Read Aloud: Using better local voices on iOS

This discussion was created from comments split from: Now available: Read Aloud on iOS.
  • I love the feature, but I wonder if it would be possible to use the already much better local voices on IOS. So far you can only select the worst versions, but in the system settings you can download the larger better models, which also can be used by other apps. That would be great.
  • @FeLux: Not sure what you mean here. Zotero already supports local voices on iOS and macOS, including the "Enhanced" and "Premium" ones that you can download, but they're vastly worse than the Standard and Premium Zotero voices.

    The five Siri voices are probably roughly equivalent to Standard Zotero voices, but Apple doesn't expose those to third-party apps.
  • On macOS the use of system own premium voices works, but under IOS it doesn't, at least not on my iPad. That was why I wrote here. Maybe it's just a bug. But the iPad app only shows a really small amount of the downloaded voices.

    I already read about the problem with the Siri voices. If that would be possible, it would off course be the best... But I don't think Apple will ever allow that.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited today at 1:17am
    Working fine here. After downloading "Ava (Premium)" (which has nothing to do with the Premium Zotero voices) in Settings, it shows up in the Read Aloud voice picker:

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u6/y1dlakibsdn3mac0ub08.png

    Just to reiterate, though, all local iOS and macOS voices are incredibly primitive compared to both Standard and Premium Zotero voices.
Sign In or Register to comment.