by Imaja - Greg Jalbert, www.imaja.com

Learn how to access voices for text-to-speech in different languages on iPhone and iPad and in the Speak News app in this article.

Sometimes, one needs to use different languages in text-to-speech on the iPhone or iPad. The iOS system comes with numerous built-in voices that can be enabled for text-to-speech. Higher quality, enhanced voices can be downloaded in the iPhone or iPad Settings app.

iOS 11 on iPhone and iPad comes with about 90 voices for about 25 languages from various regions. See Voices available for text-to-speech on iOS 11

Here is a step-by-step walkthrough on enabling voices for other text-to-speech languages.

Open the Settings app on the device (iPhone or iPad).

Tap General.

Tap Accessibility.

Tap Speech.

Tap Voices.

For this example, tap Chinese.

Tap a voice to see the details.

If an enhanced voice needs to be downloaded, tap the download button to start downloading the enhanced voice.

Enabling language voices in the Speak News app

Speak News is an RSS news feed reader with text-to-speech for iPhone and iPad. (More information about Speak News).

To enable text-to-speech voices for other languages in the Speak News app, tap the Settings button with the gear icon.

The Speak News Settings view appears.

Scroll down and tap to open Voice Library Configuration in the Speech Behavior section.

In the Voice Library Configuration view, enable the voices you wish to use in the Speak News app.

The set of selected voices that are in the appropriate language will be used for stories of a given language. Each story will be read in the next appropriate language from the voice library. If a story contains multiple languages, the dominant language is used to select an appropriate voice.

Tap Edit in the Voice Library view to change the order of voices in the library. Drag items using the drag control on the right side of each item in the table.

Voices available for text-to-speech on iOS 11

• Maged, Arabic (Saudi Arabia), ar-SA
• Zuzana, Czech (Czechia), cs-CZ
• Sara, Danish (Denmark), da-DK
• Anna, German (Germany), de-DE
• Helena, German (Germany), de-DE
• Markus, German (Germany), de-DE
• Markus (Enhanced), German (Germany), de-DE
• Martin, German (Germany), de-DE
• Melina, Greek (Greece), el-GR
• Catherine, English (Australia), en-AU
• Gordon, English (Australia), en-AU
• Karen, English (Australia), en-AU
• Karen (Enhanced), English (Australia), en-AU
• Lee, English (Australia), en-AU
• Lee (Enhanced), English (Australia), en-AU
• Arthur, English (United Kingdom), en-GB
• Daniel, English (United Kingdom), en-GB
• Daniel (Enhanced), English (United Kingdom), en-GB
• Kate, English (United Kingdom), en-GB
• Kate (Enhanced), English (United Kingdom), en-GB
• Martha, English (United Kingdom), en-GB
• Oliver, English (United Kingdom), en-GB
• Oliver (Enhanced), English (United Kingdom), en-GB
• Serena, English (United Kingdom), en-GB
• Serena (Enhanced), English (United Kingdom), en-GB
• Moira, English (Ireland), en-IE
• Moira (Enhanced), English (Ireland), en-IE
• Aaron, English (United States), en-US
• Alex, English (United States), en-US
• Allison, English (United States), en-US
• Allison (Enhanced), English (United States), en-US
• Ava, English (United States), en-US
• Ava (Enhanced), English (United States), en-US
• Fred, English (United States), en-US
• Nicky, English (United States), en-US
• Samantha, English (United States), en-US
• Samantha (Enhanced), English (United States), en-US
• Susan, English (United States), en-US
• Susan (Enhanced), English (United States), en-US
• Tom, English (United States), en-US
• Tom (Enhanced), English (United States), en-US
• Victoria, English (United States), en-US
• Tessa, English (South Africa), en-ZA
• Tessa (Enhanced), English (South Africa), en-ZA
• Monica, Spanish (Spain), es-ES
• Paulina, Spanish (Mexico), es-MX
• Satu, Finnish (Finland), fi-FI
• Amelie, French (Canada), fr-CA
• Chantal, French (Canada), fr-CA
• Chantal (Enhanced), French (Canada), fr-CA
• Nicolas, French (Canada), fr-CA
• Nicolas (Enhanced), French (Canada), fr-CA
• Aurelie, French (France), fr-FR
• Aurelie (Enhanced), French (France), fr-FR
• Daniel, French (France), fr-FR
• Marie, French (France), fr-FR
• Thomas, French (France), fr-FR
• Carmit, Hebrew (Israel), he-IL
• Lekha, Hindi (India), hi-IN
• Mariska, Hungarian (Hungary), hu-HU
• Damayanti, Indonesian (Indonesia), id-ID
• Alice, Italian (Italy), it-IT
• Hattori, Japanese (Japan), ja-JP
• Kyoko, Japanese (Japan), ja-JP
• O-ren, Japanese (Japan), ja-JP
• Yuna, Korean (South Korea), ko-KR
• Ellen, Dutch (Belgium), nl-BE
• Xander, Dutch (Netherlands), nl-NL
• Nora, Norwegian (Norway), no-NO
• Zosia, Polish (Poland), pl-PL
• Felipe, Portuguese (Brazil), pt-BR
• Felipe (Enhanced), Portuguese (Brazil), pt-BR
• Luciana, Portuguese (Brazil), pt-BR
• Luciana (Enhanced), Portuguese (Brazil), pt-BR
• Catarina, Portuguese (Portugal), pt-PT
• Catarina (Enhanced), Portuguese (Portugal), pt-PT
• Joana, Portuguese (Portugal), pt-PT
• Joaquim, Portuguese (Portugal), pt-PT
• Joaquim (Enhanced), Portuguese (Portugal), pt-PT
• Ioana, Romanian (Romania), ro-RO
• Milena, Russian (Russia), ru-RU
• Laura, Slovak (Slovakia), sk-SK
• Alva, Swedish (Sweden), sv-SE
• Kanya, Thai (Thailand), th-TH
• Yelda, Turkish (Turkey), tr-TR
• Li-mu, Chinese (China), zh-CN
• Ting-Ting, Chinese (China), zh-CN
• Yu-shu, Chinese (China), zh-CN
• Sin-Ji, Chinese (Hong Kong [China]), zh-HK
• Mei-Jia, Chinese (Taiwan), zh-TW

