General TTS Discussion Thread

By Enes Deniz, 24 June, 2023

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

I wanted the title to be as broad as possible. This may be a thread where everything related to speech synthesizers and TTS, from questions and problems to suggestions and available/newly-released voices/engines, is posted. So I have two questions:
1. I already have eSpeak-NG and RHVoice on my iPhone but can anyone list all the available third-party TTS engines? New ones may be added to this list as they're released. And does anyone know whether DecTalk will be ported to iOS?
2. Would it not be great to have an option to download third-party TTS engines from within VoiceOver settings, just like we can go to App Store to download fonts? Well, just letting me quickly go the app store and having me look for fonts or TTS engines myself doesn't actually help much, so users should only see fonts if they choose to download fonts from the App Store, or TTS engines if they choose to download TTS engines/voices.

Options

Comments

By Levi Gobin on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 23:28

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

have they added rh voice for English?

By Matthew Whitaker on Sunday, June 25, 2023 - 00:17

Just now reading this post. Is RH Voice on there? I didn't know. ama check it out.

Update:
I don't see English as an option when in the app.

By Levi Gobin on Sunday, June 25, 2023 - 00:27

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I just checked out rh Voice, and there is still no English version
That’s not the worst though. Look what the developer wrote back to a two star review where someone was wishing for the English version to be provided.
There are so many English voices already available on iOS. Please read the description of our language strategy. Also, with two-star reviews like yours, this App will not attract English language users in future.
Basically you’re saying, oh, there’s a million other voices on iOS. Just use those? That’s kind of BS in my opinion.
I think just how sided people can use any font they want, we should be able to use any Voice we want. Rant over.

By Siobhan on Sunday, June 25, 2023 - 07:02

I'll never wrap my head around this whole voice thing. every IOS release, someone wants this voice, someone doesn't want that voice, can this voice be added? In my humble opinion, apple's given up on any voice development whatsoever simply because they can outsource to get voices. Now for languages that needed support as they didn't have any, I can't think of an example off the top of my head, I understand that. But they source technology that hasn't been updated in ages, have low sample rates causing Eliquence to sound tinny as someone has posted before. Personally I wish apple would really develop Alex a little more, maybe a female counterpart, and give us the ability to take what we don't want for voices off our phones and Macs. For example all the novelty voices which are stupid and incredibly unhelpful, I'd get those off faster then a prom dress. I get everyone wants their own voices like the font someone just posted. apple's probably not gonna allow that as they are sandboxed pretty well and the only way is jailbreaking your device which though not a goody goody, I'd be most unwilling to do. Here's to the next OS and maybe deleting the unwanted voices. Notice I didn't say languages because I wouldn't ever think like that.

By Enes Deniz on Sunday, June 25, 2023 - 13:08

We have a bunch of English and Russian voices for use with other software like NVDA and Talkback yet we still have more than one Russian RHVoice voices. Besides, we now also have eSpeak-NG supporting not only Albanian and Macedonian but several other languages and dialects, and eSpeak-NG can also be used on all the currently popular operating systems. So RHVoice should be totally abandoned if that's what they argue.

By Dennis Long on Sunday, June 25, 2023 - 13:18

Make it clear it is because of their response.

By Levi Gobin on Sunday, June 25, 2023 - 13:23

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

We all should be leaving once Starr reviews. That’s right I forgot espeak supported those languages. Let them know that. Let them know that they are not the only one, in Espeak was first.

By Enes Deniz on Sunday, June 25, 2023 - 13:27

What if they actually decide to stop development altogether? Do state your opinion and tell them you can lower your rating further but I would prefer to keep it at 3 for now, to incentivize them while also giving them a warning.

