What is the best text to speech software for Mac and iOS?

Question

14

Options
Considered

586

User
Recs.

Aug 30, 2023

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 2 of 10 OptionsWhy?

Best text to speech software for Mac and iOS	Price	Publisher	Personal Sub (Annual)
94 Capti Voice	FREE	Charmtech Labs	$29.99
92 Voice Dream Reader	$24.99	-	-
-- CereProc	-	-	-
-- Natural Reader	$69.50	-	-
-- Intelligent Speaker	-	-	-

See Full List

Voice Dream Reader

Top Pro

Easy to follow along with your eyes

If you look at the screen while the app is reading, the text scrolls and emphasizes the sentence and the individual words as they are read, kinda like high quality karaoke lyrics. See More

Top Con

Ugly interface

The interface is ugly and not well thought out. For instance, putting items in folders removes the details from the list and replaces it with the name of the folder. Also, adding folder names has an ugly double popup. See More

Andrew Lett's Experience

I strongly recommend Voice Dream Reader. I wasn't it was available on more platforms (Mac/windows/amazon ecosystem) and I wasn't very happy when the voices I had purchased disappeared or were deleted (about a year ago). For those with concentration or tracking problems, this program is a godsend. I was able to load and push through academic texts that gave me fits before. The highlighted word tracker is also a nice feature. See More

Top Pro

Imported document (PDF, ePub, Doc, Mobi, TXT) is displayed in an easy to read, nicely arranged format.

VDR arranges most documents you import into a clean, easy to read format that is customizable. Can control the size of margins, select from several fonts & adjust the size, change text, background & highlight colours. Can swipe and view text in original layout/format or view as plain text and lose all the formatting for a simpler view of material. See More

Top Con

Cannot read via OCR

If you have image based PDFs for example, this won't be able to read it, at least not without pre processing with other OCR software before exporting/uploading to Dream Reader. That being said, VoiceDream Reader now has a companion app to make OCR > Voice Dream Reader very simple and easy. Visit this link. See More

InfluentialBodbDerg's Experience

excellent experience See More

Top Pro

Dropbox source

By being able to connect to Dropbox in the Voice Dream Reader app, you can open and read books that are stored in your Dropbox account. See More

Top Con

Can't play DRM protected content

Top Pro

Highlighting text

Allows highlighting text on the fly. See More

Top Con

Few voices

When bought, a voice package from the iOS App Store, as part of a package with voice writer & voice dream, had over 20 voices/accents, now there are only 2 voices. See More

Top Pro

Inexpensive

Compared to the alternatives, this is a cheap solution. See More

Top Pro

Very efficient voices

Top Pro

Has the best share implementation I've seen on iOS

Voice Dream Reader has a share sheet extension for iOS. When you use it, there are three options, you can save in Aritcle format (text and images), PDF format, and Full Text format. and it will show you a preview of what it will look like so you know what to expect. See More

Top Pro

Has OCR companion app

Here. See More

Top Pro

Instant pickup

Just click on a new page or new paragraph to skip boring sections. Also, allows speed increments changes to a very small accurate degree - i.e. to read at the right speed. See More

Top Pro

Reflows PDF text content as plain text

This feature lets you read along beautifully and in the focused and pac man modes. Great for studying purposes. See More

See All

8 Other Options Considered

Natural Reader

Top Con

No Safari Support

Great options although it could be more affordable. It is not as if most average consumer is financially strong enough to afford all? If prices were lower, their premium offers could sell like other very successful great ideas. See More

Top Pro

Reads many formats

Formats include: Microsoft Word, PDF, eBook (ePUb), text, and RTF files, webpages. See More

ReverentAlthaea's Experience

Lost interest as soon as I found out Natural Reader does not support Safari for macOS. It is an insult when a Business as Natural Reader is using App Store or else to sell products to Apple Users. It does not support Safari in favour of Google Chrome. Then these Companies ought not to have permission to target Apple Consumers. Safari offers security features that Google Chrome does not and in addition, they use any usage of Google products for marketing. I do not want my private life exposed when using Google Chrome. If Natural Reader arrogantly considered Safari to be of less importance, then lets boycott Natural Reader and alike! At the prices quoted if they cannot bother their developers about macOS users then I take it personally! See More

