Topics
- How to read aloud web pages from Safari, Chrome and other apps?
- How to import files from iCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box etc?
- How to listen to the headlines from web sites and add articles from them?
- How to access the content under the paywall or the content that requires log in?
- How to get the API key and region for Microsoft AI voices?
- How to export audio file?
- How to customize pronunciations?
- How to backup data?
- How to sync data among iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac?
- How to prevent Apple Maps to pause the playback?
- Can I use Siri voices?
- What is the function of the Pro add-on?
- What to do if the app is not working?
- What to do if Microsoft AI voices don’t work?
- Is there a school-friendly distribution?
- Popular Sites – first pick the category of the site (e.g. Sports, News) and then check all the sites that you want to follow from that category.
- Web Site – type the name of the site and tap ‘Add’.
- Type Address – type in the address of the feed or web site to add it
- First go to the Extras tab then to the Settings and finally to Button Functions in the Headlines subsection. Set the action of the Next button to ‘Add to Books & Articles’.
- When the item is read and the screen is off hit the next button to add the article related to it to the Articles tab. On the headphones the next button is invoked by double clicking on the center button.
- When reading of headline item(s) is completed, the app will proceed to read the article items that you have added in the previous step.
- Sharing from Safari – if you use Safari and share the article, the complete content is passed, not just a link, which should make it possible to obtain the article that you see on the web page even if it is under the paywall.
- If you use other browsers or you want to copy and paste the link, the procedure is:
- Try to import the article in the regular way (by sharing from other browsers or doing copy and paste). The article won’t be imported properly, but your intention to use the content from this website will be registered.
- Go to Extras > Log In To Websites. Pick the website from the list (if you have properly completed the previous step it should appear there). After that log in to that website in its standard interface. The next time you try to import the content it should be imported properly.
- Press the ‘Edit’ button in the top left of the screen.
- Press the ‘Select All’ button that will appear on the same position.
- On the bottom of the screen press the ‘More’ button (‘…’).
- Pick ‘Export to Word Doc’.
- If you want to save .docx files to a folder pick ‘Save to Files’ in the share sheet.
- You are logged in to those devices with the same Apple account with at least some free iCloud space and that iCloud function is activated in the system settings.
- That the settings Books & Articles > Storage > ‘Sync across Apple devices’ is enabled on each device. On the Apple Watch there is no such setting and it is always enabled.
- Create the Azure account and subscription (note: currently there is a version with free limited tier and a paid version) from here.
- Create the Speech Service from here
- You should be able to see the Speech Service in the Azure Portal. When you open it in the left sidebar there is the option ‘Keys and Endpoints’ that you can use to create and get data about API key (it is in the ‘Resource Management’ section and you may need to expand it for ‘Keys and Endpoints’ to become visible).
- Speech Central is in no way affiliated with Microsoft. Your relationship with Microsoft is in no way connected to your relationship with Speech Central as Speech Central doesn’t take any fee from your eventual payment to Microsoft.
- Microsoft paid tier is fairly expensive (the price at the moment of writing of this article is 16$/million characters which means that listening to larger books would cost 10$ or more). We have picked to support Microsoft as it has a generous free tier that may be enough for most use cases, most other providers (Amazon, IBM) charge the same amount but don’t have a free tier at the moment.
- If you use their paid tier it is strongly suggested for you to track your costs in their portal and avoid unpleasant surprises (there is a page ‘Cost Analysis’ that can be activated from the option right below ‘Keys and Endpoints’ that you have used in the previous step).
- You can use up to 500,000 characters in the last 30 days. This Information is updated each second so the app is likely to be able to read few sentences now and then if this happens.
- You have a limited number of requests in the minute. You shouldn’t be able to hit this limitation by listening to the regular text at the default speed, but you may hit it by frequently skipping the content, listening at high speeds or by some specific context with very short sentences (or combination of all of those).
- If you experience long pauses between sentences:
- Try to restart the device as it sometimes happens to be a temporary bug.
- Your data connection to Microsoft’s server cannot deliver audio streaming in real time, which causes pauses.
How to listen to the headlines from web sites and add articles from them?
1. In the Headlines tab of the app add a home page or some other site section that contains headlines or site’s RSS feed using the ‘+’ button. You will see three options:
2. Tap on the item and the app will start to read the headlines from the page
3. To add linked articles you can swipe left over the item and tap on the “Add to Books & Articles” button (visually it appears as “+”). You can also long tap on the item and pick this option from the menu. Finally, you can tap on the “More” at the top right of the screen, pick “Select Articles to Add”, select all articles that you would like to add and press the “Add to Books & Articles” button at the bottom toolbar.
4. You can even add articles while the screen is off (e.g. when you are using headphones and walking or while driving and the app speaks through connected Bluetooth speaker).
How to read aloud web pages from Safari, Chrome and other apps?
1. Invoke sharing of the link – in Safari it is done by pressing the Share button in the middle of the toolbar.
2. If you use this function for the first time, additional steps are needed:
2a. In the first row where the apps are listed scroll to the right and tap on “More”.
2b. In the next screen ensure that the switch for Speech Central is set to ‘On’. You may also reorder Speech Central to appear closer to the top.
3. Tap on Speech Central in the first row of icons.
4. Tap on ‘Listen Now’.
5. The web page is added to the end of the Articles tab and read aloud.
How to import files from iCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box etc?
1. When file is stored on the storage other than iCloud ensure that you have installed the required storage app from the App Store (e.g. Dropbox app) and after that log in to that app.