By Enes Deniz on Sunday, June 25, 2023 - 13:49

Let me clarify that eSpeak-NG's support for certain languages and dialects is still quite poor and it's a fact that we do have numerous English voices available, many of which are free, with excellent quality, particularly compared to voices in certain other languages. Thinking that speakers of these languages should be grateful as they now have eSpeak-NG, would not really be respectful at all either. So demanding support for English is fine, but it is also perfectly understandable that other languages have to be prioritized. For those speaking English or certain other languages as their mother tongue, finding some language they've not even heard of among the languages supported by eSpeak-NG, shouldn't necessarily mean it speaks this language well enough and speakers of this language no longer need any additional voices. Getting used to high-quality voices and demanding them is okay, but do bear in mind that many have never ever had a single one of them in their own language, so even broken eSpeak-NG voices are tremendous steps for them. You can use your iPhone in Kazakh and Persian but having voices in these languages/dialects alone doesn't fix everything either, as the default language is still Russian when trying to use the device in Kazakh, so you have to pick Kazakh from the list of rotor languages.
By the way, I've visited rhvoice.com just a few minutes ago but couldn't find the App Store link for the iOS app there. So you still have this "Coming soon" thing there, so apparently they're also slow to update the website.

By Henrik on Sunday, June 25, 2023 - 20:09

I'm one of the people who like using voices at slightly different pitches on iOS, and I don't like the fact that when you change the pitch of one thing, everything goes along with it. It would be great if you had the ability to change pitch on a per voice basis

By Zoe Victoria on Sunday, June 25, 2023 - 20:32

Pronunciations have completely stopped working for me ever since iOS 16 came out. Yes, I have tried restarting my phone, and yes, I have tried setting all the pronunciations to only the voice I use. Nothing has worked. The problem persists on my iPad as well.

By Enes Deniz on Sunday, June 25, 2023 - 21:59

We once had three variants of Zoe, but one, which should be "premium-high", is gone now. We still do have this variant for other voices like Ava and Malcolm, whose name is Jamey on iOS for some weird reason known possibly only to whoever changed it. And some Eloquence voices/variants are also named differently. Anyone know why?

By Levi Gobin on Sunday, June 25, 2023 - 22:02

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Although the premium version of this Voice has been on Mac os for over a year now, it is finally back on the iPhone

By Enes Deniz on Sunday, June 25, 2023 - 22:06

Well, why it was gone remains a question to which I currently have no plausible answers but good that it's somehow back.

By Dominic on Monday, July 3, 2023 - 13:17

Who else sees the default Australian female voice here and who else uses it

By Levi Gobin on Monday, July 3, 2023 - 15:02

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Why that particular Voice?
To me that Voice sounds awful. That is my personal opinion though.

By OldBear on Monday, July 3, 2023 - 23:43

I remember back in the days I used JAWS, some of the voices had overtones or some kind of conflict with the cheap laptop speakers that became annoying after a few minutes. A few attempted to be realistic, but never quite got there, becoming annoying. I think it was Reed and this high-pitched, child's, cartoon voice called Bobby that I eventually used the most. Neither sounded real, and neither were well understood by sighted people... probably because I had the rate cranked up most of the way.
I am lucky that I don't have any auditory issues with the stock Samantha voice, but I completely understand someone needing to find a voice that doesn't make their brain go haywire. Even if it's Grandma.

By Enes Deniz on Wednesday, July 5, 2023 - 21:41

I have tried downloading Fiona and adding Scottish English to the rotor languages several times, but all of my attempts would result in certain voices like Tom and Malcolm/Jamy being gone all of a sudden along with Fiona. I've even had to delete all rotor languages so that VoiceOver would revert to the default language, and then re-add the ones that I would need, with the help of sighted people, as VoiceOver would not speak at all. Why on earth does that happen?

By Enes Deniz on Wednesday, July 5, 2023 - 21:56

Malcolm is named Jamy on iOS, but even on iOS can you find him also as Malcolm. So he might have been struggling to discover his true identity...
Some Eloquence variants, or at least one of them, may also have been named differently than the versions for other operating systems. I am almost sure Eddy has to be named Glen, and I also think Sandy has to be named Bobby and Flo has to be named Sandy.

