Thanks to advances in AI and deep learning, text to speech has become a common feature in smartphones today. Before these apps existed, we were depended on the Google text to speech engine to read text out loud. But with the arrival of the new cutting-edge TTS apps for Android phone and iOS systems, a lot has changed. These apps increase the accessibility of online digital content, make it easier for visually impaired people to read content and improve comprehension, removes language barriers, helps with multitasking, among other benefits.
For example, there are times we have all received an important email or text while driving. Not only is it dangerous to read while driving but it can also get difficult to read through the doc and keep your eyes on the road at the same time; you can miss crucial points or lose concentration. This where text to speech applications for Android and iOS play their part in improving the accessibility of content.
Text to speech allows your android or iOS device to read out loud any text visible on the screen. The text can be anything, from an SMS you've received, a news article, or an email or a PDF. By integrating TTS with a smartphone, users can hear blogs while exercising, listen to PDF files or document and proofread while commuting, and more. Some TTS applications also allow users to customize how the text is spoken aloud, edit words or add punctuation, if necessary, speed up narration, among other things, using appropriate voice controls.
Today, there are multiple text to speech apps available in the market for both Android and iOS devices, but how to choose the best one that meets all your requirements?
To help you out, we have created a list of top-rated text to speech mobile apps for both Android and iOS along with their features, pros and cons, and pricing details.
Narrator's Voice is a popular text to speech app for most Android devices and iOS systems that lets users create customized narration from the text by converting it into speech. You can create narration for any kind of content with various effects in different languages. Users can either speak in or type their messages to the application, after which it will convert the text to speech. You can also choose from a variety of different customizable voices, including male, female and kids voices.
Narrator's Voice also comes with a unique feature to add voice effects such as echo, reverb, gargle, and choir when your text is being read aloud. Additionally, you can add your own text to Narrator's Voice to create a voiceover for your video narrations and slideshow presentations from scratch.
Key features
If you're looking for a text to speech app with a more natural reading style than Narrator's Voice, then Natural Reader is definitely worth checking out. This app offers a wide array of natural sounding voice that can read out text in a very realistic way. Users can choose between multiple voice options in different languages. Moreover, you can also alter the reading settings, change the speed, and convert text to MP3 for a personalized experience.
That said, Natural Readers supports many document formats. Users can listen to text files, eBooks, PDFs, and webpages or paste an existing script to read out aloud onto the app. It’s as simple as importing and listening.
An innovative text to speech application, Voice Dream comes with 100+ voices in more than 30 supported languages and multiple unique features to overcome language barriers. The software has great accessibility for people struggling with blindness, low vision, dyslexia, autism, and motor function disorders. In addition to offering audio control in terms of speed, pitch, pause, pronunciation, and citations, Voice Dream Reader comes with an easy to configure screen layout to suit users with different reading styles.
Speechify is another versatile text to speech app that is available in both Google play store and iOS App store. For text to speech conversion, the app supports about 186 built-in voices across 30 languages. Users can utilize the app to read text from images or upload documents or articles from cloud solutions like Dropbox, Google Cloud, ePub files, emails, text messages, and HTML files and get them read out loud. Speechify can read up to 900 words per minute. To improve the listening experience, the app also offers features like active text highlighting and a floating widget to control the audio more conveniently.
Voice Aloud Reader is a free text to speech software that comes with a great set of features despite having no paid version. A stand alone feature of the app is that it provides users multiple ways to add text to the app. Users can either have the app read from sources on your phone, such as books, PDF, documents, and HTML, or copy-paste a website URL into the application. Similarly, you can also share the text from where you’re reading like on a webpage, eBook reader, and more, provided it has a ‘share’ button. Another notable aspect of Voice Aloud Reader is that users can customize almost everything, be it the text, display, speech, voice, audio, or headset controls.
