[BUG] Read Out Loud / Play voice degrades mid-playback — gets soft, speeds up, voice changes, and fades
Preflight Checklist
- [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
- [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
- [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code
What's Wrong?
When I use Read Out Loud / the Play button on a Claude Code chat response (desktop app, Windows 11), the text-to-speech starts fine but partway through it degrades: the voice gets softer, the tone/voice changes, it speeds up, and it fades out — sounding weird and garbled. It acts up frequently, especially on longer responses.
Possibly related to #66111, though the symptom differs: that issue goes silent after ~3 seconds, whereas here the audio keeps playing but progressively degrades (soft + fast + fading). The pattern looks consistent with known Chromium Web Speech API (speechSynthesis) volume/rate-control bugs in the Electron app.
What Should Happen?
The read-aloud voice should play at a consistent volume, speed, and tone for the entire response — start to finish — with no fading, no speeding up, and no change in voice/tone.
Error Messages/Logs
No error message, crash, or console log appears — there's nothing in the way of an error. The audio itself simply degrades during playback (gets soft, speeds up, voice changes, fades).Steps to Reproduce
Open the Claude Code desktop app on Windows 11, have Claude produce a (preferably longer) response, then click the Read Out Loud / Play button at the bottom of the response. The voice starts normally, then partway through it gets softer, the tone/voice changes, it speeds up, and fades out — sounding garbled. It happens repeatedly across responses.
Claude Model
None
Is this a regression?
I don't know
Last Working Version
_No response_
Claude Code Version
2.1.195 (Claude Code)
Platform
Anthropic API
Operating System
Windows
Terminal/Shell
PowerShell
Additional Information
Feature requests (read-aloud improvements):
- Play from a specific spot — let me click anywhere in the response to start/continue playback from that point, instead of only from the beginning.
- Word highlighting during playback — highlight each word/sentence as it's read aloud (like Microsoft Word's Read Aloud), so I can follow along visually.
- Pause/resume with a chosen point — pause and resume, and choose where playback continues.
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6 Comments
same issue
2nd this, same thing, my first thought was "Claude, are you drunk?"
I am using the windows app, Win 11, I checked both chat/cowork and code in the app and it's the same on both.
For me, i click the read aloud feature before Claude Code is done with the whole reaponse...then the read aloud feature stops when the whole response finishes and i can't go back and have it read aloud from where it stopped. I would like to put my cursor where i want it to start reading and click play.
Hopefully they will have an option where you can click on the area where you want it to start reading out loud for you. But for now, I use this great program my son invented. Check it out https://shmia.co/
include, a playback from mid session feature. more specifically. pressing the button from the start of any paragraph. having to hear it from the beginning after a long session is.... flip table worthy. i just need to know what happened at critical moments not hear an entire book to get to the climax
I experience this bug also on the Android, Linux, and Web interfaces.