Google Text-to-Speech is a screen reader application developed by Android, Inc. for its Android operating system. It powers applications to read aloud (speak) the text on the screen. Currently, the supported languages include Bengali (Bangladesh), Cantonese (Hong Kong), Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan) Danish, Dutch, English (Australia), English (India), English (United Kingdom), English (United States), Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (United States), Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese. Text-to-Speech may be used by apps such as Google Play Books for reading books aloud, by Google Translate for reading aloud translations providing useful insight to the pronunciation of words, by Google Talkback and other spoken feedback accessibility-based applications, as well as by third-party apps. Users must install voice data for each language.
Some app developers have started adapting and tweaking their Android Auto apps to include Text to Speech, such as Hyundai in 2015. Apps such as textPlus and WhatsApp use Text to Speech to read notifications aloud and provide voice-reply functionality.
The Google Chrome extensions "Chrome Speak" and "Speak It" can read aloud any selected piece of text within the browser.
Korean now supported.
Version 3.0 added support for natural high-quality voices.High quality voices now featured in English (United States) as Female (high quality) whilst English (United Kingdom) also now featured three new high quality voices; Male, Female (high quality) and Male (high quality). These new high quality voices are much larger than the prior versions in terms of file size with 244MB for English US female (high quality) compared to just 6.8MB for the regular female voice version. These high quality voices were added to ensure higher quality pronunciation and enunciation with intonations that are more natural.
Support for Brazilian, Portuguese and Spanish (United States) bringing the total number of languages supported to nine at this point. (German, English (UK), English (US), Spanish (ES), Spanish (US), French, Italian, Korean, and Portuguese (BR). Only English (US) and English (UK) have high-quality voice packs for now.) German, English UK, English US, Spanish ES, Spanish US, French, Italian, Korean, and Portuguese (BR). Only English US and English UK have high-quality voice packs for now.
User Interface tweaks: Due to having multiple voices for some languages a toggle was added to voices with 2 or more voice packs.
Russian, Dutch, Polish and English (Indian) added to the currently supported list of languages.
Support for Japanese output added.
Version 4 Available (For 6.0 Marshmallow and up)
Support for Hindi and Indonesian output.
Improved output quality. Standard quality voices now surpass the quality of the high quality voices from previous releases.
Four new languages now supported: Cantonese (Hong Kong), Mandarin (China), Thai (Thailand) and Turkish (Turkey)
Bug fixes and other improvements.
Improved voice quality
Added support for Bengali (Bangladesh), Danish (Denmark), English (Australia), Finnish (Finland), Hungarian (Hungary), Norwegian (Norway), and Mandarin (Taiwan).
The offline voices can now speak at a faster rate.
Plus lots of bug fixes and performance improvements.
Added support for Swedish and Vietnamese.
Bug fixes and improvements
Alternative voice variations now available on every device.
Added support to amplify speech volume over other audio.
Extended support for emoji verbalisation in Chinese, Dutch, Danish, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
Bug fixes and improvements.
