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Readwave

Troubleshooting

Most Readwave issues fall into a handful of categories. Find your symptom below.

No audio

You press the hotkey, but you don't hear anything.

  1. Check the output device. Open Settings → Output device and make sure the selected device is the speakers or headphones you're actually listening on. This is the most common cause.
  2. Check Windows volume. Confirm system volume isn't muted and the app isn't muted in the Windows volume mixer.
  3. Confirm something was selected. Readwave reads your selection by default. Make sure text was highlighted before you pressed the hotkey — or switch what to read to Clipboard / Both and try again.
  4. Watch the player. If the now-playing player shows a read in progress but you hear nothing, it's almost certainly the output device (step 1).

"Engine offline" / the engine won't start

Readwave uses a local speech engine that the app starts and stops automatically — you never launch it yourself. If you see an "Engine offline" message or reads don't begin:

  1. Give it a moment. On launch the engine takes a short time to come up. The status should clear on its own.
  2. Restart Readwave. Fully quit the app and reopen it. This re-starts the engine cleanly and resolves most cases.
  3. Check antivirus. If security software blocked the engine, the app can't talk to it — see Antivirus flags the engine below.
  4. Check the first-read warm-up. A first read can be slow while the model loads — see High CPU on the first read. That's expected, not an outage.

Antivirus flags the engine

Readwave's speech engine is a bundled native executable (a packaged Python/Kokoro engine). Some antivirus and security tools flag unfamiliar executables the first time they run, even though it's part of Readwave.

If your antivirus quarantines or blocks it:

  1. Allow Readwave and its engine in your antivirus's "allowed apps" / exclusions list.
  2. Restore the file if it was quarantined.
  3. Restart Readwave so the app can start the engine.

The engine ships inside Readwave and runs locally on your machine; on the free/local path it does not send your text anywhere (see Privacy).

The hotkey doesn't work

You press Ctrl+Alt+R (or your custom key) and nothing happens.

  1. Another app may have claimed the same shortcut. Global hotkeys are first-come, first-served in Windows. If another running app grabbed your combination, Readwave won't receive it.
  2. Rebind it. Open Settings → Shortcut and choose a different, unused combination.
  3. Confirm Readwave is running. The app (or its background process) must be running for the hotkey to work. Consider enabling Launch at startup.
  4. Re-check what to read. If the hotkey does trigger but reads the wrong thing, adjust what to read.

High CPU on the first read

The first time you read something after launching, Readwave may briefly use extra CPU and take a moment to start speaking.

  • This is the neural voice model warming up — it loads once.
  • Every read after that is fast and light.
  • This is normal and not a sign of a problem.

If high CPU persists across many reads, restart Readwave.

Playback won't stop

  • Press the hotkey again (Ctrl+Alt+R by default) — the same key stops playback.
  • Or use the stop control in the now-playing player.

Still stuck?