Text to Speech - Reviews

I’ve been using TexttoSpeech for so many years and it’s never been a great app but it gets the job done. The latest update has a sickening UI and removes the feature of exporting your text as a sound file. TexttoSpeech is bad now.

I would think that BOTH the female voices AND the MALE voices would be available for english. At least make ONE of the english voices available only as male by default (i.e.- instead of UK English female voice, have UK English male voice available for free, or do that for the US English voice—it really doesn't matter much which is made available by default, but when I cannot speak (as my friend couldn't) and want to try using an app instead of writing constantly, I would prefer to have my gender available. I know that probably sounds extreme, but my friend became ill with a terrible case of the flu and his throat hurt whenever he spoke. He was afraid he might damage his vocal cords, so I came up with TexttoSpeech idea instead of paper and pen. But he's a he.).
I do agree the voice quality is probably the highest I've heard anywhere. You're awesome for that.

I would also like to comment on the fact that the US English Female voice sounds, well, provocative (in the most common modern-day use of the word—also for lack of a better… child-safe word)

I recently had neck surgery. During the surgery, one of my voice box nerves became paralyzed. I am not supposed to use it for a while to help it heal. Hopefully, it's use will come back on its own. In the meantime, I have 4 kids and an amazing husband who have no idea what I'm saying.... Until now! I am so grateful for TexttoSpeech that allows me to communicate again without playing charades (which my family is horrible at) Even if it does takes me a bit longer now than actually speaking. I like the ability to save often-used phrases. The voices are among the most realistic I've heard. The only thing that could make TexttoSpeech better, is if I could push a button to delete out all of what I had previously written. I hate having to select everything & delete. Sometimes I forget, & that is just a big hot mess :) it would also be nice if the phrases saved in alphabetical order in addition to the order entered, as it saves them now. The description says that it can read emails, but either I'm really slow witted, or it doesn't do that. At least not that I've figured out. Not unless you copy & paste them in. It is also notable that you cannot use TexttoSpeech unless you have an internet connection. The only way to use it without, is with the saved phrases. I haven't experienced having to have an 'account' yet. All in all, TexttoSpeech is a definite keeper for me. :) Thanks again for developing such an amazing app for us to use! :) keep up the good work!

I lost my voice 7 months ago, and I've been using TexttoSpeech to talk to people. Very sophisticated text recognition. It even changes intonation depending on the punctuation you use! It reads the sentence differently if you use a ? or a ! and it pauses for periods and commas. There are many different voices and languages, if you want to entertain people and make light of your disability. They were a great hit at the last party :)

If you're using TexttoSpeech as your voice, here are some great tricks I've come up with! The iPhone can be quiet, especially when there's any competing noise. I bought an iHome mini-speaker that connects through the headphone jack, so the voice carries MUCH louder. It's great! I also bought a portable fold-up keyboard, that connects to the iPhone through wireless Bluetooth. This makes it much faster to type what you want to say!

Please, please keep upgrading TexttoSpeech. There are some pronunciation and intonation problems that can be improved. It also acts buggy sometimes and won't speak until I restart it. Saved audio clips often do not play. Overall a really great app. I don't know what I would do without it, now that I have no voice. I hope it will continue to get better and better; I will come back and review the upgrades!

Really the only thing TexttoSpeech has that other text-to-speech apps don't have is the iSpeech voices. Other than that, it's really nothing special at all. My biggest complaint is that you can't use the voices without an internet connection. With other high quality TTS apps (such as Voice Reader by Linguatec, or Speak It! by Future Apps, Inc.), if you purchase a voice, that voice is downloaded to your phone, and you can use it with no internet connection required. With TexttoSpeech, however, even if you pay for a voice, you don't technically get it. You just get to access it on iSpeech's servers. Then, as I discovered today, it can only handle a few sentences at a time. Anything more than that, and it doesn't read it. So basically, I paid to not have the voices on my phone, to only have access to them through an internet connection, and to have TexttoSpeech not read any text if I put more than a paragraph into the text window. Also, as I am blind, I use the VoiceOver accessibility feature on my iPhone. TexttoSpeech doesn't allow me to view all eight pages of available voices when using VoiceOver; I can only select from the voices on the first page. My advice to anyone looking for a good text-to-speech application: DON'T GET THIS ONE! Go with either Speak It! or Voice Reader. They've got better voices, control of voice speed, pitch and volume, and a lot more features that TexttoSpeech doesn't have.