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— Greg Jalbert is an app developer for Mac, iPhone, iPad, an artist, composer, musician, and graphic and web designer, the founder of Imaja, www.imaja.com, publisher of apps Speak News, Perspectiva, CalReader, TelepaText, TaskInsight, Astral Blossom, and more...

Video: 6:32

Learn some TelepaText app Speech Commands and how to use them for doing a variety of fast web searches on iPhone and iPad.

Learn how to perform various searches on the web using special speech commands in the TelepaText app. The TelepaText iPhone / iPad app adds unique speech command functionality, expanding on functions provided by Apple's #Siri voice-powered assistant.

Note: Speech Commands are an In-App Purchase in the TelepaText app.

To get the Speech Commands

To get the Speech Commands module for TelepaText, open the File Commands view in the document listing view, and choose Get Speech Commands.
The TelepaText In-App Store appears.
Tap the price button to purchase the Speech Commands module.
The description includes the Speech Commands Reference which displays the phrase grammer to perform speech commands in TelepaText.

Learn the Speech Commands phrase grammar.

The phrase grammar is the set of sentences and variations that TelepaText recognizes.
Take a look at the Speech Commands Reference to learn how the phrase grammar works.
To open the Speech Commands Reference, tap the Actions button at the top of the document editing view and choose Speech Commands Reference.
The reference view will start scrolling automatically so one can read it over without any manual scrolling.
After the Reference section is a How To section.
Possible variations in a given speech command phrase are indicated by lists of possible words or phrases in square brackets, each item separated by a vertical bar.
Use one of the words or phrases in square brackets [ ] to complete a phrase.
Replace the subphrase in angle brackets < > with the desired subphrase.
For example: This command in the Speech Commands Reference has three variations. Use one of the words in square brackets. The variations are Change style, Dark style, and Light style.