While in essesnce, Pocket is book marking app that enables users to save web page articles from the Internet for later reading, it also offers a text to speech functionality for future reading. The application can be used on both Android and iOS devices. The Pocket app can be accessed from any device with an internet connection and even works offline for your convenience. The app’s speech synthesis feature enables users to adjust the audio speed, advance or rewind the narration by 15 seconds at a time, and even make a playlist.
T2S is a text to speech with a built-in web browser that lets users access web pages without copying/pasting or sharing website links. A "Speak from Here" button appears on the app's browser when a user selects any text on web pages, making it simple to listen to a few sentences rather than the entire article. T2S also supports other convenient features like ‘Copy to Speak’ (copies text from any app and converts it to speech) and ‘Type Speak’ (converts text to speech as you type). Additionally, it displays an on-screen popup button whenever users copy the text from other apps.
If you are an Android or an iOS user, you know how life-changing a text to speech applications can be. But what features make a TTS app really stand out? Here are some of the basic features look for in a mobile TTS app:
First, you want to ensure that the synthetic voices available on the TTS reader are realistic and not robotic sounding. If the voices sound like they're coming from a robot or an Android, that could be a deal breaker! Natural sounding AI voices can be used for all kinds of use cases, from reading out lessons, to getting navigation or GPS directions on your phone to listening web pages, blogs or articles aloud. If the voices aren't realistic enough, they'll be hard to listen to and won’t serve the purpose.
Next, it's important to know if your text to speech tool supports multiple language options and different accents. This feature is key to creating multi-purpose content for various sets of audiences. Having a multilingual text to speech mobile application means users don't have to worry about having deep knowledge on different languages or accents before using them.
One of the unique differentiators of any TTS application is the ability to customized the voice. A good TTS reader should offer users the ability to change the speed at which words are spoken, adjust volume levels, modify the script, lower or increase the pitch, and include pauses, among other facilitates. This not only helps fine tune the audio narration but also makes the voiceover sound more natural and human-like.
You can be very creative with a text to speech app and have a lot of customization features, but if the application is not simple, then its ineffective. It all comes down to how easy the app is to use and navigate. Therefore, a convenient user interface is a must for any text to speech software.
Now that we have gone through the features, pros, and cons of a good text to speech app, lets see what makes Murf Studio a strong text to speech contender, inspite of not supporting a mobile application.
Murf is text to speech software that offers over 120+ natural-sounding professional-quality AI voices in over 20 languages. Murf has a wide range of features that make it perfect for anyone looking to add a bit of extra flavor and personality to their voiceover narration. Beyond a text to speech app that lets users convert their text to 100 percent human-like speech, the software serves as a voiceover tool that enables users to create perfectly timed voice over videos.
Murf offers the following customizations that help users in creating the perfect audio every time for their projects:
Along with these voice modulations, Murf supports top-notch features like:
It's not hard to find a good text to speech app these days. A common factor between every TTS app is their ability to turn your written text into spoken words. But there are other features like the quality of voice, ease of use, and accessibility that make a text to speech app best from good. Murf is one that ticks all these boxes and, is hence, one of the best TTS out in the market.
Murf is the most realistic TTS app available that offers over 120 human-like AI voices in 20+ languages across different accents, styles, and emotions.
Yes, there are multiple free text to speech applications such as Natural Reader, Voice Dream Reader and more.
Narrator's Voice is a text to speech app for Android and iOS with a built-in narrator, which reads the content as you type it in the application.
Read more about the best text to speech software, best text to speech chrome extensions, and best text to speech apps available online and their advantages.
Related Links: Murf, Wellsaid Labs, Natural Readers, Amazon Polly, Google Text to Speech, TTS Reader, FakeYou, TTSMP3 , Notevibes, Speechify, IBM Watson Text to speech, Goanimate, Speechmax, 15 ai, Voice Maker, Uberduck, Oddcast, Synthesia, Lovo AI, Microsoft Azure TTS, ElevenLabs.