Listen to Text on Your Android Phone While Doing Something Else

 A much underused and very useful capability on smartphones is the ability to have text read aloud from the screen.

This capability can be used to read Kindle books.

The gestures to activate this capability vary from phone to phone.

They may require sliding two fingers up, or sliding two fingers down, or simply tapping on a “bubble” which appears on the screen.   Tapping the bubble, brings up the play or pause or quit options.

The capability needs to be installed.  Installation for Android is tricky.

Also, it is important to install the proper text to speech software. You want to be able to toggle the capability on and off simply.

That means you do NOT want the talk back capability, which reads back screen commands, unless you are sight impaired.  That can be very confusing and require a lot of effort. Also, you do NOT want the requirement to select text first.

You want to be able to turn speech off and on, or toggle it, easily when needed and when not wanted

Set up requires going to the accessibility options in settings, and also the general options, in settings for android.

Text to speech needs to be enabled and then voice data installed.   Then the speak text on/off toggle action needs to be installed.

Some devices require the android accessibility suite app to be installed first before the above actions, in order to accomplish the above.

Once you have the capability, you can listen to any reading material while your eyes are involved in doing something else.

(114) How to Turn On Text To Speech Read Aloud on Android/Samsung - 2022 - YouTube