2. In the Books & Articles tab tap the ‘+’ button and then ‘Import File’
Follow the steps bellow (you may also read the official Apple support on this topic):
3. If you are using for the storage other than iCloud:
3a. Select the ‘Browse’ tab
3b. Go back to the first page (ensure that you see ‘Cancel’ in the top left)
3c. Under ‘Locations’ if you see your storage provider click on it otherwise tap on the ‘More’ (‘…’) in the top right and pick ‘Edit’
3d. Ensure that the switch next to your cloud provider is turned on and tap on the ‘Done’ in the top right
3e. Browse to the file
4. If you are using iCloud:
4a Tap on the ‘Browse’ tab at the bottom
4b. Navigate through the folders and tap on the file you want to open.
How to access the content under the paywall or the content that requires log in?
There are two approaches that should work:
How to export audio file?
First you need to import the text from some of supported sources as described in the other sections of help. Then from the item’s context menu pick ‘Export Audio File’. In the dialog that appears press on the ‘Start’. After the operation is completed in the file save dialog pick the file name and folder where file will be saved.
How to customize pronunciations?
For Apple voices you can add custom pronunciations by using system Settings. Go to Accessibility > Spoken Content > Pronunciations, and press the ‘+’ button on the top left.
How to backup data?
By default your data is saved to iCloud as part of operating system backup. Assuming that you have enough space on the iCloud you can always restore data to another iOS device using this operating system function.
If you don’t use this function or you want to backup for different purposes, you can export data to .docx file format, which is ISO standard file format and can be easily accessed in many apps (including that you can re-import items back to Speech Central with preserving the annotation). To export the whole list follow this procedure:
How to sync data among iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac?
To sync data across devices ensure that:
The items may not appear immediately on another device after the app is installed.
If you don’t hear the sound it may happen that your device sound is turned off.
If you still encounter problems, it is likely that the sync on Apple apps like Notes and Reminders don’t work either. If that is the case you need to contact Apple on how to restore the device syncing capabilities for your account.
Can I use Siri voices?
Apple restricts Siri voices only to the operating system functions. This is done to protect the user privacy as the user might be sharing his private data with Siri. While this sounds reasonable Apple has already proved that such risks can be managed by implementing the mechanism in which an app asks the user for the permission to use a potentially risky resource. Please encourage Apple to implement such mechanism by sharing your feedback using the Apple’s feedback assistant. In the header press the icon to start the new feedback, then pick ‘iOS & iPadOS’, and then mention that you would like Apple to implement the mechanism that would allow you to give apps permission to use Siri voices.
How to prevent Apple Maps to pause the playback?
By default Apple Maps pause the playback of spoken audio in apps like Podcasts or Speech Central. This can be changed by going to the device Settings > Maps > Spoken Directions > Directions Pause Spoken Audio and turning this option off.
What to do if the app is not working?
First check if you are affected by some known issue in the iOS operating system. Ensure that you are using the latest version of the app by searching for the app in the App Store (you should see the “Update” button if the app has not been updated to the latest version yet). Further check if your issue falls under the technical limitations.
Some document formats are not intended for the text extraction and thus they don’t have necessary information for that process. From the supported formats this limitation refers to PDF and web. Samples of the documents that don’t work properly are always useful and they will be tested for possible improvements, but due to those technical limitations such problems are not considered as a bug. You can read more about technical limitations of PDF and web. For a PDF file you can copy and paste the text from the original file – for improperly coded files you will immediately see improper results.
If the app is not working at all or some major function is not working in most cases there is the problem on your device. The app is tested by Labsii and Apple before each release and it is highly unlikely that such problem may occur.
In most of such cases it is enough to just restart the device to restore the functionality. If it doesn’t help it is very likely that it will be resolved by reinstalling of the app. By default your data is synced through the iCloud which should restore your data from there after the reinstall. Generally this should work, though it may be influenced by some factors like the lack of iCloud disk space or no network connection which may prevent the data to upload to the iCloud. Please note that by the default setting original files are not synced and as such they won’t be restored unless this setting was altered (they are used to provide PDF original pages and images in some files like .epub and .docx).
In some cases even data itself may trigger some problem. As such to fully resolve the problem you may need to clean the iCloud data and prevent its restoration. You need to turn off the switch in System Settings > Account > iCloud > Saved to iCloud > Speech Central before deleting the app, which should also delete data on iCloud or prevent it from being restored.
If you are using Apple voices (which is the default option), they can have their own bugs. You may try to switch the voice and also to reinstall the voice in the system Settings.
So please ensure that you have tried the options mentioned above. If you still find problems please report the problem to the support.
How to get the API key and region for Microsoft Neural voices?
If you want to first preview voices available on Azure service, you can do this on the official page (the app uses the default style).
Please note that:
To activate those voices go to Extras tab > Settings > Voice > Microsoft Neural Voices (activated from the menu at the top right of the screen).
What to do if Microsoft AI voices don’t work?
As Speech Central is not affiliated with Microsoft, you need to contact Microsoft directly for eventual problems in their service. In most of the cases users are hitting the limitation of their free tier and getting the error for that. Most notable limitations of their free tier are:
What is the function of the Pro add-on?
The Pro add-on enables unlimited import of items. Without the Pro add-on you can import two short items in a day or one long item (e.g. book) in a month.
Is there a school-friendly distribution?
A school-friendly distribution is expected to come soon. Read more about its features and plans.