Nasio Themes

<p>Simple Text to Speech is a small and easy to use text to speech (TTS) WordPress plugin that uses AI to generate audio versions of your posts and pages.</p>
<p>The plugin supports more than 50 languages and seamlessly integrates with the WordPress Block Editor but it also supports the good old Classic editor.</p>
<p>When the audio has been generated for a post or a page from the Block editor sidebar, an audio player will be displayed automatically at the top of your page, which visitors can listen to. You can also upload audio files from external sources, enabling you to use real human voices if you want. The audio files will appear on top of the page, improving accessibility and user engagement.</p>
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li><strong>Block Editor Integration</strong> – Generate audio directly from the post/page editor from the sidebar panel</li>
<li><strong>AI Voices</strong> – Use Google’s WaveNet voices for natural-sounding speech</li>
<li><strong>Multiple Languages</strong> – Supports over 50 languages and variants</li>
<li><strong>Accessibility ready</strong> – Improves content accessibility by providing audio versions of your posts and pages</li>
<li><strong>Automatic Storage</strong> – Audio files are automatically saved to your WordPress Media Library</li>
<li><strong>Easy Management</strong> – Delete audio files from either the editor panel or the Media Library</li>
<li><strong>Custom audio upload</strong> – Ability to upload audio from external sources and use real human voices</li>
<li><strong>Multi-language Support</strong> – Supports 50+ languages and language variants</li>
</ul>
<h4>How It Works</h4>
<ol>
<li>Configure your Google Cloud API key in Settings > Text to Speech</li>
<li>Edit any post or page in the Block Editor</li>
<li>Find the “Text to Speech” panel in the document sidebar</li>
<li>Click “Generate Audio” to create an MP3 file from your content</li>
<li>Audio is saved to Media Library and attached to the post</li>
<li>Play, download, or delete audio directly from the panel</li>
</ol>
<h4>Google Cloud Text-to-Speech</h4>
<p>This plugin uses <a href="https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/product/google/texttospeech.googleapis.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Google Cloud Text-to-Speech API</a>, which requires an API key. Google offers a generous free tier:<br />
* WaveNet voices: 1 million characters per month free<br />
* Standard voices: 4 million characters per month free</p>
<p>This plugin uses predominantly WaveNet AI voices, as well as Standard AI voices when WaveNet voices are not available for the specific language.</p>
<p>Learn more about <a href="https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing" rel="nofollow ugc">Google Cloud Text-to-Speech pricing</a>.</p>


Simple Text to Speech

Easily generate audio version of your content using Google Cloud Text-to-Speech API.

