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Listen to your documents in Google Drive (preview mode) or listen while you edit in Google Docs with the Chrome extension.
Please note that the extension may experience instability or reduced functionality when used with Google Docs. Google Docs does not function in the same way as standard webpages so we must independently develop compatibility solutions to have NaturalReader working with it, which may limit some of the extension's features. Additionally, any updates to Google's websites could impact the extension's performance.
Tip: You change the presets for Activate the extension, Pause/Read, Highlight to Read, and more from the Hotkey Settings.
Google Drive
The following features are not available while listening from Google Drive's preview mode:
Highlighting (both sentence and word)
Highlight to Read
Click to Read
Autoscroll
Immersive Reader
Closed Captions
Back to Reading
We instead recommend opening and reading the document in Google Docs instead. When a document in Google Drive is opened, you can select Open with Google Docs at the top of the page.
However, you can still listen to documents right from Google Drive.
Login to your Google account and open to My Drive.
Select a document from your Drive to listen to
If you don't have Quick Start enabled, launch the extension by clicking on NaturalReader's logo from your pinned extensions or by selecting NaturalReader from your extensions list. Both options are next to the address bar.
Press the Play button to start listening and it will start at the beginning of the page
OR USE HOTKEYS
Use the hotkey for Activate the extension. The default preset is ctrl + shift + Y (Windows) or ⌘ + shift + Y (Mac)
Use the hotkey for Pause/Resume, which by default is alt + P (Windows) or ⌥ + P (Mac)
Google Docs
The following features are limited while listening from Google Docs:
Highlighting
Only sentence highlighting will work with Google Docs. Word-by-word highlighting is not available.
Click to Read
Click to Read works only while the extension is already playing audio. When no audio is playing, you cannot use Click to Read. Because Google Docs is a word processor, when the extension is not playing audio, clicking on the text enables you to continue editing the content.
Highlight to Read
The Highlight to Read button will not appear when you highlight text in Google Docs and the Read Selection option will not appear in the content menu (right-click). You can still listen to text you highlight by using the Highlight to Read hotkey.
Immersive Reader
This feature is not supported on Google Docs, however you can use Closed Captions instead to follow along.
To listen to your Google Docs:
Go to Google Docs and login with your Google Account
Select a document from your Docs to read to
If you don't have Quick Start enabled, launch the extension by clicking on NaturalReader's logo from your pinned extensions or by selecting NaturalReader from your extensions list. Both options are next to the address bar.
Press the Play button to start listening and it will start at the beginning of the page
While audio is playing, you can click on any text in the document to listen from there
OR USE HOTKEYS
Use the hotkey for Activate the extension. The default preset is ctrl + shift + Y (Windows) or ⌘ + shift + Y (Mac)
Use the hotkey for Pause/Resume, which by default is alt + P (Windows) or ⌥ + P (Mac)
While audio is playing, you can click on any text in the document to begin listening from there. Click-to-Read will not work if the audio is not playing.
HIGHLIGHT TO READ
The Highlight to Read button will not appear when you highlight text in Google Docs and the Read Selection option will not appear in the content menu (right-click), but you can still listen to text you highlight by using the Highlight to Read hotkey.
Use the cursor to highlight the text you want read aloud
Use the hotkey for Highlight to Read. There is no preset for this hotkey, so if you have not set up a shortcut yet, you can customize this hotkey from the Hotkey Settings