After trying out 4 different text to speech apps, including my iMac's native text reading, iSpeech definitely has the most natural sounding voices. The trouble is TexttoSpeech needs an Internet connection like Siri does in order to do the reading. Also, TexttoSpeech won't let you do more than about a minute's worth of text reading an the full version only gives you more voices, not longer reading times. These restrictions make TexttoSpeech useless for listening to web articles or books. Quite a shame since, as I said, the voices are hands down the best I have yet heard. They have a subscription service on their website that lets non-businesses clients to convert up to 12 hours of document reading, but that is hamstrung by the fact that they restrict the voices to ones that are not appreciably better than the competitions. Hope to see better from iSpeech soon. They have great potential. They just need to unleash it.

I use TexttoSpeech to memorize my speaking parts in my Masonic Youth Organization. It was always very good for that, since I’m an auditory and visual learner. I can read over the part while listening to someone speak to it, and I can recite it along with the speaker. The best part was I could save the audio so I could listen to it again as many times as I wanted. Overall a very good app, it had all the tools I needed in the free version. However, I reduced one star since after the most recent update all of my saved audio was gone. I was upset, because I spent a lot of time typing those speaking parts. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to type them again since it would help me remember, but I’d rather not have do that since it took so much time to type them. Other than that TexttoSpeech is perfect for this purpose. I recommend it. I just hope this doesn’t happen again.

Does exactly as the description says. Cut and paste text into it and it annunciates. Voices are excellent. Much better than Speak It. I downloaded both and tested thoroughly. Speak it beats iSpeech hands down in functionality. If these two companies would get together and merge their two programs we customers would have an absolute winner. Speakit has built-in speech which is great for instant, no Internet delay, whereas iSpeech accesses their server via wifi or 3G. Speak it allows you to save files in aiff format, e-mail the voice file, and a lot more. iSpeech does a lot better (near perfect) job of annunciating, but has a bothersome window that covers the text. Yes, iSpeech will save the file (and the text), but in a very weird way. I sincerely hope that Speak It implements better voice annunciation, and iSpeech implements all of the great functionality of Speak it.

I lose my voice all the time, and TexttoSpeech is great for that! But every time I get onto TexttoSpeech, it asks me the same stupid question over and over. Do you want to buy celebrity voices? Number one, no. Number two, the only people that will buy that app will be people who have nothing better to do with their lives. But anyway, get rid of the constant pop ups. Then you'll have five stars.

Newest Edit: Figured it out! When you open TexttoSpeech and it takes you to the free trial/ purchase option screen- look at the top left corner- There will be an option to continue with the limited version. This way you will at least have access to use TexttoSpeech - though you don’t have all of the fancy options and voices. To the developer- Thank You for keeping this option open! It seems hard for people to find- but it means a lot none the less that it is still there!

I’ve been using TexttoSpeech for years- and it has been a wonderful experience. It worked out great for me because the voice I particularly use was free- and if I needed a different voice then I could choose to buy them. App just updated- gives you a three day free trial and then charges you $9.99 a week!!! 🤬

I am going to miss TexttoSpeech- but at the end of my three days I will probably never use it again if it stays this way.

I am happy to change my review if it ever gets fixed. Hopefully the developer is listening!

Edit: After consideration (even though it is still a gouge) I would pay a one time $10 price for TexttoSpeech. Maybe the developer should consider that instead?

I originally got TexttoSpeech because I liked being able to save speeches. The voices were good, didn’t sound much like a text to speech program, and I had fun making Bush and Obama argue. However, since the new update came out (“iSpeech TTS” to “Text to Speech”), I have deleted it. Not only can I not save unlimited speeches, but I lost the two voices I paid for, and can’t get them back, and now I have to pay FOURTY dollars to get them all?! If it was closer to $3 or even $5 I may do it, but $40 is way too much, and the developers are just milking money now. Not to mention, I don’t know what happened, but the voices do not sound realistic anymore. They are worse than Siri! They also want me to pay another $40 PER MONTH to be able to save unlimited speeches. Sorry, but I’m not about to pay $80 for different sounding Siri thank you very much! Would NOT recommend TexttoSpeech. Just use Siri.

