In years gone by, text to speech software was rather expensive, but these days there are excellent text to speech tools available free of charge. We're here to help you find the very best tools that will make converting written documents to audio files as easy as possible.
Text to speech software can be enormously helpful for anyone who's visually impaired, or has a condition like dyslexia that makes reading on screens tricky. It can also help overcome language barriers for people who read a language but don't speak it, or are in the process of learning.
- Speech-to-text software, or dictation software, lets you control your computer, dictate text, or both. These are the options for Mac OS X users. Speech-to-text software, sometimes known as dictation software, is something that lets you talk to the computer in some form and have the computer react appropriately to what you are saying.
- For example, a Spanish voice must be used for Spanish and a French voice must be used for French. To save the computers speech to a sound file, click Save To Sound.
- The Best Free Text-to-Speech Software app downloads for Mac: Voice TextSpeech Pro Elements Toau SpeechMirror Speechissimo Listen Later. The Best Free Text-to-Speech Software app downloads for Mac.
- Text to speech software has become a common choice for many to read web contents, eBooks, PDF files, clipboard contents etc. It is very helpful for people suffering from dyslexia, students pursuing eLearning and even content editors who have to read a large amount of content on computers daily.
Text to speech software is also ideal if you want to listen to a document while doing something else, if you find it easier to retain information you've heard, or if you want to sense-check something you've written.
VDR arranges most documents you import into a clean, easy to read format that is customizable. Can control the size of margins, select from several fonts & adjust the size, change text, background & highlight colours. Can swipe and view text in original layout/format or view as plain text and lose all the formatting for a simpler view of material.
Here's our pick of the best free text to speech software for reading either individual paragraphs or whole documents aloud.
1. Balabolka
Save text as a spoken audio file, with customizable voices
Lots of voices to choose from
There are a couple of ways to use Balabolka's free text to speech software: you can either copy and paste text into the program, or you can open a number of supported file formats (including DOC, PDF, and HTML) in the program directly. In terms of output you can use SAPI 4 complete with eight different voices to choose from, SAPI 5 with two, or the Microsoft Speech Platform if you download and install the necessary files. Whichever route you choose, you can adjust the speech, pitch and volume of playback to create custom voice.
In addition to reading words aloud, this free text to speech software can also save narrations as audio files in a range of formats including MP3 and WAV. For lengthy documents you can create bookmarks to make it easy to jump back to a specific location and there are excellent tools on hand to help you to customize the pronunciation of words to your liking.
With all these features to make life easier when reading text on a screen isn't an option, Balabolka is best free text to speech software around.
2. Natural Reader
Free text to speech software with its own web browser
Choice of interfaces
Natural Reader is a free text to speech tool that can be used in a couple of ways. The first option is to load documents into its library and have them read aloud from there. This is a neat way to manage multiple files, and the number of supported file types is impressive, including ebook formats. There's also OCR, which enables you to load up a photo or scan of text, and have it read to you.
The second option takes the form of a floating toolbar. In this mode, you can highlight text in any application and use the toolbar controls to start and customize text to speech. This means you can very easily use the feature in your web browser, word processor and a range of other programs. There's also a built-in browser to convert web content to speech more easily.
3. Panopretor Basic
Easy text to speech conversion, with WAV and MP3 output
Exports in WAV and MP3 formats
As the name suggests, Panopreter Basic delivers free text to speech conversion without frills. It accepts plain and rich text files, web pages and Microsoft Word documents as input, and exports the resulting sound in both WAV and MP3 format (the two files are saved in the same location, with the same name).
The default settings work well for quick tasks, but spend a little time exploring Panopreter Basic's Settings menu and you'll find options to change the language, destination of saved audio files, and set custom interface colors. The software can even play a piece of music once it's finished reading – a nice touch you won't find in other free text-to-speech software.
If you need something more advanced, a premium version of Panopreter is available for US$29.95 (about £20, AU$40). This edition offers several additional features including toolbars for Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer, the ability to highlight the section of text currently being read, and extra voices.