Top Con

Free version available, but upgrades are costly

$69.50, $129.50, or $199.50, does not appear to be a lifetime purchase, there seems to be a limit on how many images that can be used with the OCR function within the different tiers. See More

Top Pro

Prices reflect arrogance

It could be a perfect suite of voices if macOS could in extension include them when working on alternative apps or browsing, etc. You could if you preferred go along for the Standard Offering but as set forth before, Natural Reader ought to include macOS users and with recognition other than imposing Google Chrome as the default. See More

CooperativeElectra's Experience

mac os text-to-speech See More

Top Con

Few hotkeys, not user configurable

The shortcuts/hotkeys that exist are simple and work well, but they are not user configurable which might be a problem for some. The app is more GUI driven, a travesty since accessibility is a big attraction for people seeking software like this. See More

Top Pro

Simple but effective playback controls

You can click on a any sentence and the voice will jump to wherever that sentence is and continue on from there. Forward and back button is for one sentence. Shortcuts are available as well for pause/read, forward/back by one sentence. See More

adamlogan's Experience

This is my preferred software solution on Mac OS for text to speech. With Natural Reader 16, the desktop app is finally on par with the webapp. it is basically the webapp but wrapped in an app container, the one exception is that the desktop app includes what was formerly known as the Floating Bar, which is now called the Miniboard and resides under the overflow menu "More", a feature I use a lot to readback whatever text I've selected with my cursor in whatever app avoiding the need to cut and paste or download and upload. Some people may ask why not just use Mac OS's native Services and Voiceover? With Natural Reader 16 you have on-the-fly control over voice selection, speech speed, plus you still retrain playback controls, and it shows the text like "captions" in a tiny but very functional window. Also you can utilize voices you have installed from other sources asides from the voices that Natural Reader offers. The biggest improvement that I have asked for several times and still have yet to see implemented is syncing between Natural reader Desktop and the smartphone equivalent. I feel strongly that documents should be synced two-way between all the clients be it desktop, smart phone and webapp, not just in file replication but in playback position. Settings is a little tricky since availability of voices is not the same on all devices. I prefer to use VoiceDream reader on iOS since I don't get any benefit of syncing with Natural Reader on iOS, VoiceReader does a better job of presenting media when I need to see the content in original format, but if Natural Reader came out with syncing I would switch to using Natural Reader for most of my reading which does not require reading in original format in a heartbeat. See More

Top Con

Unstable on MacOS High Sierra

Encountered stability issues on MacOS High Sierra. Changing voices or opening a .docx Word document can cause crashes. See More

See All

Speech Central

Top Pro

File replication/syncing available via iCloud

Top Con

No voices included on Android version

The app is unusable on Android unless you have voices installed under text to speech output settings. See More

Top Pro

Available on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android

It's cross platform, but syncing only partially works for Apple ecosystem using iCloud. See More

Top Con

No playback position syncing, even via iCloud

Even though the files replicate across Mac OS and iOS devices, the playback position does not replicate.across iCloud. Each device remembers it's own playback position, but it doesn't get synced to other devices. See More

Top Pro

Good value for the money / Cheap

For $10 this app offers a lot. See More

Top Con

Doesn't support images

If you have media you want to read where images or illustrations are important, this is not going to cut it. See More

See All

Read Aloud

Top Pro

Simple but effective playback controls

Pressing the addon icon in the extension bar will read aloud everything on the page, unless you have some text selected, in that case it will only read what is selected. Pressing the arrow icons on the extension will advance or back track one paragraph worth of reading material. The extension also employs editable shortcut combinations which can be triggered in Chrome or Globally. See More

Top Con

Extension / Add-on limited to browser

Its function is limited to reading whatever text is selected or readable in your web browser. See More

Top Pro

Voice options are impressive

For a free product, the voice options are quite good with a number of premium options from Google and Amazon. See More

