Most of what we publish can be listened to as well as read. This page explains how the player works, how the queue behaves, and what happens to your place when you close the tab.
What you can listen to
Two different kinds of audio appear in the player, and it is worth knowing which you are hearing.
Narrated pages and articles. Where no recording exists, we generate a narration of the written text using voice synthesis. It follows the words on the page closely.
Original recordings. Where a talk, sermon or lecture was actually recorded, the player uses the real recording. A recording is not a word-for-word reading of the write-up that accompanies it — the speaker digresses, expands and sometimes answers questions — so the audio and the text will not match line for line. That is expected.
Guides like this one, the privacy policy and the changelog are narrated. Articles may have either, depending on what exists.
Note
Not every page has audio. Where none is available, no player controls appear — there is nothing you need to switch on.
Starting playback
Where audio is available, you will find two buttons near the top of the page:
- Play now — starts this track immediately. Anything already playing is replaced.
- Add to queue — puts this track at the end of your queue and leaves what is currently playing alone.
"Add to queue" is the one to reach for when you are browsing and collecting things to listen to later in one sitting.
The player bar
Once something is playing, a player bar appears at the bottom of every page. It stays there as you move around the site, so you can keep reading while you listen.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Play / Pause | Stops and resumes without losing your place |
| Previous / Next | Moves through the queue |
| Progress bar | Drag to move within the current track |
| Speed | 0.5× up to 2× — useful for long recordings |
| Volume | Independent of your device volume |
| Queue | Opens the list of what is lined up |
| Minimise | Collapses the bar out of the way; playback continues |
Your chosen speed and volume are remembered as ordinary preferences and carry across to whatever you play next.
The queue
The queue drawer shows everything lined up, in order, with the current track marked. You can remove anything you no longer want, and jump straight to a later item without playing what is in front of it.
The queue is capped at 100 tracks. If you somehow exceed that, the cap is applied around whatever you are listening to — so the things nearest your current position are the ones kept, in both directions.
Picking up where you left off
Close the tab, reload the page, or come back tomorrow: your queue and your position in the current track are still there.
It always comes back paused. This is deliberate and it is not a bug. Browsers do not permit a page to start playing sound on its own, so nothing we could do would make audio resume by itself — and if it did, a page opened in a background tab would start talking without warning. Press play and it continues from exactly where you stopped.
Your position is saved continuously while you listen, and immediately when you pause, change track, or leave the page.
What is remembered, and what is not
| Remembered | Not remembered |
|---|---|
| Your queue, in order | Whether it was playing |
| Which track you were on | |
| How far into that track you were | |
| Your speed and volume settings |
It stays on your device
All of this is stored in your browser, on the device you are using. It is not sent to us, it is not attached to an account, and it does not follow you from your phone to your laptop.
Two practical consequences:
- Clearing your browser data clears your queue and your place along with it.
- Private or incognito windows start empty every time and keep nothing when closed.
Important
Reading and listening need no account. We are not tracking what you listen to in order to make this work — the information never leaves your browser.
If we later add accounts, listening history is something we would want to carry across your devices; that would be something you opt into, not a change made quietly to what is described here.
If something is not working
No audio controls on a page. That page has no audio yet.
Playback stops when the screen locks on a phone. Mobile browsers suspend background audio in some configurations. Your place is saved when the page is hidden, so you will not lose where you were.
The queue emptied unexpectedly. The most common cause is browser data being cleared, either by hand or by a privacy setting that clears site data on close.
The audio does not match the text. If you are listening to an original recording rather than a narration, this is expected — see the first section.