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eSpeak-NG

Submitted by Amir, 14 November, 2022
Member of the AppleVis Blog Team
Last updated on 14 November, 2022
Category
Utilities

Description of App

The eSpeak NG is a compact open source software text-to-speech synthesizer. It supports more than 100 languages and accents. It is based on the eSpeak engine created by Jonathan Duddington.

This app adds a compatibility layer between eSpeak NG library and Apple VoiceOver.

Version

1.0

Free or Paid

Free

Apple Watch Support

No

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

16.1.1

Accessibility Comments

The app has been optimized for VoiceOver and the user doesn't need to open it once eSpeak-NG settings have been altered and adjusted.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

All buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use.

App Store Link

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/espeak-ng/id6444089174

Developer's Website

https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng-ios-app

Recommendations

5 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by Amir 2 weeks 1 day ago

Options

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Comments

the dialects

By Will

4 months 1 week ago

hi all, I still can't understand though, that the regional variants are in the e-speak app for english, but only Uk, and US, are languages for voiceover?

does this support dictionaries?

By Dennis Long

4 months 1 week ago

Could projects like the Dictionary one for Eloquences be ported to eSpeak? Can this be made to sound close to Eloquence?

Re: Does this support dictionaries?

By Amir

4 months 1 week ago

Member of the AppleVis Blog Team

Dennis, no to both. The Eloquence dictionary can't be ported to eSpeak-NG, and despite what some people believe about eSpeak-NG's Klat voices, they never sound similar to Eloquence. eSpeak-NG should be appreciated as is because of its multilingual aspects, clarity, the light resources it requires, etc. Of course, it does support dictionaries, but the format isn't similar to that of Eloquence.

More voices

By Country music fan

4 months 1 week ago

Hi everyone. To the people who made this synthesizer possible to work with voiceover, that’s awesome! I love what you have done, and I was wondering if there are any more synthesizes out there for voiceover, or if ESpeak is the only option

About languages

By Nikola Jovic

4 months 1 week ago

Hello,
to Will and anybody else wondering about this, ESpeak can't do anything about this at the moment.
On iOS, currently, VoiceOver allows synthesizers to use only exactly the same languages VoiceOver already supports.
So, for example, if VoiceOver doesn't support Amharic, or some other dialect of a language, you can add it to VoiceOver, but it will simply do nothing. Switching to it isn't possible.
This is a limitation or a bug of the new API. I recommend writing to Apple and explaining about this problem, and hopefully they will fix it in a future update.

On Mac OS,this limitation doesn't exist at all and you can add any language that ESpeak supports.

running on Mac?

By techluver

4 months 1 week ago

I'm trying to get this loaded on my apple silicon Mac. Any idea how to do this?

New York City US Accent

By wiljames

4 months 1 week ago

Tell Apple you want your app to sound like it's from the Bronx! LOL!

On launch I get Error…

By LBM

3 months 3 weeks ago

On launch I get Error loading: The operation couldn’t be completed. (component error -1.)
Any ideas? Thanks

new voice variants

By Josh Kennedy

2 weeks 2 days ago

I am very disappointed that the app developer will not add the new espeak variants such as espeak Glenn, baby, bobby, Paul3, etcetera!! I even emailed him about it!! They are important because they make espeak sound a lot better. They make it sound a bit more like eloquence or decTalk. so please add them.

I would like to see Glenn added as well

By Dennis Long

2 weeks 2 days ago

I would like to see Espeak updated to add Glenn as well. Please and Thank you.

This is Great News

By Ekaj

2 weeks 2 days ago

Thought I had posted a comment to this thread already, but I guess not. Anyhows...this is amazing and hopefully I will upgrade to a newer iPhone soon so that I can grab myself a copy of this little gem. Not that my current iPhone isn't amazing enough, but it's starting to show its age somewhat and I already have enough apps on there as it is. But I used eSpeak with NVDA and liked it. Hopefully that will also be the case in iOS.

Update March 12: Well curiosity got the best of me as it often does, and I thought I'd try getting this little gem on my M1 Mac. Sure enough, I was able to do that and it is working great thus far. I like all the voices that are currently available, and am now using Adam. I honestly wish I had all day to play with this thing, but I'm going somewhere later and a neighbor is probably going to call and/or stop by again soon.

More Like This

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