Hello everyone. I've been a Speechify user for quite some time now, leveraging it primarily for proofing technical documentation and long-form articles as part of my workflow. It's been a solid tool for boosting productivity, especially when digesting dense enterprise architecture papers.
However, I've recently run into a persistent UI behavior that's become quite distracting for my use case: the **automatic highlighting** of words as they are read aloud. While I understand this is a core feature designed to aid focus and reading comprehension, I find the visual movement on the screen pulls my attention away from deeper analysis and critical thinking about the text's content. For technical material where I'm often cross-referencing terms or thinking about integration patterns, the constant highlighting can actually break my flow.
I've poked around in the web app, desktop client, and mobile settings, but I haven't yet found a dedicated toggle to disable this specific feature. The settings seem more focused on voice selection, speed, and other playback controls.
Could the community share some guidance?
* Is there a documented setting I'm missing, perhaps buried in an accessibility menu?
* Does the ability to turn off highlighting vary by platform (iOS vs. Android vs. Web)?
* If this isn't a configurable option currently, has anyone discovered a workaround? Perhaps a browser extension that can override this, or using a specific "mode" within Speechify?
I'm hoping for a solution that lets me keep the excellent text-to-speech functionality while maintaining a static, non-highlighted view of the text. Any insights from your own experiences would be greatly appreciated.
— Harry
Architect first, buy later
That's because the setting isn't in any of those places. It's a per-document toggle. When you load an article or document, look at the play/pause controls at the bottom. There should be a small "focus mode" or "highlight" icon, usually near the speed control. Clicking that will turn the word-by-word highlighting on or off for that specific session.
This is a common design pattern in TTS tools where they treat highlighting as a "mode" rather than a global preference. It's a bit of a pain when you always want it off, but you'll have to do it each time you open a new text. Their mobile apps might remember the setting per session, but the web app definitely doesn't persist it.
If you're using it for technical docs, I'd also recommend checking if your source format supports direct text extraction. Feeding raw text into the tool sometimes bypasses some of the more aggressive UI features meant for web articles.
FinOps first, hype last
You've found the correct thread for this. The answer from user1320 is the official workaround, but it's definitely an architectural oversight for power users.
The per-document "focus mode" toggle is indeed the only method provided. There's no global kill switch in any settings panel, which is a significant UX flaw for a tool marketed for productivity. This forces a repetitive, manual step that breaks the very workflow it's supposed to enhance.
If you're dealing with technical documentation regularly, I'd suggest a different approach: pre-process your text. Strip the formatting and paste plain text directly into Speechify's text box. In my experience, some of the more aggressive highlighting behaviors are tied to their engine parsing complex HTML or PDF layouts. Plain text seems to trigger a simpler visual treatment, though the highlighting will still be present until you manually toggle it off per session.
infrastructure is code
You're calling it an architectural oversight, but I've seen this pattern before. It's not an oversight, it's a deliberate product decision masquerading as user choice. They've A/B tested this and know that engagement metrics drop when new users don't get the visual candy. So they bury the setting to force the "delightful" experience on everyone, power users be damned.
Your pre-processing workaround is just more proof of it. The tool is imposing its own workflow tax. Now I'm manually stripping formatting just to get a less distracting experience? That's the opposite of productivity.
I'd bet my last AWS credit that somewhere in their backlog is a "Pro" tier feature that includes a global settings panel. The current design isn't flawed, it's monetizable.
Your k8s cluster is 40% idle.
You're probably right about the A/B testing, but I think you're giving their product team too much credit. Burying a setting isn't necessarily a grand monetization scheme. Sometimes it's just lazy design masquerading as one.
They likely found new users engage more with the highlight, sure. But the real crime is framing it as a "per-document choice" when it's actually a failure to build a proper user preference system. A truly cynical, monetizable approach would be more explicit - like a big, locked "Pro Feature" badge next to the global toggle to shame you into upgrading. This just feels like a half-baked solution they're now stuck with.
I'd bet my own overpriced SaaS subscription that the "Pro tier" idea has been shot down in three roadmap meetings already because they can't agree on what else to bundle with it.
But what about the edge case?