I was on YouTube looking for a good Free Text To Speech WebSite.

I see you make an account then you can use it.

Then another video says you have to copy the code on the Page.

Another video says you have to get PlugIns for it.

Before I make an Account can anybody tell me if you can just make an Account Log In and Past Text and use it?

Or is there something better out there?

I do want it to be Free.

 

Text-to-speech is a feature built in to most modern operating systems. Why do you need a website to do it?

 

On my computer Ctrl Shift U will start the computer reading to me. (in most cases, but not all)
While at this forum I can select a block of text and right click, then "read aloud".

 

I was on YouTube looking for a good Free Text To Speech WebSite.

I see you make an account then you can use it.

Then another video says you have to copy the code on the Page.

Another video says you have to get PlugIns for it.

Before I make an Account can anybody tell me if you can just make an Account Log In and Past Text and use it?

Or is there something better out there?

I do want it to be Free.

Since you don't say what website you are taking about it is not possible to answer the question.

 

Text-to-speech is a feature built in to most modern operating systems. Why do you need a website to do it?

These websites offer AI driven voices that sound like realistic speech, It is far more sophisticated than the tesx-to-speech features in OSs.

 

Text-to-speech is a feature built in to most modern operating systems. Why do you need a website to do it?

On my fairly new Intel / Windows 11 system, the Ctrl-Shift-U key combination does nothing. I did enable / install / configure something a couple months back to get voice-to-text, and it works ok (not smoothly but OK)

So how does this modern operating system like me to designate some text and initiate the "voice" playback mode? I use a couple e-textbooks with their designated apps or websites, and can deal with the ridiculously poor audio simulation of a voice, but with Siri and Alexa out of puberty and approaching mid-life crisis, I'd expect far better text-to-speech performance on a system with the mflops mine and most others have.

(my memory is really declining, so I may well be just forgetting how I've done it in the past!)

 

I was on YouTube looking for a good Free Text To Speech WebSite.

I see you make an account then you can use it.

Then another video says you have to copy the code on the Page.

Another video says you have to get PlugIns for it.

Before I make an Account can anybody tell me if you can just make an Account Log In and Past Text and use it?

Or is there something better out there?

I do want it to be Free.

Balabolka has a good reputation, Panopreter might be good.

there have been conversion type apps for a long time, I want to be able to just hilight text onscreen and have it read to me.

 

I thought I did put the name of the WebSite.

The WebSite is Text To Speech Open AI.

One video on YouTube says you can just make an Account and Login and Past Text and have it Read.

Another WebSite says you have to get Plugins.

Before I make an Account can anybody tell me if you can just use it as is?

As for the Built in Text To Speech in Windows and most Programs is is very Basic and does not have that many Voices and settings.

 

I thought I did put the name of the WebSite.

The WebSite is Text To Speech Open AI.

One video on YouTube says you can just make an Account and Login and Past Text and have it Read.

Another WebSite says you have to get Plugins.

Before I make an Account can anybody tell me if you can just use it as is?

As for the Built in Text To Speech in Windows and most Programs is is very Basic and does not have that many Voices and settings.

A link would be the way to point us at the site.

 

Based on ronsimpson comment. (post #3)

On MY computer (iMac2023) right clicking yields:

.

Ya’akov just got captured in the screen shot.

Also have a similar feature on my iMac 2010

 

Macs had rudimentary text-to-speech when they launched in 1984.

So is this discussion about "high quality" text-to-speech provided by an AI, as @Ya’akov speculates?

 

Here us the WebSite https://ttsopenai.com

I think this is not the Open AI Talk To Speech.

If you go to Talk To Speech Open AI I think you get code on the screen part way down I did not know what to do.

Is the WebSite https://ttsopenai.com the same thing from Open AI?

 

Speech to text comes free with every windows package, press the windows key + H and a little microphone icon appears above the browser bar. Make sure the microphone icon is lit karma then put your cursor on the text field you want to write in and start talking.

 

Speech to text comes free with every windows package

.... but the TS wants text-to-speech.
Windows has the Narrator function.

 

Speech to text comes free with every windows package, press the windows key + H and a little microphone icon appears above the browser bar. Make sure the microphone icon is lit karma then put your cursor on the text field you want to write in and start talking.

Speech to text is an entirely different function. The OP, like myself, was interested in Text-to-speech; a way for people with poor eyesight or other deficits /disabilities making it difficult to read at times, or for extended lengths of time. The TTS function I might also say, is a pleasant convenience at times for many computer users who don't have such issues.

 

I was on YouTube looking for a good Free Text To Speech WebSite.

...Or is there something better out there?

I do want it to be Free.

I'm assuming you looked at the "Similar threads" listings. I haven't worked clear through all of them,,, yet, but I'll contribute something that's current and pertains to the current versions of MS Word.

Word has had some "read" or Speak functions for some time. CURRENTLY (Q2 2025), the Alt-Ctrl-Space key combination will have Word read your Word document to you, and I must say it does quite nicely! It is US or North American colloquial speech, but quite clear, with good enunciation and timing, even the very slight accents within words that make the voices far more normal and "personal" than R2D2, Siri or Alexa! Older versions of word use different commands, and didn't work as well as, or sound as good as this version.

Word has been getting more cooperative and accepting of PDF files, so it may well be possible to use a current or relatively current version of Word to read you various PDFs you have.

I (too) certainly wish I could just hi-light something with a swipe of my mouse, or finger on a touchpad, and get a double right-click to have the selection spoken to me, but I'm not finding that yet on Windows systems.

 

Here us the WebSite https://ttsopenai.com

I think this is not the Open AI Talk To Speech.

If you go to Talk To Speech Open AI I think you get code on the screen part way down I did not know what to do.

Is the WebSite https://ttsopenai.com the same thing from Open AI?

I think you mean to say "Text-to-speech"? (as opposed to "Talk To Speech")

 

Speech to text is an entirely different function. The OP, like myself, was interested in Text-to-speech; a way for people with poor eyesight or other deficits /disabilities making it difficult to read at times, or for extended lengths of time. The TTS function I might also say, is a pleasant convenience at times for many computer users who don't have such issues.

A while back a friend of mine had a similar request. They wanted to use their scanner to copy articles and then the text to speech software to read them out loud.
The fatal flaw is that a scanned document saves a file with the picture of the text, not the characters of the text.
Thus there still needs to be software to convert the images of the characters into the actual text. THAT may be a serious challenge.

 

Hello,

To convert the image to text, you would need an OCR ( optical character recognition ) software.
My scanner software has a simple one included.
It can make failures during the process.

Bertus

 

Certainly an OCR interface utility would solve the problem. A GOOD OCR package is neither simple nor cheap.