Claude Read Aloud — Buttons

Buttons and hotkeys for hearing Claude Code's replies out loud. This extension is the clickable front end for the claude-read-aloud Claude Code plugin — install that first (it's the engine: voices, chunked playback, providers).

What you get

• Status-bar button (bottom-left, right under the chat input): click to read Claude's last reply aloud, click again to stop.
• Toolbar speaker icon on the Claude Code panel.
• Ctrl+Alt+S / Ctrl+Alt+X (⌘⌥S / ⌘⌥X on macOS) — speak / stop.
• A "Read Aloud" settings panel inside Claude Code's sidebar — voice with test and a searchable picker, provider, speed, auto-read.
• Right-click → "Read aloud" on highlighted text in Claude Code, and an optional in-chat speaker button beside the mic — these two need the opt-in composer patch: the extension offers it once on startup, or run "Claude Read Aloud: Install in-chat button" from the Command Palette (it explains exactly what it changes and is fully revertible).

Setup

1. Install the plugin in Claude Code:

   claude plugin marketplace add michaelpgifford/claude-read-aloud
   claude plugin install read-aloud@claude-read-aloud
   

2. Install this extension (code --install-extension MichaelGifford.claude-read-aloud-button, or search "Claude Read Aloud" in the Extensions view).
3. Click the speaker. Free system voices work immediately; on Linux run /read-aloud:voice-setup once for a much better free neural voice, or add a Speechify / ElevenLabs / OpenAI key for premium voices.

Requires Python 3.9+ on your PATH.