and JS files on singular pages where TTS is enabled. On all other pages the frontend class is not even loaded. No external scripts, fonts, or services are used.