4. WordTalk
An extension that adds text to speech to your word processor
Customizable voices
Developed by the University of Edinburgh, WordTalk is a toolbar add-on for Word that brings customizable text to speech to Microsoft Word. It works with all editions of Word and is accessible via the toolbar or ribbon, depending on which version you're using.
Text To Voice Software For Mac
The toolbar itself is certainly not the most attractive you'll ever see, appearing to have been designed by a child. Nor are all of the buttons' functions very clear, but thankfully there's a help file on hand to help.
There's no getting away from the fact that WordTalk is fairly basic, but it does support SAPI 4 and SAPI 5 voices, and these can be tweaked to your liking. The ability to just read aloud individual words, sentences or paragraphs is a particularly nice touch. You also have the option of saving narrations, and there are a number of keyboard shortcuts that allow for quick and easy access to frequently used options.
5. Zabaware Text-to-Speech Reader
A great choice for converting text from websites to speech
Good file format support
Despite its basic looks, Zabaware Text-to-Speech Reader has more to offer than you might first think. You can open numerous file formats directly in the program, or just copy and paste text.
Alternatively, as long as you have the program running and the relevant option enables, Zabaware Text-to-Speech Reader can read aloud any text you copy to the clipboard – great if you want to convert words from websites to speech – as well as dialog boxes that pop up. Zabaware Text-to-Speech Reader can also convert text files to WAV format.
Unfortunately the selection of voices is limited, and the only settings you can customize are volume and speed unless you burrow deep into settings to fiddle with pronunciations. Additional voices are available for a US$25 fee (about £20, AU$30), which seems rather steep, holding it back from a higher place in our list.
Once again, I am in a place where I can’t work directly with my servers to test the NetInstall steps and images, so... we’ll take a brief detour here to take a quick look at your Mac’s built-in dictation features.
I can hear you now
You may think you have to wait for Siri to appear in macOS Sierra before you can talk to your Mac, but your Mac already has a way to listen to everything you say and to turn what it hears into text. You can enable this feature, which supports over 30 languages and many more dialects, using the Dictation & Speech preference in System Preferences.
Voice To Text Software For Macbook
Apple’s speech to text features are turned off by default, so before you can use this feature you need to turn it on.
- Open System Preferences.
- Click Dictation & Speech, which you’ll find in the middle of System Preferences’ fourth row.
- Click the radio button that says On. You will see a message warning you that using your Mac’s dictation option the way it’s currently set up will send your spoken text to Apple to be converted.
- Click Enable Dictation. The default keyboard shortcut to begin dictating is to press your Mac’s fn key twice. If you aren’t using an Apple keyboard with an f* key, make note of or choose a different shortcut key.
Let’s give this a test:
- Open the TextEdit app.
- Select File > New to create a new document.
- Tap the fn (or your selected shortcut key) twice and began speaking to your Mac.
Note that what you say will almost immediately begin to appear on your screen. You should also note that your normal speech doesn’t make for very good text, because your normal speech doesn’t usually include punctuation. So, let’s work out a little “speech-to-text”.
Learning to speak again
Instead of your normal speech, speak the following italicized text exactly as it’s written, but first, press the fn key twice:
This is great
Exclamation point
I’m using Apple’s speech to text feature
Period
New paragraph
Pretty great
Comma
Isn’t it
Question mark
When you’re done, press the fn key.
As you can see, this isn’t exactly pretty sounding speech, but, as you can also see, what you said is exactly what appears on the page. And that’s pretty great!
So, about that warning
By default, Apple’s dictation feature uses Apple’s servers to convert your speech to text. This can be a problem, because whatever you’re saying gets sent across the Internet, converted to text, and sent back to you; and if you don’t have access to the Internet you can’t use this feature. So let’s remedy that:
- Open System Preferences.
- Click Dictation & Speech.
- Put a check in the box that says Use Enhanced Dictation.
You Mac will download the speech-to-text translation files to your Mac’s hard drive. As soon as the download is complete you’ll have access to the dictation feature without an Internet connection and you don’t have to worry about your romantic love poetry traveling to infinity and beyond to get turned into text.
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