By JC on Thursday, July 6, 2023 - 00:22

As of iOS 17 beta 3, I'm back on Red..

By Enes Deniz on Thursday, July 6, 2023 - 09:32

You mean Reed?

By Enes Deniz on Sunday, July 9, 2023 - 20:21

Well, would anyone be interested to remind Google of my request to have Google TTS on iOS and other operating systems by Apple? You know, the more requests, the more priority. At least I hope so. And what about Microsoft and even Yandex? Even the neural voices should actually be available for free, just as the Siri voices, but even if not, at least the voices that we have on Windows (OneCore voices) we should also have on iOS. so I've not ever contacted Microsoft support and would appreciate someone more familiar with their support team doing this, but can do it myself too. And I've been searching for ways to contact Yandex support but not yet been able to do it.

By roman on Monday, July 10, 2023 - 00:10

I really do not have no hopes what so ever regarding any voices, even if we complain. In my personal view, only the American voices are prioritise and been changed, well, sort of.

I mention the American voices, because other voices of English are just trash. Specifically, Daniel, from the UK,, Kate and Oliver. voices. The UK voices are sentimental to me, because I am from England and we are the English, and the world speaks our language.

My point is, apple has given up on voices and if there is really some legendary voice in the market, then Apple will consider the text to speech revelation.

By Vsevolod Popov on Monday, July 10, 2023 - 06:35

Hi all. I agree about the thing that the behavior of RHVoice for iOS developers is bad. RHVoice have the best Russian voices on the market imho, also keeping in mind that they are free and open source. They also have great voices for Ukrainian and Polish. For those people who speak Ukrainian the solution provided by Nuance is simply horrible, it makes pronunciation mistakes here and there! So RHVoice for different languages is really needed!

By Ann Marie B on Monday, July 10, 2023 - 14:13

Hi all. Yes it would be cool to download preferred voices from the app store in the same way an app is downloaded. As for RH voice, there is still no English option. Happy Zoey premium is coming to iOs 17.

By Dennis Long on Monday, July 10, 2023 - 16:20

Eloquence Reid all the way.

By Enes Deniz on Wednesday, July 26, 2023 - 21:38

I need answers and findings on the following from users of both iOS 16 and iOS 17, as these issues I have been having for quite a while, and wish to know if you also have them.
Some or all of the following voices are deleted after being downloaded and used for some time: Fiona (Scottish English), Jamie/Malcolm (British English), Lee (Australian English), Tom (US English), Nicolas (Canadian French).
I don't know which of these voices commit suicide and which are killed by those committing suicide, but they're often deleted together so it's not that easy to be sure about it.
As I said, this has happened multiple times but the latest and present one is more critical and weird. I had downloaded and been using Jamie but then it somehow got deleted. I then wanted to download Oliver, and I also had Lee, but don't know remember whether I downloaded Lee before or after Oliver. I also used Oliver and Lee for a few days but then realized they were also gone. So I decided to stick with Eloquence for British English and Karen for Australian English, but then when I went to the settings to select Karen as the Australian English voice, I wouldn't be able to select it no matter how many times I tried. I would double-tap the Karen button and find Karen there, which was the compact voice/variant, and hear the word "Selected" when double-tapping it, but I would hear Samantha after going back to the Speech section of the VoiceOver settings where you have the rotor languages; and yes, it's Samantha who speaks when I pick Australian English from the rotor languages. And VoiceOver doesn't say "Selected" when I double-tap on Australian English once again and navigate to the Karen button. I have a screen recording that I sent to Apple when reporting feedback on that, but will have to upload it somewhere so that I can share a link with you.

By Enes Deniz on Thursday, July 27, 2023 - 17:26

It currently supports Albanian and Macedonian only.