See All

Neospeech

Top Pro

High-quality voices

Neospeech voices are some of the most humanlike voices you'll hear among TTS voices. Their US English voices specifically include popular TTS voices Julie, Paul, and James are all distinct and pleasant to listen to. They sound even more natural when you adjust their speed and break of their text-speech input. See More

Top Con

Limited pricing options

The pricing of their software licensing is limited. You usually license their software on an annual basis or on an On-Demand basis with credits. The On-Demand option is great if you only need a specific amount of words to be synthesized into text-to-speech. See More

RomeoZegna's Experience

My experience using Neospeech's VT editor was fairly positive. Their software is simple to understand and easy to use for a non-computer expert like myself. The US English voices Julie and Paul are very high quality TTS voices and they sound the most natural to me. I like how you can change the speed, pitch, break, and volume of the voices by using simple VTML in the editor. Overall, this software I would give a 9/10 just for its simplicity and quality of the voices. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Neospeech VT editor is compatible on most versions of windows and is simple in design and usability. Interface has all the functions of a basic TTS software right there on its toolbar. See More

Top Con

Complete BS

Don't bother. See More

See All

Audio Book

RealisticHonos's Experience

I use it to learn Spanish. Of course, it supports more foreign languages. It helps me convert some learning documents and e-books into mp3. So I can put t he into the iPhone, and then I can follow it to practice pronunciation. See More

Notevibes

Top Pro

Best bargain available for all devices

Only $9 / month. See More

Top Con

Webapp only, no mobile clients

It would need a mobile client to be useful for editing. Straight-forward paste/convert/playback/download works on mobile though. See More

CredibleJuthrbog's Experience

Notevibes is just $9 / a month. It is cloud-based and the website follows GDPR seamlessly. You don't even have to have a full account, just your email address! I highly recommend this to everyone including my fellow instructional designers. Going with Notevibes was the "sound" decision I wish we had years ago for text-to-speech. See More

Top Pro

Voice and speech tuning

Very simple visual controls to adjust speech by using the tags. See More

Top Con

Copy paste reliant

Copy and paste experience, no auto scrape of article text if you feed it a URL. See More

Top Pro

24-57 Premium Voices

Top Con

No hotkeys/shortcuts

This would be especially useful for applying tags to modify voice output of the pasted text. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use on desktop computer browsers

See All

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Capti Voice

Top Pro

Semi-Desktop and Webapp versions make it pretty much crossplatform

You can use it on any internet enabled device. Desktop Mac and Windows versions uses your default browser and java to drive a webapp. On linux you'll have to straight up use the website or run a virtual machine. On the Mac and Windows the "desktop app" is more than just a shortcut to the website. Disconnect your wifi and close your default browser (set to clear cookies, offline data, active logins, cache, site preferences, browsing and download history). Upon launching the application again, the default web browser should open, the document should still be there and the webapp should still function. Everything needed is stored locally somewhere. See More

Top Con

Inconvenient to use

Says it is free, then takes you to the iTunes page to pay, Capti does recognize accounts set up through iTunes, to change voices you pay, to open a pdf to read you have to buy coins to use. See More

ClassyEurotas's Experience

for help See More

Specs

Publisher:Charmtech Labs

Personal Sub (Annual):$29.99

Top Pro

Supports many formats

Supported formats include: Adobe PDF (.pdf), Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx), Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), Plain and Rich text (.txt, .rtf), EPUB books (.epub), OpenDocument (.odt, .odp), DAISY books (.zip). See More

Top Con

Very disappointing

Advertising say great things, reality is much different. See More

InfluentialBodbDerg's Experience

Terrible experience with Capti. Pocket drainer. Never buy.. See More

Top Pro

Offers a one week premium plan trial

This is enough time to know whether the upgrade or product on the whole make sense for the user. See More

Top Con

Does not automatically sync

Capti Narrator does not automatically sync additions from local files to playlists on the hybrid desktop/webapp client, only if you add them to a cloud storage. See More

ColorfulKulla's Experience

very limited the free version, always pushing you to upgrade to premium, annoying! See More

