I like the ‘read aloud’ function in Microsoft Edge. After the latest update and possibly the one before the ‘read aloud’ function seems to be missing. Normally you click on the Immersive Reader icon and then ‘read aloud’ is on the toolbar. The voices are really good too.
Is anyone else seeing this?
Ubuntu 21.10
MS Edge 99.0.1150.46
I use “festival” and “espeak” to do text-to-speech. For example, on login my system announces my display manager:
echo $DESKTOP_SESSION>~/tmp.txt ; festival --tts ~/tmp.txt
Hi, 
I may recommend the pico2wave command which is really great. 
sudo apt-get install libttspico-utils sox
It´s a fully-fledged speech synthesizer for the command-line and it´s easy to write a script for it. I´m using it on an almost daily basis.
The best thing about it is the fact that the natural-sounding voices (m/f) are perfectly understandable and not mechanical at all.
The following languages can be used:
de-DE, en-US, en-GB, es-ES fr-FR, it-IT
Here is a link with a pretty good yet concise description of it (albeit in German):
Sprachausgabe › Wiki › ubuntuusers.de .
That way you´re independent of any browser. You can use it for having text-files or pdf-files read out to you, too.
Many greetings
Rosika 
I’ve used espeak before, but I don’t think I’ve used festival. The espeak package was pretty good as I recall.
The reason I liked the built-in Read Aloud was that it was built-in and it sounds so natural. It’s the best sounding TTS I’ve ever heard.
Maybe I’ll look into pico2wave too. If it also will read PDFs and other things with a natural voice that could be useful.
Thanks all.
Noticed that too. I missed that feature. To get around this, at least temporarily, I’ve downloaded an older version (98). Although, IDK if Microsoft is going to include it again in future releases. 
I don’t know which distro are you using, but here is the .deb for Debian-based distros or the PKGBUILD for Arch-based ones.
Hi again, 
Yes, it´ll read whatever you throw at it.
Just copy any text and insert it into e.g. a script.
I use it this way (running the script I´ve written):
/home/rosika/Desktop/Kopie_Skripte/tts_script_7_deLuxe_focal.sh
Programm starten? Eingabe: j, n j # start the script
bitte wählen Sie die gewünschte Sprache aus: # choose language/variations
Englisch=1, Deutsch=2. schneller Deutsch=3, sehr schnell Deutsch=4, eng_mod=5 1
This is an example text. # example
Warning: an existing sandbox was detected. mplayer will run without any additional sandboxing features
MPlayer 1.3.0 (Debian), built with gcc-9 (C) 2000-2016 MPlayer Team
do_connect: could not connect to socket
connect: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.
Playing /tmp/test.wav.
libavformat version 58.29.100 (external)
Audio only file format detected.
Load subtitles in /tmp/
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [pcm] Uncompressed PCM audio decoder
AUDIO: 16000 Hz, 1 ch, s16le, 256.0 kbit/100.00% (ratio: 32000->32000)
Selected audio codec: [pcm] afm: pcm (Uncompressed PCM)
==========================================================================
AO: [pulse] 44100Hz 1ch floatle (4 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback...
A: 1.8 (01.7) of 2.0 (02.0) 0.5%
Exiting... (End of file)
Programm starten? Eingabe: j, n n # end script or start it again
Das Programm wird nun beendet. # signoff-message
If you or anyone else might be interested in the script I´d be glad to share it. 
It´s a pretty simple script though.
Many greetings from Rosika 
BTW:
The message concerning the sandbox results from running the script within firejail.
Of course it´s possible to run the tts-script outside it as well.