By Enes Deniz on Saturday, September 2, 2023 - 20:23

Here's what I get when I go to Settings>Accessibility>VoiceOver>Speech>English (US)>Siri:
- Download Voice 1, 55,8 MB
- Download Voice 2, 63,3 MB
- Download Voice 3, 62,7 MB
- Download Voice 4, 66,4 MB
- Download Voice 5, 69,5 MB
* Note that these do not have the typical rotor actions like Activate or Speak Sample.
Here in turn is what I get when I go to Settings>Accessibility>Spoken Content>Voices>English>Siri under English (US):
- Voice 1, Using 72,6 MB
- Download Voice 2, 79,5 MB
- Download Voice 3, 79,5 MB
- Voice 4, Using 82,4 MB
- Download Voice 5, 90,3 MB
* These do have rotor actions.

By Enes Deniz on Thursday, November 23, 2023 - 17:23

Let's bombard whoever maintains RHVoice for iOS with App Store comments and e-mails so that they finally decide to deal with whatever that's taking so long and speed up the process.

By Singer Girl on Sunday, July 20, 2025 - 13:41

I absolutely love the default Australian Karen voice. It’s so clean and smooth. It is such an even read. By that I mean, it’s very natural and inflecting. If you tried to use her enhanced, our premium counterpart it tends to be inflections and very unnatural places so they don’t read as evenly. I’ve also had issues where the premium version of Karen will actually crash partway through reading something and he brought back up to the top of the screen while waiting blocks of text. This happened mostly in iOS 16, but it does definitely happen for sure still in iOS 18. This is on an iPhone SE third generation and it’s updated to the latest iOS 18.5. I’m also experienced this on my iPad mini sixth generation. I am using the regular Samantha Voice for my iPad though. I use a different voice for each device so that I know which one is speaking to me at any given time. So on my iPhone SE Third generation I am using default Karen. On my iPad mini six generation I’m using default Samantha. And I even have an iPhone 5 lying around in my parents house still functions and I’m not. I’m using default Tessa. I just found the default voices to have a much more even inflection while reading as well as better response of times. I also got run into issues with those voices crashing the devices. So I think right now we are better off process or wise for all of our devices to use default voices that are preinstalled or to download the default counterpart of one that we would like. This is my own personal experience as I said I had less crashing with those kind of voices so I tend to use those for over exclusively. We were talking an actual computer such as a laptop or a Mac for instance that had more processing power, but I definitely go for premium high on my Windows computer. So this kind of makes sense. And I understand the reason that people would like higher quality voices and right now. I just don’t think we have the processor power to do that and the phones and iPads just yet. I believe that will come at some point. But I am also somebody who grew up with my first computer having the keynote gold Fred Voice. I just actually found out recently that there are different voices and then Keynote gold. I was very surprised by this. I did not know. But I grew up on the default for Voice and honestly as far as I knew back then that was the only Voice. I also grew up using eloquence in jaws. I got tired of that Jaws because I actually physically get headaches from eloquence. But I figure right now if I can use the default vocalizer voices for my iPhone and iPad then I should be just fine. I also tend to do not like the human sound of the 11 labs voices. To me those are two human. I want my machines and humans to be very much distinguishable from each other. I would rather have a more machine, sounding voice on the machine. So I guess what I’m trying to say is I’d rather have a more mechanical sounding voice coming out of a machine versus something that sounds so human, but I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. But then again, as I said this is because I’ve grown up with the more mechanical voices. I even have been known to use Agnes, Bruce, Vicky, and Victoria, while I’m doing other things in reading. I really don’t have any enhanced or premium voices or voices downloaded into voiceover at this point. I use just the regular voices. I think the enhanced and premium ones sound great but we just need to get better process and then we can use them without crashing. Hopefully, that will be something that will be fixed at some point. I would eventually love to have the premium high voices that we actually get for our computers to be on the phone iPad. Because if you listen very carefully and you get any of the enhance or premium voices, they are not the same ones that the max and windows computers enjoy. Just some thing I’ve observed over the years of using voices. I’ve been totally blind and spray so I’ve had to use screen readers exclusively in order to use my technology. I apologize for any dictation errors in this post. I do have to use dictation because I have CP and I cannot physically edit The rotor with my hands. It is actually physically painful to even swipe or tap this phone. But thank you for taking that into consideration as you’re reading this and I tried to speak as clearly as possible. I do have trouble speaking too. I actually just got hearing aids on June 16 so please forgive any dictation errors that you may find here I will try to do my best to speak it deliberately and clearly accessible. This is a work in progress. Also, please understand that I do forget to insert punctuation occasionally. I don’t mean to and I will definitely continue to improve my post as I keep going on this website.

