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Ask HN: Best free software to read text aloud

50 points by n8ta ↗ HN
What is the best software to read arbitrary text aloud in a decently human sounding voice? I'd be happy with a CLI tool or a website I can just paste text into.

There are many articles I'd rather hear than read so I can rest my eyes. I've tried the builtin macOS say cmd, naturalreaders (dot) com and they both suck.

27 comments

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freediver
Try "Listen" feature at TinyGem [1] to see if you like that kind of voice (powered by Microsoft AI). It accepts URLs to articles and does extraction for you. (disclaimer: my hobby project)

[1] https://tinygem.org/listen/

n8ta
This voice is better than any I've tried. Thanks!
vmilner
Really impressed with this.
simion314
I was looking for same thing years ago but after a while the voice will no longer feel robotic (edit: it still feels robotic just you no longer notice it unless you focus on teh voice instead of the content), and you can try increase the speed slowly until you will be able to have text read to you at super speeds.

This days I use my custom scripts that use eSpeak under the hood.

gnicholas
The Pocket app has TTS that is pretty good. I believe they use Amazon Polly under the hood.
hahnchen
Ibm cloud has a text to speech I thought it was pretty good
martin-adams
I use the build-in macOS right-click > Speech option. I often use it to proofread things I'm writing and of course to read articles. I've made sure I have the enhanced quality voices in the Accessibility settings.
shpx
You can also use this from the command line with

  say hello world
To expand on your last sentence, you need to open System Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content > click on the System Voice: drop down > click Customize... and then click "Download", otherwise all the voices are still that old school robot voice.
fxtentacle
all the big cloud providers have APIs for this and they tend to have demo websites where you can paste text into.
engfan
EmacsSpeak lets you select just the text you want and reads it to you with some context as fast as you can listen. Much finer control available then in other systems.
nmfisher
Edge has built-in neural TTS, just highlight, right-click and click "Read aloud".
speedgoose
Isn’t it cloud based? I would bet a bit that’s it’s using Azure Cognitive BlaBlaBla Text to Speech.
koinedad
I use Siri on my iPhone a good amount, and recently made a Shortcut that reads the page that I am on. Usually I use triple click accessibility setting to read a page/article to me (or even kindle book). You just need to learn a few gestures to use it and it works pretty well
leobg
Not free. But Voice Dream Reader is the app I install first on any iPhone. I read any long form text with it. In fact, I’ll even go through the trouble of scanning physical books simply so I can read them in the app. I have my entire library with me wherever I go. I can take notes and highlights, and export them. I’ve even come to prefer reading a book in the app over listening to an actual audiobook version, because of the ability to read along visually and add highlights.
padheyam
Google Translate and Apple Translate both have read out aloud options..so does Microsoft Word (not free; but relevant in case you/your company has an office 365 subscription)
Jack5500
Descript also has a great TTS feature.
python273
https://tts.cns.wtf/ - I made a tiny website with Firefox'es Narrator module (used in FF's Reader view). Alex voice on macOS is a little robotic, but seems decent for me.

https://hn.cns.wtf/#32380045 - Also I have HN reader with comment reading feature, it's not so polished though (no settings, no announcement between comments)

the_omegist
Surprised it is not mentioned but :

- for software : balabolka (free, portable, customizable, tons of functions). Also DSpeech. But then you need to find the voices depending on the languages you need (some are free and/or already part of windows)

- chrome based browsers can do it through javascript and many voices are available (example from [1]) :

function speak(text) { var msg = new SpeechSynthesisUtterance(); var voices = speechSynthesis.getVoices(); msg.voice = voices[10]; msg.voiceURI = 'native'; msg.volume = 1; msg.rate = 1; msg.pitch = 2; msg.text = text; msg.lang = 'en-US';

    speechSynthesis.speak(msg);
}

speak('Short text');

speak('Collaboratively administrate empowered markets via plug-and-play networks. Dynamically procrastinate B2C users after installed base benefits. Dramatically visualize customer directed convergence without revolutionary ROI. Efficiently unleash cross-media information without cross-media value. Quickly maximize timely deliverables for real-time schemas. Dramatically maintain clicks-and-mortar solutions without functional solutions.');

speak('Another short text');

Then you can make a "Bookmarklets" to read aloud whatever you selected, for example.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21947730/chrome-speech-s...

Pixeltect
https://hq.getmatter.com

If you want to turn just about any text into a playlist with a voice that actually sounds like a human is speaking, there's no better app than Matter. I use the iOS app with a Safari extension.