How to search the web with TelepaText Speech Commands

First open a new document in the TelepaText app. Tap the menu icon in the top left of the document listing view.
Tap New iCloud Document and a new document is created and opened.
If the keyboard is not open, tap the blue microphone button in the toolbar at the bottom of the document view. The keyboard will slide up into view.
Tap the microphone button on the keyboard to dictate a search phrase. The keyboard will change to the voice input view with the audio input signal.
Speak the phrase and then tap Done.
For example, say Wikipedia search Great Lakes.
The app will perform the search on the web using the specific domain.
The search phrase text will be removed from the document.

Example search phrases for specific domains

Wikipedia search Impressionism
Wikipedia search New York City

To return to the TelepaText app, tap TelepaText in the status bar at the top.

Let's try another search.

Tap the microphone key in the keyboard.

Map search Denver Colorado
YouTube search New Orleans Jazz
Flickr search chameleon
Yahoo search Apple Watch
Google image search top movies
Google image search 1960's poster art
Bing search Seattle Washington
Ask search diabetes
Unicode character search bicycle
Apple developer search swift closure
Quora search solar power prices
Google news search health care prices
Google book search Thomas Paine
EBay search adult tricycle
Web M.D. search wheat diet
Pub Med search sugar digestion
Health Finder search balance exercises
Health Line search balance exercises
Twitter search speech commands iPhone app

The TelepaText iPhone/iPad app adds unique speech command functionality, expanding on functions provided by Apple's #Siri voice-powered assistant.

Get TelepaText for iPhone or iPad on the App Store.

Get TelepaText for macOS on the Mac App Store.

The Speech Commands are an In-App Purchase

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/telepatext-text-editing-tools/id927208356?mt=8
Get more info about TelepaText and Speech Commands at our web site: http://imaja.com/telepatext

Current set of TelepaText search speech commands

[ Wikipedia | Web | Map ] search (phrase)
[Google image | Flickr | Yahoo | Bing | Ask ] search (phrase)
[ Thesaurus | Dictionary | Wolfram Alpha | Apple developer ] search (phrase)
[ YouTube | Cora | Unicode character ] search (phrase)
[ Google news | Google books | Twitter | EBay ] search (phrase)
[ Web M.D. | Pub Med | Health Finder | Health Line ] search (phrase)
Internet movie database search (phrase)

Choose one of the sub-phrases in square brackets, and replace (phrase) with the desired phrase.

See http://imaja.com/telepatext/speechcommands.html for details on the Speech Commands for TelepaText for iPhone, iPad, and macOS.

TelepaText #text #editor app for #OSX, #iPhone, #iPad http://imaja.com/telepatext http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/telepatext-text-editing-tools/id927208356?mt=8 + #iCloud + #speech

TelepaText iPhone app adds unique speech command functionality, expanding on Apple's #Siri voice-powered assistant. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/telepatext-text-editing-tools/id927208356?mt=8

Tags:
TelepaText, text, editor, app, speech, commands, voice, control, web, search, iCloud, text-to-speech, Siri, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, iOS, macOS

Read and listen to RSS news feeds with text-to-speech in the Speak News app for iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

Get Speak News on the App Store

This update includes three new features: Wikipedia page bookmarks, query bookmarks for cached stories containing a phrase, and a new natural language custom URL format.

Wikipedia page bookmarks

Use "pagetitle wikipedia" in the Title field of a new bookmark to load the Wikipedia page for the given page title. The Wikipedia printable version of the page is what is loaded. For example, "bicycle Wikipedia". Wikipedia pages are cached on the device for offline reading. To create a Wikipedia bookmark, tap the + (Add Bookmark) in the Bookmarks toolbar, tap Add Manually, then tap the dictation button in the keyboard and speak the desired phrase into the Title field, such as "bicycle Wikipedia". Tap OK to confirm creation of the new bookmark. Wikipedia page titles are case sensitive in the case of names of people or places (pronouns).

Query phrase bookmarks

Use "story contains phrase" in the Title field of a new bookmark to create a query for stories that contain the given phrase. For example, "story contains solar panel". Use the dictation button on the keyboard to speak the phrase "story contains solar panel" into the Title field.

