SpeechSynthesis: cancel() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since September 2018.

The cancel() method of the SpeechSynthesis interface removes all utterances from the utterance queue.

If an utterance is currently being spoken, speaking will stop immediately.

Syntax

js
cancel()

Parameters

None.

Return value

None (undefined).

Examples

js
const synth = window.speechSynthesis;

const utterance1 = new SpeechSynthesisUtterance(
  "How about we say this now? This is quite a long sentence to say.",
);
const utterance2 = new SpeechSynthesisUtterance(
  "We should say another sentence too, just to be on the safe side.",
);

synth.speak(utterance1);
synth.speak(utterance2);

synth.cancel(); // utterance1 stops being spoken immediately, and both are removed from the queue

Specifications

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Opera Safari Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet WebView Android
cancel 33 14 49 21 7 33 62 No 7 3.0 No

See also

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Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/SpeechSynthesis/cancel