By Enes Deniz on Tuesday, July 29, 2025 - 12:12

Why do we have no child voices? I'm not talking about those two derivatives of Zoe as I don't treat them as child voices. It's true that they don't sound like chipmunk presets found in voice changers or audio editors but this doesn't make them any less artificial nevertheless and this is why they have no compact variants whatsoever.

By Winter Roses on Tuesday, July 29, 2025 - 13:38

Whenever I’m using my device, I usually set the voice speed to 100%, even when I’m reading books. The only voice that seems to handle that speed properly is Samantha Default. I don’t think the other voices have been fully optimized for that kind of reading. I’ve tried switching to some of the premium voices, hoping they’d work better, but they don’t. They’re great for navigating the device—menus, Siri, etc.—but when it comes to reading books, they fall apart. I don’t know if I’m the only one experiencing this, but when those premium voices are sped up, even just a little, they become so fast that you can’t make out what they’re saying at all. It’s not that they sound squeaky or like a chipmunk—it’s too fast and no longer sounds natural. That makes no sense to me. If this is supposed to be a premium voice, shouldn’t the quality be consistent at all speeds?
Strangely enough, I prefer Samantha default over Samantha Enhanced. The enhanced version doesn’t sound as clean, which is kind of ironic. I was telling this to someone who works on text-to-speech, like, ā€œI downloaded the premium voices thinking the quality would be better, but nope.ā€ The only other voice that works somewhat decently at high speeds is Alex, I think. It should be at a high-speed, but still be crisp and clear, similar to the Alexa voice from Amazon. Most of the others turn into this whiny, grating mess that’s unbearable on the ears. I’m like—no, just… no.

Now, about child voices. I get that some might think it’s a fun idea, especially for content aimed at kids, but realistically, I don’t see Apple adding them. There are privacy concerns and ethical issues, and knowing how many creeps are out there, it’s probably not worth the risk. Even if it’s a synthetic voice and not an actual child, the whole concept gets tricky fast. You don’t know where the data’s coming from or how they’re training those voices to sound accurate. Personally, I find the idea of using a child’s voice to read certain content kind of awkward and unsettling. It might sound cool in theory, but in practice, it doesn’t sit right. I’m not saying it should never be done—but when it comes to kids and tech, sometimes it’s better to play it safe. There are people out there with twisted minds and dark intentions, and with the way technology is evolving, the potential for misuse is too close for comfort. Best not to tempt fate, I suppose.

By Enes Deniz on Tuesday, July 29, 2025 - 13:57

Just record a short snippet and synthesize more human-like speech using some AI model; even free ones like F5TTS do the job amazingly well. Besides, Acapela and CereProc already have their own child voices. As for what voice is still intelligible at high speeds, we unfortunately no longer have access to that voice, even though the voice is definitely still present as part of iOS and most likely other operating systems: the good old compact version of Aaron.