Wikipedia pages and regular web pages referenced by Speak News bookmarks are presented as sequences of paragraphs that can be navigated with the earphones remote control. Double-tap the center button to speak the next paragraph, triple-tap to speak the previous paragraph. The next and previous buttons in the bottom toolbar also work.

Natural language custom URL format

The Speak News Custom URL Scheme supports adding booksmarks by specifying natural language queries. For example:

• speaknews://NYTimes+tweets
• speaknews://politics+hashtag
• speaknews://bicycle+twitter+search
• speaknews://wind+energy+google+news
• speaknews://story+contains+green+jobs
• speaknews://electrolyte+wikipedia

If you are viewing this page on an iPhone or iPad with Speak News installed, the speaknews:// URLs above can be tapped to open them in the Speak News app. A new bookmark will be created and the specified web page will be downloaded from the web for speaking or reading.

For more information on the Speak News app, visit www.imaja.com/speaknews

Support

For questions, bug reports, and feature requests for Speak News, please contact Imaja via e-mail. We will try to respond within a day, usually much sooner.

E-mail Support: support@imaja.com

Open the Perspectiva app.

The properties, such as title and color, of calendars can be edited on some types of calendars, such as calendars from your macOS machine, iCloud, or local CalDAV system.

Note: Google Calendars calendar properties cannot be edited from Perspectiva. Use the web interface to edit Google Calendar properties.

On iPad:

In the top right toolbar, tap the Filter button (magnifying glass):

In the Filter view, tap Calendars:

The Calendars view displays all calendars from different sources. Tap a calendar to make it visible (checked) or hidden. Tap the Edit button in the top right to switch to calendar editing mode.

In calendar editing mode, some types of calendars

can be edited, such as "Alameda Nature" with the (i) icon and disclosure indicator below:

The Title and Color of a calendar can be edited. Choose one of the basic colors or specify a custom color. When you are finished editing calendar properties, tap Done to save your changes.

Tap the calendar title and the keyboard appears for editing.

Tap Custom Color to open the Color Picker view. Specify a color with the hue, saturation brightness and alpha sliders. Or tap Swatches to choose from a large library of named colors.

Use the Swatches view to choose from a large library of named colors.

When you are finished editing the properties of a calendar, tap Done in the top right of the Calendars view to save the changes.

This article describes the process of converting audio song files using the iTunes app on a macOS / macOS computer. This is useful for delivery of appropriate audio formats for different situations.

To determine what format an audio file is on your Mac, select the file in the Finder and choose Get Info in the File menu.

Open the Name & Extension panel and turn off Hide extension. If you have a .wav file, you may want to convert it to mp3, or another format.

To change conversion settings, choose iTunes - Preferences in the top menu.

Click General in the row of icons panels at the top of General Preferences.

Click Import Settings in the General Preferences panel.

Configure the settings by choosing options from Import Using: and Setting: and click OK to confirm.

Drag the song into iTunes.

Find the song in iTunes in the Recently Added section of the Library in the left column source bar.

Choose iTunes - File - Convert - Create MP3 Version and the selected song(s) will be converted to the format you chose in Import Settings.

The new file in the chosen format is created. In this case we converted from .wav to .mp3.

Choose the new .mp3 version of the song in iTunes - Library - Recently Added.

Choose Get Info in the iTunes menu at the top. This shows the detailed information for the song(s). Click the Details tab.

Fill in the information for all the pertinent fields as this really helps listeners find your music, especially if you are publishing your music.

If you are creating a CD, you can even make sure that the CD and song info is delivered to the CDDB system so other listeners of your CD can automatically get all the track details into iTunes when they load the CD onto their computer.

Here's a song Info view with the information filled in.

If you have artwork for the music track or album, you can copy and paste it into the CD icon area at the top or choose the Artwork tab.

The artwork should be between 600 and 900 pixels square for a decent hi-resolution view on the computer or smart phone or tablet.

A full resolution image for a typical physical CD cover is about 4.75 inches square, printed at 300 DPI (dots per inch) so the pixel resolution is about 1,425 pixels square.

The options panel of the Get Info view lets one set custom volume, equalizer settings, and start and stop times for individual music tracks.

