decTalk for IOs

By Josh Kennedy, 11 August, 2025

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Is there any chance that someone could make a version of decTalk for IOS and Mac-OS? DecTalk is available on github. I know that bestSpeech tts otherwise known as Keynote Gold by Dr. Michael O'Malley, probably won't come to IOS and mac, because it is abandonware. But could we have decTalk?

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Comments

By Devin Prater on Monday, August 11, 2025 - 15:20

No

By Diego Garibay on Monday, August 11, 2025 - 15:35

Direct, to the point, except what do you mean? I understand that it may be literally impossible, but why.

By Michael Hansen on Monday, August 11, 2025 - 16:22

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I would love to see Classic (AKA anything version 4.6 and earlier) DECtalk come to iOS. The issue for DECtalk and any of these other synthesizers is licensing. Someone, somewhere, has licensing rights for DECtalk. At a bare minimum, what would be needed for any type of project to get off the ground is either (1) a third-party company like Code Factory, etc. to license the software for development/distribution/use on iOS; or (2) Apple to license and bring the synthesizer to its platforms natively. I would prefer an Apple-licensed solution, as the integration would probably be much better and smoother. If Apple can license and make Eloquence run on its platforms, well, to this casual observer, it seems as though the technology is there. But if Apple does not license DECtalk (something I think is quite likely) and a third-party company can pull this off, that would be exciting too and it would be something I would be very interested in if it is done well.

By Dennis Long on Monday, August 11, 2025 - 16:41

Now I'll preface it with I won't use it. I'm perfectly happy with Eloquence however I do think the more choice there is for users the better. To those that say "no" Did anyone say you had to use it? No they didn't if you don't like it don't use it.

By Josh Kennedy on Monday, August 11, 2025 - 16:47

no. not anymore. because decTalk is open source and has been for the past year or two. It is on github.

By Daniel Angus MacDonald on Monday, August 11, 2025 - 19:18

I have never used Dec Talk for sirious time, but remember how bad people wanted Eloquence on Apple platforms? I was one of them. now Dec Talk seems to be popular, and the edition of it would be great.

By Chris on Monday, August 11, 2025 - 19:29

It should be possible with Apple's new TTS API that was added a couple years ago. The problem is finding someone willing to build a native macOS and iOS app and then putting it in the App Store. I doubt Apple will do this since it's open source, but you never know. Here's the link to the repository.
https://github.com/dectalk/dectalk