[slyn]

I like to use Edge on occasion when I need to read something dry but necessary because I find following along with the TTS it’s auto-highlight of text helps me stay focused and retain better as well.

Is there any equivalent program for ebooks? If not can someone build one? The dream would be to plop in an arbitrary document (pdf, docs, tex, epub, and so on) and have it read to me by a reasonable TTS at a speed of my choosing and have words / lines highlighted as the TTS goes along. Bonus points if you can regularly identify and skip things that are not necessarily relevant like page numbers, headers, footnote markers, and so on, which is something that Edge TTS within Edge struggles with when reading PDFs.

[FireInsight]

I've been using https://readest.com/ lately. It's FOSS and just recently got this feature. The TTS voices are pretty natural and text is highlighted one sentence at a time. Plus the design of the product is great.

[visarga]

https://www.naturalreaders.com/, is has a free tier I think

[laurentlb]

If anyone else wonders, naturalreaders provides no API.

[lf-non]

The ReadEra app for android supports this, and I use it for reading/listening to ebooks during commute. It works well.

[gostsamo]

You can use a screen reader. Most of them have a focus highlight feature and use local tts.

[jahsome]

Calibre does this.

[tomr75]

can you use TTS models?