Hey everyone!
A while back I shared Fetchmark, an offline-first bookmark manager I built to escape cloud bloat and subscription fatigue.
Since many of you suggested it, I just shipped a brand-new feature: a local audio reader that reads saved articles aloud directly in your browser.
Why Build This?
Most read-later or text-to-speech tools rely on heavy paid cloud text-to-speech APIs (like ElevenLabs or AWS Polly) which drive up maintenance costs and add latency. Since Fetchmark is built around local-first data and deterministic DOM parsing, I wanted a native solution that didn't require external cloud dependencies for text extraction or audio generation.
How It Works
Web Speech API Integration: It taps directly into the browser's native speech synthesis engine, meaning zero per-character API costs and lightning-fast playback initialization.
Clean Text Pipeline: Because Fetchmark's DOM parser already strips out ads, sidebars, and clutter, the audio reader only feeds the clean article body into the speech engine—no getting tripped up by navigation menus or cookie banners.
Seamless Reading Loop: You can save an article on the go using the extension, open your reader view, and hit play to listen to long-form tech deep dives while working or walking.
I'd love for anyone interested in offline tooling or local-first apps to take it for a spin at https://fetchmarkapp.com and let me know how the audio reader handles your favorite long-form articles or documentation pages.
How do you usually handle listening to articles while coding or working? Would love to hear your thoughts or feedback!
submitted by /u/Low-Actuary8926