Dear AppleVis community,
ToBe SAID, a new local TTS app for macOS is officially here!
It integrates Pocket TTS directly into macOS, allowing you to use custom voices system-wide with accessibility tools like VoiceOver, Spoken Content, and Speak Selection.
ToBe SAID comes with two flexible ways to create personalized voices: Voice Cloning and Voice Design.
With Voice Cloning, you can record your own voice and turn it into a custom TTS engine for reading back text. However, since you can legally only clone your own voice—and many people don't particularly enjoy listening to the sound of their own recorded voice—we also built Voice Design.
Voice Design lets you create completely custom voices simply by describing how you want them to sound in plain text. For example, you can enter a prompt like:
"A gentle, soft-spoken 30s American female voice in an ASMR style. Medium-high pitch spoken in an unhurried, delicate murmur. Smooth and velvety timbre with subtle breathing pauses, clear articulation, and a comforting, attentive tone."
Once generated, you can preview the audio, adjust your description, and dial in a voice that feels comfortable for long reading sessions.
Under the hood, the voice design is powered by Qwen3-TTS. If you need help crafting detailed descriptions, you can even ask ChatGPT or Gemini to generate tailored Voice Design prompts for you.
The free version includes 4 standard built-in voices, with both Voice Cloning and Voice Design available as a preview to test out. Upgrading to the Pro version removes these limits so you can generate and save as many custom voices as you need.
We’d love for you to give it a try.
Free: https://apps.apple.com/app/tobe-said/id6801981584
Pro: https://apps.apple.com/app/tobe-said-pro/id6803422049
Comments
Observations on iOS version
Hello,
Just thought I would share my observations of the current iOS version. I saw the comment about a new build being added which is great but the issue I mentioned with the engine not handling rapid element navigation in VoiceOver still exists in the iOS version as it does in the Mac version. Voice quality is decent but the constant volume shifts are a bit more problematic. Fortunately I read using headphones most of the time so it isn’t the biggest deal imaginable for me but might be for someone who doesn’t use headphones or in my case hearing aids my final observation is you may want to put some focus into battery efficiency where possible I’m running this on an iPhone 16 pro Max and while its generation is stable, it’s a bit of a battery drain Which could possibly have more to do with my battery then the app itself, but it might still be worth looking at