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textweaver reads your course documents aloud and follows along with a highlight. This page is the shortest route from download to hearing a document, followed by pointers to the options most relevant to coursework.

Get it

On Windows, download the package from the releases page. Its name ends in windows-x86_64.zip.
Right-click the zip, choose Extract All, and select a folder of your own.
Open the folder and run textweaver.exe.
Windows warns on first launch because the program is not code-signed. Choose "More info", then "Run anyway".

For other systems, see Installing textweaver.

Hear a document

Press Ctrl+O and choose a file.
Press Space to start and pause reading.
Press F1 for help. Press ? for a list of every key.

What it opens

Plain text, Markdown, HTML, PDF, EPUB, Word, PowerPoint, spreadsheets, and a number of other formats. Scanned pages are read through optical character recognition (OCR), which requires a download you approve first. Converting documents lists the formats and explains OCR.

Move around

h moves to the next heading.
Reading and moving around lists the keys for moving by word, sentence, and paragraph.
F10 opens the menus. F2 opens the command palette, where you type the name of a command.

Adjust it to your needs

Voice and speaking rate: Speech engines and voices.
Theme, font, and spacing: Themes and Reading aids.
Marking your place and recording your own thoughts: Bookmarks, notes, and highlights.

The reading aids are options, and the research on several of them is mixed. Evaluate each against your own reading and keep only those that help.

If something goes wrong

Troubleshooting
Known limits
Privacy: what textweaver sends over the network. Without a request from you, it sends nothing.

Read Using textweaver with a screen reader first. It explains how to avoid hearing every announcement twice, once from textweaver and once from your screen reader.