PageCast
Free
£0
- 15 minutes of video a month
- Videos up to 3 minutes
- Standard voices
Stop reading it.
Watch it instead.
PageCast takes the page on your screen — including the ones behind a login — throws away everything that isn't the article, writes a script, and starts playing it as a narrated video in about ten seconds.
Or skip ahead: download the extension
The video above was made from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hovercraft 6 slides1:10Play to first word in about 10 s
It works out what the page is actually about.
Every block and image goes to the model with its position, its class names and where its links point. Nothing is removed by a keyword rule, so a figure in the sidebar survives and a fundraising banner halfway down the article does not.
182
kept from the page in the video above
- 104 paragraphs, under all 32 headings
- 42 photographs, diagrams and drawings
- 28 picture captions
- The lead section, in full
67
removed, each with a reason
- 29
Main menu, search, contents, language linkssite navigation - 20
We owe you an explanation…donation banner and its buttons - 12
Site logo, tagline, duplicate meta imagepage furniture - 4
Categories, legal, footer navigationsite footer - 2
See also, related topicslink lists
Every removal keeps the model's own reason, listed beside you while you edit. Tick one back and the storyboard is rewritten to include it.
Nothing plays
until you've seen it.
The model drafts the slides and the narration. You get them as an editable storyboard, with a live preview of the finished frame beside every field.
- Twelve layouts
- Bullets, a pull quote, a big number, two columns, full-bleed photo. Change one and the preview redraws as you type.
- The page's own pictures
- Pick from everything the page had, at the largest size it offers. Nothing is generated, nothing is stock.
- Narration you can rewrite
- Each slide shows its word count and how long it takes to speak, so you can hit a length exactly.
It plays over
what you were reading.
No tab to hunt for, and no waiting for a video file. It plays on the page it came from: subtitles light up word by word as they're spoken, and you can jump to any moment. Want a file to keep or post? Export it as an MP4.
Pick the voice
that reads it.
Standard voices are clear and quick. Premium voices sound like someone reading it to you: real breaths, real emphasis. Here's the same sentence in each.
“Concorde could cross the Atlantic in under three and a half hours. Leave London in the morning, and you would land in New York before you had set off, by the local clock.”
Standard
Premium
Four pages, four videos, nothing touched up.
Each came straight out of the tool. They have sound.
Free to start. Pay for more minutes.
A minute is a minute of narration spoken. Playing a video again or exporting it costs nothing, and editing one slide only counts that slide.
Pro
£8a month
- 90 minutes of video a month
- Videos up to 5 minutes
- Standard voices
Max Premium voices
£20a month
- 240 minutes of video a month
- Videos up to 10 minutes
- Standard and premium voices
Prices include VAT. Billed monthly through Stripe; cancel any time and keep your plan until the month you've paid for ends. Minutes start again on the 1st of each month.
What happens
when you hit Play.
- Your browser does the reading
- It reads the page you are already signed in to. A server fetching the same address gets a login wall, a cookie prompt, or a different page altogether.
- We do the heavy part
- Filtering, the script and the voice run on our machines, every slide narrated at once, so the video starts before the rest is ready. Your browser just draws the slides. Nothing to install, nothing to configure.
- What travels, and what doesn’t
- The text and pictures from the page you asked about, and nothing else. No other tabs, no browsing history, no background collection.
- Honest about the state of it
- The hosted version is running for early testers, and what they point it at shapes what it does next.
Tell us what you'd point it at.
We want a handful of people who read more than they have time for: researchers, engineers working through documentation, anyone who summarises the web for everyone else.
Get the extension.
PageCast isn't in the Chrome Web Store yet, so for now it installs by hand. It takes about a minute.
Download the extension
Version 0.4.2 · 487 KB · Chrome or Brave
- Unzip it into a folder you'll keep. That folder is the extension, so don't delete it afterwards.
- Open
chrome://extensions(in Brave,brave://extensions), turn on Developer mode at the top right, choose Load unpacked and pick the folder. - Pin PageCast from the puzzle-piece menu, open it on any page and choose Sign in.
When there's a new version: download it again, replace the folder's contents, and press the reload arrow on PageCast's card in the extensions page.