Read anything on the web 3× faster — one word at a time, at a fixed point, so your eyes never move.
Chrome extensionMV3 · TypeScriptAlt+R to startLocal-first
github.com/shafiqimtiaz/dash-reader
01
The idea
Your eyes never move.
RSVP — Rapid Serial Visual Presentation. Select text or start on the whole article,
and Dash Reader flashes one word at a time at a fixed point on screen.
No scanning, no saccades, no re-reading. Just the words, at the pace you set.
default 300 wpmrange 100–1000chunks 1–8 words≈ 3× faster than scrolling
the idea
02
Start
Two ways in
01
Read the selection
Select any text on the page and press Alt+R. The overlay opens paused at the first word — press Space when you're ready.
⌘ ready when you are
02
Read the article
Alt+R with no selection — or the toolbar icon — highlights the first word of every paragraph. Click one and reading starts right there.
⇧ start anywhere
Alt+R — toggle readertoolbar icon — sameclick a marker — start therere-trigger — replaces the session
start
03
The engine
Timing that feels like thought
01
Smart punctuation pauses
Commas and colons rest longer, sentence enders ×3, paragraph breaks hold the longest — the words already on screen, not a flashing marker.
02
Multi-word chunks
A chunk stays up as long as its words would take one at a time — so wpm means the same thing at any chunk size.
03
Long tokens, handled
URLs, numbers and long words stay atomic; oversized tokens auto-shrink past 20 characters.
04
Drift-free playback
requestAnimationFrame accumulation, not setTimeout chains. A 1000-word article holds its rhythm to the millisecond.
LIVESpeed changes while you read — ↑/↓ ±25 wpm, delay recomputed on the fly.
engine
04
Structure
One extension, three contexts
Trigger
Alt+R / toolbar
Select text, or start on the whole article — paused at the first word.
→
Content script
Overlay + engine
Shadow DOM reader, tokenizer, timing — the page's CSS can't touch it.
→
Service worker
Aloud · stats
Speech runs off-screen on system voices — close the overlay, keep reading.
→
Options page
chrome.storage.sync
Settings, live preview, and 90 days of stats — no accounts, no network.
WHY A WORKER?Aloud lives in the service worker on offline system voices, so closing the overlay never stops the reading.
structure
05
Aloud
Read with your ears, in step.
Aloud is a mode, not a transport control: it arms the voice without making a sound. Play drives everything — and the voice becomes the clock.
Measured, not trusted
Every engine event — word, sentence, utterance — snaps the display back onto the spoken word. A voice that ignores the requested rate is timed for real, not assumed.
Survives the overlay
Speech runs in the service worker on offline system voices — close the overlay and the reading continues.
Always a fallback
If speech dies early, the wpm ticker takes back over instead of freezing. No voice installed? The whole section stays hidden.
aloud
06
any article, dimmed to focus
The overlay
Zero style bleed
▸Rendered in a Shadow DOM with all: initial — the page's CSS can't touch it, and it can't touch the page.
▸Dark / light / sepia themes, three font sizes, four fonts — the choice applies everywhere, reader to options page.
