How to Use the Floating Helperbird Button

Learn how to turn on the floating Helperbird button, a small button on every website that opens the Helperbird accessibility toolbar without using the browser toolbar.

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What is the Floating Button?

The floating button is a small circular button with the Helperbird owl logo that appears in the corner of every web page. Click it and the Helperbird accessibility toolbar slides open with your favourite tools, read aloud, dictionary, translate, immersive reader, voice typing, the reading ruler, reading mode, and more, so you never have to open the browser toolbar to reach them.

Looking for the full guide? See How to Use the Helperbird Accessibility Toolbar for everything the toolbar can do, including using it while Helperbird is paused and in lockdown or kiosk mode.


Step 1: Open Helperbird

Click the Helperbird icon in your browser toolbar. It looks like a small owl and is usually in the top-right corner of your browser. This opens the Helperbird panel.


Step 2: Turn on the Floating Button

At the top of the panel, click the toolbar button (the small toolbar icon in the header). It lights up to show it is on, and a small round Helperbird button now appears on every page you visit. Click the same button again at any time to turn it off.

Tip: Schools and organisations can turn the button on for everyone using a managed policy, so people do not have to enable it themselves. When it is locked on by an administrator, the button shows a "Managed by your admin" note.


Step 3: Move the Button

Drag the button, or the open toolbar, anywhere on the screen using the move handle, and Helperbird remembers the spot for next time. You can also Tab to the move handle and use the arrow keys to nudge it, holding Shift for fine, one-pixel adjustments.


Video Tutorial

Coming soon



Need Additional Help?

If you have any questions or run into any issues, please contact the Helperbird support team. You can reach us at Helperbird support. We are happy to help you get the most out of Helperbird.

What People Are Saying

Join over 1,000,000 people who use Helperbird every day.

Fantastic! Great software and simple to use even for kids new to the computer. Provides the option to tailor every variable to make any page easier to read. Really excellent. Super helpful support too. Great job!

Rebecca Meldrum

Rebecca Meldrum

High School teacher

Have an amazing collection of assistive tools that have benefits for everyone. For me, the combination of Microsoft's Immersive Reader and Apple's reading machine voice (US Alex) makes Helperbird my first choice for processing web content.

Jim Sprialis

Jim Sprialis

Assistive technology specialist

Saw it mentioned at Cast last night! Love Immersive Reader.

Taylor Coffee

Taylor Coffee

Firefox user

It's easy to use with every webpage since it's just an extension. You can access lots of different functions to declutter a page (show only the relevant text and not ads, for example). You can add post it notes to annotate, and it has things like text-to-speech.

Harmony M.

Harmony M.

Program Manager

Thank you!! Love the tint feature.

A Google User

A Google User

Helperbird user

This is a great little extension, lightweight and non intrusive. With dyslexia its reading that's an issue, not the underlying intelligence. An aid such as this one, can help deliver the world to some who may not otherwise have received it. Great Work.

Colm Murphy

Colm Murphy

Helperbird user

Helperbird logo: Stylized owl with large yellow eyes and a beige face, against a green background.

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