I just had surgery to remove my tonsils and adenoids. It's very painful so I cant really talk that well so I went searching for a app that I can text and the words would be big enough so people could read. Then I ran across a text to speech app but it was good I couldn't understand the words to well. Out of all the text to speech app this is the best and it's free. You can really understand what is being said not to robotic at all. But the only downside to this is I want to save my text so I don't have to keep retyping but when I try to save it it's asking me if I want to pay for a voice that I didn't even use or like. So I'll give TexttoSpeech 4 stars only because I can't save my text.

I'm very happy with TexttoSpeech. I lose my voice from time to time because of chronic laryngitis and I found this to be the best app to talk for me. I have two young children so I can't exactly communicate with them by writing stuff down so this is a great option. Plus they get a kick out of me having a British accent.

Two things that would greatly improve TexttoSpeech would be a single button that you can push to clear everything previously typed, and to allow the screen to rotate to landscape on my iPhone. It's so much easier to type that way.

Works perfectly! Voices are great! For me it will speak anything and will let you save anything! Definitely get TexttoSpeech! My throat has been hurting me so I downloaded TexttoSpeech to give my throat a little break. It works way better than any of the others! BY FAR! I'm not joking TexttoSpeech is great. Especially If your a girl because there are only US woman and UK woman for free but you can purchase more. They sound great. If you need more emotion try adding a exclamation mark or question mark. If you need the sentence to slow down just add periods in spaces you need to slow down or pause. Overall TexttoSpeech is great!

Just downloaded TexttoSpeech and accidentally agreed to their ridiculous subscription of $9.99 A WEEK! Now if maybe a decent price ( say $9.99 a month) then it would be no problem, but a week? Bye. If anyone else has made this mistake ( and im sure many have since it’s so sneaky and sudden) to cancel the subscription you go to your email linked to your apple store account and find their email, then scroll to the bottom to ( review your subscription) and click it. After hat their should be an option to “unsubscribe”.

You’re welcome. These devs should be a shamed of themselves, they don’t even have a website and as far as i can see, they don’t even bother to help people in this situation. This should be removed from TexttoSpeech store!

This is the best reader I’ve ever installed on my phone. The voice is very clear and saves my time when I’m preparing to go to school. Now I can easily read my PDF documents or web page contents. It is fluent, with no lags. Overall, I find it simple and clean with a clear voice. If you are a student with lots of course materials to read, TexttoSpeech comes highly recommended. My only challenge is for the developers to keep making it better!! Keep me updated on any new developments. It's my new favorite app.

Those who complain about having to be connected to the internet while using this don't seem to appreciate the extra processing power provided, which allows for the sentences to sound so natural. Even if only two female voices are included for free, that's more than enough for most use cases. The extra voices are cheaper than a pack of gum; 99 cents each or 2.99 for all (more than 10-15 total, including celebrity voice sound-alikes of Obama and Bush).

Get it -- you won't regret it.

If you need a speech app for working with special needs ... then don't waste time on this one. It is NOT free. The "use for free" button simply puts up a text input screen which quits (or crashes) when you try to launch speech when you are not connected to the internet. If you are connected it does NOT offer you speech but instead ir nvites you to register for a free trial on their web site. As far as special needs are concerned, TexttoSpeech or rather the way it is presented is FALSE and deceitful. I have not bothered to regisyter and try it out, I am too dissapointed already with the the way it all started ... if there was a Zero Star rating of a minus rating I'd post it. Thanks but NO THANKS. Don't waste my time !

