Android App: TTS Util

TTS Util is a text-to-speech utility app I put together in 2019 and developed further between then and August 2022.

Links

• Google Play link
• F-Droid link
• Source code
• Privacy policy

Description & Features

TTS Util is a utility Android app for synthesising text into audible speech. It has the following features:

• Read or create wave files from input text, clipboard text or text files using text-to-speech.
• Configure app-specific text-to-speech settings: engine, voice, pitch and speech rate.
• Custom silence for line endings, sentences, exclamations and questions.
• Text filters for omitting certain text elements from the audio.
• A playback-on-input mode for reading letters and words as they are typed.
• Buttons for retrieving commonly read text.
• Share menu entries and shortcuts for sharing input text to the app.

Please see one of the store links for screenshots.

Requirements

TTS Util has the following requirements:

• A device running Android version 5.0 or higher.
• A separate Android text-to-speech engine app.

App Permissions

• Read SD card - (completely optional) allows the app to synthesise the contents of chosen text files into audible speech.
• Write SD card - (completely optional) allows the app to write synthesised speech into wave files located in internal storage. This permission is used in the Write to files section of the app.

Notes

Software license

TTS Util is open source software licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.

Text synthesis errors

Sometimes the selected text-to-speech (TTS) engine will fail to synthesise text into audible speech. This can occur both when synthesising text for playback or when recording synthesised text into wave files. A message will be shown if this occurs.

TTS Util will do its best to tell you what went wrong. Unfortunately, the selected TTS engine may not use the different error codes available in recent Android versions. If it doesn't, then you will get a generic error message. I have listed the reasons for text synthesis errors below, retrieved from Android's text-to-speech API documentation in June 2019:

1. The TTS engine couldn't synthesise all or a part of the given text or text file.
2. The TTS engine failed unexpectedly (i.e. an engine bug).
3. The TTS engine failed to send audio output, either to the audio device or the wave file.
4. The TTS engine failed due to network connectivity problems.
5. The TTS engine failed due to a network timeout.
6. The TTS engine failed because voice data was not installed.