How to Use Microsoft Immersive Reader for Easier Reading

Microsoft Immersive Reader is a free accessibility tool built into several Microsoft products and the Edge browser. It strips a page down to clean, readable text and adds a suite of tools that make reading easier — including text-to-speech, adjustable font and spacing, color backgrounds, grammar highlights, and translation. You do not need to install anything extra to use it in Edge.

In Microsoft Edge, when you visit a news article, blog post, or most text-heavy web pages, look for a small book icon in the address bar at the top right. Clicking it opens Immersive Reader — the ads, sidebars, and extra page elements disappear, leaving only the text in a clean, distraction-free layout.

Once inside Immersive Reader, a toolbar at the top gives you access to all the features. Text Preferences lets you increase font size, change line spacing, and switch to a wider or narrower column width. Some people find a narrower column (about 40 characters wide) easier to track than full-page text. You can also change the background color — a soft yellow, green, or sepia tone reduces eye strain for many readers compared to a bright white background.

The Line Focus feature highlights one, two, or three lines at a time and dims the rest of the text. This can help readers who lose their place or feel overwhelmed by a full page of text. Only the highlighted lines are in focus; the rest fade out.

Read Aloud (the speaker icon) reads the text in a natural voice, highlights each word as it is spoken, and lets you adjust the speed and choose from several voices including male and female options. You can pause, rewind, and jump forward.

For anyone learning to read or working through a text with unfamiliar vocabulary, the Picture Dictionary feature shows an image when you click on a word — helpful for visual learners. Grammar Tools can underline nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in different colors, useful for students.

Translation converts the entire page to another language — select from the dropdown and the text updates instantly. This is helpful for reading content in a second language or for English language learners.

Beyond Edge, Immersive Reader is built into Word Online, OneNote, Outlook on the web, Microsoft Teams, and many educational platforms — look for the book icon in the View menu of Word or OneNote.