I haven't used TexttoSpeech very much, however, it's worked perfectly for me every time. The only thing I have an issue is weather there is a settings button or not to change speed of reading or if you just use the phone settings to set it up (I'm just blonde). I read all the reviews and on ALL the ones that gave 1/2s seemed to just be minor bug issues that can be fixed (or people just being nit picky) try it and make your own decision

This is my first ever app store review. I am a visually impaired iphone user. My new Iphone 3G S has been a God send allowing me for the first time to comfortably use a smart phone. The only thing missing was decent TTS, and ISpeech has definitly filled the void. The clear natural sounding voice and simple interface make it easy for me to listen to web articles, RSS new content and email. The FREE voice is quite impressive, but the premium voices are incredible. There are of course things I'd like to see such as built in RSS reader that let you select content right from the application. Still this free program has acceeded my expectation. I'd recamend it to anyone with poor eyesight!

When I try buying the male voice i thought it would be like a dollar or 2 but it’s 15 dollars! That’s ridiculously overpriced! Just to get a male voice! It’s good and it pronounces the words good but lower the price please

I got TexttoSpeech to help me study. I find it much easier to follow my notes when I can listen to them. Its really simple and easy to use. Just copy everything and paste it in then hit play. The voices it comes with are pretty good. I don't have a problem understanding what they are saying. But one time I accidentally picked the wrong language. I honestly had no idea what I was listening to for a few seconds. Overal this is a pretty useful app. I would recommend it.

UPDATE: Some of my previous messages were lost after the update, but I was a add them back. Just make sure you remember what you had if you listen to your recording frequently.

I downloaded this only for it to open to a screen to get me to subscribe, and the only option available was to hit “continue” and then authorize a more than $70 annual price. It wouldn’t even allow me to swipe up to exit! Everything about it was shady. I finally was able to click on a notification to change apps, then swipe up and close this one. I couldn’t even try it before buying. I get in-app purchases, but at least let me see how TexttoSpeech works first.

App works well, but the opening screen offered me a free 3 day trial, but no instructions on how to access it. I tapped on a week long subscription, thinking that the trial would engage, as the message stated you could cancel your subscription before the three days ended, but it went ahead and charged me. Bogus trial. Either a terrible bug that’s outrageously overlooked, or gross sleight of hand TexttoSpeech developers put in intentionally. Neither is a good look

Wow! I've never seen such an overpriced app such as this. You really want us to pay a fortune just to save to iCloud or export files? C'mon! We should be able to do that for free. Your just trying to rip us off. Don't get this crap. Lower your gosh darn prices and allow us to export saved audio for free☹️ will be deleting TexttoSpeech and will not reinstall and will also keep my rating the same unless developers make the changes. Thank you.

TexttoSpeech says its “free” but as soon as you download it, it immediately tries to convince you to buy it with a free trial. You can bypass that but once you do, the available options are ridiculous. Bottom line: this is not a free app. There are LOTS of other apps that have many more options in their free version. I would recommend finding and using one of those.

...and I wish I had rated it sooner. Back when it WAS a five star app. The UK English female voice has changed and now sounds stilted and horrible where before it sounded to smooth and real. Whatever you did recently, undo it. Please.

Just listening to a few saved clips and the voice was so lifelike and realistic. I copy and paste the same text into a new window and it’s horrible.

On the text to speak app here the cost is too high for the poor information on translation of English to Spanish, it sounds the came for instance the word “what” in English is what but sounds the same in Spanish or almost the same to be clear “que-pasa” in Spanish should be “what” in English disappointed on this text-to-speak app I bought and the translation is separate; it’s not informative don’t buy TexttoSpeech

The title sounds crazy, but there is an obama voice in TexttoSpeech . Get it for that voice, and the humor and laughs you can get out of it. Other than that it's bland. But that voice is great.

I just downloaded TexttoSpeech and accidentally confirmed to pay $9.99 a week a think (really sneaky of them as I was not expecting this so I pressed buttons too quickly!). It says that I can cancel my subscription in “settings,” but I can’t find “settings.” Someone pls help me cancel this, I don’t want to pay $40 per month that is ridiculous.

Be very careful. It will charge you weekly. If you accidentally press some button, it will charge you right away without letting you confirm the amount. I will report to Apple about this fraud apps. I noticed that there many reviews negative like mine. Don’t even know how the overall review can be 4.5. It the most cheating app!