Weston Ruter

<p>Add text-to-speech (TTS) to content, with playback controls, read-along highlighting, multi-lingual support, and settings for rate, pitch, and voice.</p>
<ul>
<li>Uses local text-to-speech engine in user’s browser. Directly interfaces with the <code>speechSynthesis</code> browser API. Zero external requests or dependencies.</li>
<li>Words are selected/highlighted as they are being spoken to allow you to read along.</li>
<li>Skips speaking elements that should not be read, including footnote superscripts (the <code>sup</code> element).</li>
<li>Pauses of different length added are between headings versus paragraphs.</li>
<li>Controls remain in view during playback, with each the current text being spoken persistently being scrolled into view. (Requires browser support for <code>position:sticky</code>.)</li>
<li>Back/forward controls allow you to skip to the next paragraph; when not speaking, the next paragraph to read will be selected entirely.</li>
<li>Select text to read from that point; click on text during speech to immediately change position.</li>
<li>Multi-lingual support, allowing embedded text with <code>[lang]</code> attribute to be spoken by the appropriate voice (assuming the user has it installed).</li>
<li>Settings for changing the default voice (for each language), along with settings for the rate of speech and its pitch. (Not supported by all engines.) Changes can be made while speaking.</li>
<li>Hit escape to pause during playback.</li>
<li>Voice preferences are persistently stored in <code>localStorage</code>, with changes synced across windows (of a given site).</li>
<li>Ability to use JS in standalone manner (such as in bookmarklet).</li>
<li>Known to work in the latest desktop versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. (Tested on OSX.) It does not work reliably in mobile/touch browsers on Android or iOS, apparently due both to the (still experimental) <code>speechSynthesis</code> API not being implemented well enough on those systems and/or programmatic range selection does not work the same way as on desktop. For these reasons, the functionality is disabled by default on mobile operating systems.</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://westonruter.github.io/spoken-word/test/example.html" rel="nofollow ugc">Try it out</a> on standalone example with some test content.</p>
<h4>Theme Config</h4>
<p>The settings for Spoken Word are presented in an HTML5 <code>dialog</code> element. For browsers that do not yet support this feature, the plugin bundles the <a href="https://github.com/GoogleChrome/dialog-polyfill" rel="nofollow ugc">dialog-polyfill</a>. The polyfill is only included if it is detected the browser does not support <code>dialog</code> natively. The inclusion of the polyfill can be disabled by adding the following to your theme or plugin:</p>
<pre>
add_filter( 'spoken_word_include_dialog_polyfill', '__return_false' );
</pre>
<p>For themes that have a sticky header (such as the nav menu in Twenty Seventeen) you may need to add some additional CSS to ensure that the sticky-positioned playback controls do not get hidden behind the sticky header. For example in Twenty Seventeen, you can add the following to the Custom CSS in the Customizer:</p>
<pre>
@media screen and (min-width: 782px) {
    body:not(.admin-bar) .spoken-word--active {
        top: calc( 0.5em + 70px );
    }
    body.admin-bar .spoken-word--active {
        top: calc( 0.5em + 32px + 70px );
    }
}
</pre>
<h4>Internals</h4>
<p>A bookmarklet can be used to load the Spoken Word functionality into any site, even non-WordPress sites where the plugin is not installed. The key is to use the appropriate <code>contentSelector</code>:</p>
<pre>
( () => {
    const link = document.createElement( 'link' );
    link.rel = 'stylesheet';
    link.href = 'https://unpkg.com/spoken-word/css/style.css';
    document.head.appendChild( link );

    const script = document.createElement( 'script' );
    script.src = 'https://unpkg.com/spoken-word/dist/spoken-word.js';
    script.addEventListener( 'load', () => {
        spokenWord.initialize( {
            contentSelector: [ /* 👈 Amend as desired. */
                '.hentry',
                '.entry-content',
                '.h-entry',
                '.e-content',
                '[itemprop="articleBody"]',
            ].join( ', ' )
        } );
    } );
    document.head.appendChild( script );
} )();
</pre>
<p>The <code>spokenWord.initialize()</code> function takes an object as its argument which can have the following properties:</p>
<pre>
 * @param {string}  contentSelector         - CSS Selector to find the elements for speaking.
 * @param {Element} rootElement             - Root element within which to look for content.
 * @param {Object}  chunkifyOptions         - Options passed into chunkify.
 * @param {boolean} useDashicons            - Whether to use Dashicons.
 * @param {Object}  defaultUtteranceOptions - Default utterance options when none are supplied from localStorage.
</pre>
<p>The dialog and the controls are rendered using <a href="https://preactjs.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Preact</a>. For a list of all the modules used by this plugin, see the <a href="https://github.com/westonruter/spoken-word/blob/master/package.json" rel="nofollow ugc">package.json</a>.</p>
<p>This plugin is <a href="https://github.com/westonruter/spoken-word" rel="nofollow ugc">developed on GitHub</a> where the source can be viewed. Please <a href="https://github.com/westonruter/spoken-word/issues" rel="nofollow ugc">report issues</a> there. Pull requests welcome. The <code>spoken-word</code> package is also <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/spoken-word" rel="nofollow ugc">published on npm</a>.</p>


Spoken Word

Add text-to-speech (TTS) to content, with playback controls, read-along highlighting, multi-lingual support, and settings for rate, pitch, and voice.

Simple Text to Speech vs Spoken Word