eSpeak for iPhone

By techluver, 23 August, 2016

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hello,
Does someone know if there is an app that provides eSpeak for iPhone? It would be super duper nice to find one. thanks!

Options

Comments

By TJT 2001 on Wednesday, August 24, 2016 - 09:18

No such app exists.

By Jake on Wednesday, August 24, 2016 - 09:18

Considering that 3rd-party tts isn't an option on iOS, I don't see how this could work at present unless offered by its own app, in which case functionality would be limited. Though why anyone would actually want espeak given an alternative...

By Toonhead on Wednesday, August 24, 2016 - 09:18

Apple has an ongoing contract with Nuance, the makers of Vocalizer voices. So the chances of seeing Espeak on the iPhone is probably nill. If you really want that, you'd have a much better shot of getting that sort of thing on an Android device, since it's more open.

By Igna Triay on Wednesday, August 24, 2016 - 09:18

Talking about e speak, is there e speak for mac?

By techluver on Wednesday, August 24, 2016 - 09:18

Hey,
Thanks for your help. I just need it because there is no vocalizer Afrikaans, and espeak is the only synth supported.

By Jake on Wednesday, August 24, 2016 - 09:18

In reply to by Igna Triay

Espeak technically will run on a Mac, in that you can feed it text and it will speak it. As of yet however, no one's developed a version that interfaces with the Macintosh's TTS manager API, so it can't interface to VoiceOver. Unlike on iOS, this could be done fairly easily on a Mac, however I'm guessing there's not much demand for it else it would have been done.

By Nathan Stocking on Wednesday, August 24, 2016 - 09:18

Unfortunately, apple is unlikely to open the tts infrastructure. However, we might be able to convince, for example, the developer of voice dream to use espeak if we can port it. This would at least allow you to listen to text. However, there might be some difficulties in getting all the sound output systems working. One perhaps easier way to get this working in the shortterm is to set up a server that can convert text using espeak, a normal Linux program, and send back audio. This could be accomplished quite easily.

By Tanvir-Nayem on Sunday, June 24, 2018 - 09:18

Hello Everyone. Is there any update of this topic. I would like to add different language support for iOS voice over service in iPhone. Is it possible to add language support besides apple provided language.

If yes, then what should be the approach to do that ? Please help.

By Justin on Sunday, June 24, 2018 - 09:18

No,
no update for this. Basically, apple provided languages are what you get. I don't think you can put other stuff on this like what you're wanting unless you jailbreak your device.

By Tanvir-Nayem on Sunday, June 24, 2018 - 09:18

Thank to inform.
Could anyone tell me what approach they took to implement these scenario. Or anything, what steps they took or process they follow to implement eSpeak in iOS.
This will be really helpful.

By Brooke on Sunday, June 24, 2018 - 09:18

There are no steps, because eSpeak doesn't work on iOS.

By Justin on Sunday, June 24, 2018 - 09:18

Nor will it.
If the speech is not licensed by apple, or nuance, or whatever they use it won't work in iOS. As Brook said, there are no steps for this, it's just how apple does it. Would it be nice if there were more speech options, sure but I'm not complaining. It's perfect the way it is.

By techluver on Sunday, June 24, 2018 - 09:18

You could always port eSpeak to work for IOS, then implement it into your app. There is an app that did exactly this with a greenlandic voice, since there is no greenlandic for IOS. But it would only function within your app.

By Emre TEO on Thursday, November 24, 2022 - 09:18

With iOS 16, we have the ability to do this, even an app that offers it has already gone into beta.

By JC on Thursday, November 24, 2022 - 09:18

Hi there, this sounds interesting. what's the name of the app?

By Chris on Thursday, November 24, 2022 - 09:18

Does this work on macOS? I installed Ventura on my 2013 MacBook Air but it says it requires a Mac with Apple Silicon. Can you make this a universal binary?

By Nikola Jovic on Thursday, November 24, 2022 - 09:18

Hello,
the developer has commented in the past and mentioned that he will release an app for Mac OS too.
The one you are trying to install is just an iOS app, it works on M1 Mac but just for speaking text, not with VoiceOver support.
This is coming in the near future.