By Blind soft on Wednesday, July 30, 2025 - 21:18

I think I may be the only person who can answer the question on why there are so limited text to speech engines on the App Store. The reason is because Apple restrict VoiceOver so much that you literally have to have special permissions to make a text speech engine for VoiceOver because when you go into the Settings app Greater than accessibility greater than VoiceOver greater than speech and then select your voice you’ll see a expendable section depending on the operating system you’re running so for iOS 18 you will have to expand it but for iOS 17 it will be completely different but anyway you’ll see this section with the text to speech engine name and all the text to speech engine voices but do you have to have a special permission that you have to sign with Apple Which I don’t understand and it doesn’t make sense because on android you can just make your own text to speech engine, but I think I may be the only person here that can explain that however there maybe more people that can as well. Anyway, that’s My thing to say here. I hope this helps.

By Joshua on Wednesday, July 30, 2025 - 23:08

He was my favorite voice but then I think it was IOS 11 that removed him from voiceover, you can still use him in apps that let you change the voice for the app

I would love it if he could be used with voiceover again

By Blind soft on Thursday, July 31, 2025 - 17:31

Just to let you guys know, you can still use the voice Aaron on macOS with VoiceOver and you don’t even have to install it, it is pre-installed. You can even use other classic voices like Arthur and Martha as well, which I think is really handy for those who want to hear legacy voices on new versions of an operating system such as macOS. Anyway, just wanted to mention that.

By Enes Deniz on Thursday, July 31, 2025 - 18:13

Most likely because Nicky is no longer present as a Siri voice. Apple avoids referring to Siri voices by their names and even removed gender information after some point where it abandoned the practice of making available one male and one female Siri voice per language and instead included an "LGBT+" US voice so the voices just have numbers and nothing else now, like robots rather than human beings, despite the attempts to make them more human-like. So I don't think Apple will bring back Aaron as long as we can use him as a Siri voice.

By Blind soft on Thursday, July 31, 2025 - 19:24

It would only make sense that I did not know this because I have a Mac running macOS 14 so that would make sense if I didn’t know that. Plus, thanks. Now more legacy voices have gone, and the only proper legacy voice is Alex which hasn’t been updated for around two years now. Please Apple, give us more text to speech stuff. This is getting ridiculous and I am really annoyed at Apple for this.

By TheBlindGuy07 on Thursday, July 31, 2025 - 19:54

Probably already mentioned, but around ios10 or ios 12 all siri voices became just so bad in quality with voiceover, I don't know if it was across all languages but I've never used any french siri voice since then.

By Kyler G on Friday, August 1, 2025 - 12:39

Where the heck is Acapela for iOS? I use the voices on Android on my BrailleSense 6 all the time and I'm logged in! It's weird—-Android has had alternative TTS engines for years now and everybody's on the bandwagon, but when Apple finally makes that possible in iOS 16, only 3 companies/devs are actually trying to make this happen. eSpeak-NG, in my opinion, is really good for language support but extremely grating on the ears. RHVoice has a bit better quality but the iOS app still doesn't support English the last time I checked. The best one I've found so far in the quality department was CerePlay, which contains all the CereProc voices. However, trying to navigate with VoiceOver with the default voice that was already in the app was a bit too slow and honestly kind of a pain the last time I used it. Still don't understand why Acapela is on macOS but not the iPhone. Only time will tell...

By Brian on Friday, August 1, 2025 - 14:18

Many moons ago, Ivona TTS was available as an option for iOS. But Amazon acquired Ivona in 2013, and by 2017 support for it on iOS was deprecated.
I have no idea why Acappella never made it to iOS. šŸ˜–

By Enes Deniz on Friday, August 1, 2025 - 15:27

As I mentioned elsewhere on this forum earlier, it is VoiceDream or whatever that app is named that prevents Acapela Group from making its own voices available on iOS independently, as the company most likely pays or otherwise pushes Acapela Group to keep its voices exclusive to that app or else you could just purchase the Acapela voices and use them system-wide, eliminating the need to purchase them separately within VoiceDream. The company has become more and more greedy over time, and finally started charging users for a monthly or annual subscription fee. I'm honestly shocked it's not yet gone bankrupt, especially given the other alternatives like Speech Central and EasyReader.