Aloud← Back to Aloud

Speed

Let the voice use your graphics card.

Aloud's most natural voices are neural networks, and a neural network is a great deal of arithmetic. Your processor can do it, but your graphics card was built for exactly this kind of work. Browsers let web pages and extensions use it through a standard called WebGPU. This page explains what changes when Aloud can use it, why it is safe, and how to turn it on where your browser leaves it off.

Kokoro, processor~3× too slow
Kokoro, graphics cardfaster than speech
Piper, eitherfast (medium voices)

The line marks real time: the voice has to be made at least as fast as it is spoken. Measured on one machine; yours will differ. On the processor alone Aloud runs several copies of the voice side by side so Kokoro can still keep up, but it is slower to start and works harder. Piper never needs the graphics card: its medium voices are fast anywhere, and its high-quality ones, which work harder, get extra copies side by side when they fall behind.

First, see where you stand

Open Aloud's settings and go to Advanced. Aloud starts its real voice worker and asks it whether it can reach your graphics card, then tells you in one sentence, naming your graphics card if it can. That answer is more reliable than any table on a website, including the one below: it is your browser, your drivers and your machine.

If it already says the voice runs on your graphics card, there is nothing to do.

Is it safe to turn on?

Yes. It does not install anything, give Aloud new permissions, or open a way in to your computer. Here is why, and the one honest caveat.

It is a web standard

WebGPU is the W3C successor to WebGL, which every browser has shipped for over a decade. Chrome and Edge have had WebGPU on by default since 2023, Safari ships it, and Firefox has it on by default on Windows. Turning it on elsewhere switches on the same code.

Nothing touches your driver directly

Pages and extensions never talk to the graphics driver. They hand the browser a description of the work; the browser checks every instruction, rejects anything out of bounds, and runs it from its own sandboxed graphics process.

Nothing leaves your device

The graphics card only does the voice's arithmetic, on the machine in front of you. Aloud sends nothing anywhere either way, and needs no extra permission to use it.

Aloud has a safety net

If the graphics card refuses part of the work, or gives up halfway through an article, Aloud notices, tells you, and carries on with the processor. You never lose your place.

The caveat

Where a browser still keeps WebGPU off, it is because it is still being tested on that system and some drivers. The realistic worst case is a glitch or a crashed tab, not harm to your computer. And it is a browser setting: every site you visit can then use WebGPU, as they already can in Chrome. Like WebGL, it tells sites what kind of graphics card you have.

You can undo it in seconds

Every step below is reversible: the setting's reset button puts it back exactly as it was.

Turn it on

Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi on by default

On Windows, macOS and ChromeOS there is usually nothing to do. If Aloud's check says it has no graphics card:

  1. Open the browser's settings, go to System, and make sure Use graphics acceleration when available is on. Relaunch if you change it.
  2. Open chrome://gpu and look for WebGPU: Hardware accelerated. If it says disabled, your graphics driver may be on the browser's list of drivers it does not trust; updating the driver is the real fix.
  3. In Aloud's settings, press Check for a GPU again.

On Linux, Chrome turns WebGPU on for some graphics cards and not others yet. If chrome://gpu shows it disabled, open chrome://flags/#enable-unsafe-webgpu , enable it, and relaunch. Despite the name, “unsafe” here means “skip Chrome's list of drivers it has not tested”, not “turn off security”: the checks and the sandbox described above still apply. A Vulkan-capable driver is needed.

Firefox two settings, a minute

Firefox has WebGPU, and on Windows it is already on for web pages. But Aloud makes its voice in a background worker, and Firefox switches WebGPU off for workers separately. So:

  1. Open a new tab, type about:config into the address bar, and accept the warning.
  2. Search for dom.webgpu.enabled . If it is false, double-click it to make it true.
  3. Search for dom.webgpu.workers.enabled and make it true. This is the one that matters for Aloud.
  4. Only if hardware acceleration is off on your machine: set gfx.webrender.all to true.
  5. Restart Firefox, then press Check for a GPU again in Aloud's Advanced settings.

Aloud's settings show these steps too, with copy buttons, whenever Firefox is the reason the voice is on the processor.

To undo it, search for the same names in about:config and click the reset arrow beside each.

Firefox for Android use Piper

Firefox on Android does not give extension workers a graphics card. Piper voices are made for exactly this: they read faster than real time on a phone's processor, in 49 languages. Supertonic 3 works too, slower than speech on an older phone, so it pauses to catch up now and then; Kokoro works, but far too slowly to enjoy.

Questions

Will it drain my battery? For the same article, a graphics card usually does the work in less time and less energy than several processor cores running flat out. On a laptop on battery, your system may still choose its power-saving graphics; that is fine.

Does Aloud need it? No. Every voice works on the processor. The graphics card makes the most natural voices start sooner and keep well ahead of the reading.

Will it download anything? Only for Kokoro. On a graphics card it reads with its full-precision build, about 347 MB, because the smaller build the processor uses (about 114 MB) produces noise instead of speech there. If you downloaded Kokoro before turning WebGPU on, Aloud's settings offer the larger build once. Piper and Supertonic use the same files either way.

Does it change what Aloud can see? No. Aloud's permissions are the same with or without it; see the privacy policy.