If you’ve heard that voice giving you updates or reading out information in your Apps before, then Google has just released an update to their Text to Speech service for Android, adding some cool new features which users have been requesting.
It’s a service that most users don’t think about that often, so what is the big fuss? Well first off, the app adds support for high quality voices, this means the voices provided will be updated from a relatively small 5-6MB worth of files to 200+MB. The update gives you the option in the default UK English setting to choose a Female or Male voice or move on over to a US Female voice. So if you’re more comfortable with a male voice, you can now switch over to that.
You can watch the below video which Android Police put together demonstrating the new high quality voices available through the update:
As well as higher quality voices, there’s new languages now supported – Portuguese and Spanish(United States) versions.
Even though the Text to Speech engine is hidden away in the Settings menu, there’s UI tweaks included in the update like a toggle added to each voice with 2 or more downloaded voice packs. The delete button has also been replaced with a trash icon, which has made it much easier to delete languages. Voice pack sizes are now visible whereas previously there was only a download button without giving any additional detail relating to file size given.
The update is rolling out now through Google Play or if you can’t wait, head on over to AndroidPolice for a list of file hosts to download the APK.
Do you currently use Google Text to Speech? Do you like the new UI and features added to Google TTS?