Top Pro

Has shortcuts to get around easier

Here's the link to shortcuts on the FAQ webpage. See More

Top Con

Free account somewhat limited

10 MB per document/ ebook No images No access to view the original layout for PDFs No annotation features Searching limited to current document, not globally Only one playlist allowed No access to translation features No access to a word/vocabulary game See More

EagerPachaKamaq's Experience

You're locked in to Team BlueFlames, on Vibes Saturdays, with Dj Dominic, Selector Ricky and Selector Not Nyce, on 102.1 Mega fm See More

Top Pro

Limited free account available

For feature differences and limitations of the free version visit captivoice.com See More

Top Con

Desktop Version for the Mac Depends on Web Browser

Only available as fully native apps for iOS and Windows. The client on the Mac uses your default web browser and java to function. See More

Top Pro

Intelligent dictionary lookup

You can look up translations and definitions of words and phrases. Capti will automatically take into account the part of speech of a word and its use in the sentence to generate the most correct translation and definition. See More

Top Con

Can't move documents freely between different playlists

On iPhone and iPad, users have to delete and re-add documents if they wish to transfer an item from one playlist to another playlist. See More

Top Pro

Very useful in schools

Capti is very easy to use in a school setting: there's a special organization account features for managing students, sharing content with students, monitoring student activity, etc. See More

Top Con

No Linux desktop version

Website or running a virtual machine will have to do for readers on Linux distros. See More

Top Pro

Offers very high quality voices on all platforms, including online

When using Capti on iOS, Windows or Mac you can download very high quality voices. See More

Top Con

Subscription service

$1.99 / month or 9.99 / 6 months. See More

Top Con

Mac version routinely fails to start

Users on the Mac frequently have to bring up the Activity Monitor, quit Capti View, and open it again to get it to load. See More

See All

The Best 2 of 10 OptionsWhy?

My Recommendation for Capti Voice

My Recommendation for Capti Voice

Semi-Desktop and Webapp versions make it pretty much crossplatform

Inconvenient to use

Supports many formats

Very disappointing

Offers a one week premium plan trial

Does not automatically sync

Has shortcuts to get around easier

Free account somewhat limited

Limited free account available

Desktop Version for the Mac Depends on Web Browser

Intelligent dictionary lookup

Can't move documents freely between different playlists

Very useful in schools

No Linux desktop version

Offers very high quality voices on all platforms, including online

Subscription service

Mac version routinely fails to start

My Recommendation for Voice Dream Reader

My Recommendation for Voice Dream Reader

Easy to follow along with your eyes

Ugly interface

Imported document (PDF, ePub, Doc, Mobi, TXT) is displayed in an easy to read, nicely arranged format.

Cannot read via OCR

Dropbox source

Can't play DRM protected content

Highlighting text

Few voices

Inexpensive

Very efficient voices

Has the best share implementation I've seen on iOS

Has OCR companion app

Instant pickup

Reflows PDF text content as plain text

8 Other Options Considered

My Recommendation for CereProc

My Recommendation for CereProc

Best irish accent voice

Expensive desktop version

Cheap on android

No iOS app

My Recommendation for Natural Reader

My Recommendation for Natural Reader

No Safari Support

Reads many formats

Free version available, but upgrades are costly

Prices reflect arrogance

Few hotkeys, not user configurable

Simple but effective playback controls

Unstable on MacOS High Sierra

My Recommendation for Intelligent Speaker

My Recommendation for Intelligent Speaker

Good voice

Extension / Add-on limited to browser

My Recommendation for Speech Central

My Recommendation for Speech Central

File replication/syncing available via iCloud

No voices included on Android version

Available on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android

No playback position syncing, even via iCloud

Good value for the money / Cheap

Doesn't support images

My Recommendation for Read Aloud

My Recommendation for Read Aloud

Simple but effective playback controls

Extension / Add-on limited to browser

Voice options are impressive

My Recommendation for Neospeech

My Recommendation for Neospeech

High-quality voices

Limited pricing options

Easy to use

Complete BS

My Recommendation for Audio Book

My Recommendation for Audio Book

My Recommendation for Notevibes

My Recommendation for Notevibes

Best bargain available for all devices