* * *

- Greg Jalbert is an app developer for Mac, iPhone, iPad, an artist, composer, musician, and graphic and web designer, the founder of Imaja, www.imaja.com, publisher of apps Speak News, Perspectiva, CalReader, TelepaText, TaskInsight, and more.

• Better multitasking for reading and getting news for offline reading. Update All Feeds (Fast) now operates in the background and lets you read any news feeds in the foreground.
• International language support for text-to-speech: There a new option in Settings: Use voice for story language. A text-to-speech voice appropriate to the language of a story can be automatically selected. To download high-quality voices for various languages, go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Speech > Voices on the device.
• New feature: Follow news topics! Query downloaded RSS news feed stories for keywords and create collections of stories from different sources. Queries work with downloaded content, even when offline!
  To create a news topic query:
  • Tap + in the bottom toolbar of the Bookmarks view.
  • Tap Add Manually...
  • Use "story contains keyword" in the Title field of the Edit Bookmark view. Replace the word "keyword" with the desired search word. Click OK to confirm changes to the bookmark.
  • Use one of the Update Feeds options. As bookmarks are loaded, stories that match queries will be added to those query bookmarks.
  • To update query bookmarks based on only on local cached bookmark data, turn off "Auto-update if old" in Settings.
  • Speak News will automatically put a magnifying glass icon at the beginning of query bookmarks in the Bookmarks view.
  • Stories in a query bookmark are prefixed with the name of the source bookmark.
• Support for reading a Feedly OPML file to import RSS news feed URLs in bulk.
  • You need to be logged into your Feedly account.
  • Open http://feedly.com/i/opml in your web browser.
  • Tap the "DOWNLOAD YOUR FEEDLY OPML" button.
  • Copy the link of the page that appears.
  • Open the Bookmarks view in Speak News.
  • Tap the + button and Add Manually to create a new bookmark in Speak News and use the URL of your OPML file.
  • Open the OPML bookmark.
  • The OPML file should load automatically, otherwise tap the circle arrow button at the bottom of the News view, and tap Update This Feed and it will load the OPML file.
  • A confirmation alert appears.
  • New bookmarks will be created for unique XML URLs in the OPML file. Duplicate URLs in the OPML will be skipped.
  • The new bookmarks are added to the end of the collection in the Bookmarks view.
• Added support for Twitter and Google URLs as a type of bookmark.
• Shortcuts can be used to create Twitter and Google News bookmarks.
  • Tap "+" and Add Manually to create a new bookmark.
  • Enter one of the following phrases into the Title field in the Edit Bookmark view, replacing the bracketed [word] with the desired text:
    
    • [twitteruser] tweets
    • [hashtag] hashtag
    • [searchtext] twitter search
    • [searchtext] google news
  • The phrase will be automatically converted to a URL for a feed that Speak News will parse into tweets or stories.
• Tweets are optimized for screen reading and text-to-speech by optional replacement of URLs with a link icon. The elimination of user icons and tweet images simplifies the reading experience by removing distractions.
• The format of Twitter URLs:
  Tweets for a specific user:
  https://twitter.com/SpeakNewsApp/tweets
  Tweets with a hashtag:
  https://twitter.com/hashtag/SpeakNewsApp
  Search tweets:
  https://twitter.com/search?q=iPhone
  https://twitter.com/search?q=%22iOS+10%22
• Opening a tweet item in Speak News using the Open in Safari in the Share view will present the option to open the link into the Twitter app using a twitter://... custom URL. Once this is approved, tweet items will load directly into the Twitter app.

Ease of use improvements:

• Speech control buttons are added to the Bookmark view on iPad and when the iPhone is in landscape orientation for better access.
• Support for getting the RSS feed URL automatically from a web site, if supported by the particular web site. Create a bookmark manually and use the regular URL for a web site, and Speak News will try to automatically get the RSS feed URL.
• Update All Feeds (Fast) action now works in the background, so you can keep reading news will other sources are updates.
• Updated for iOS 10! This updates the visual style of the Speak News Today widget for iOS.
• IIf a feed has a validation error (indicated with the yellow triangle ! icon), there will be a Validate feed URL link displayed in the Edit Bookmark view. Tap the link to see the feed validation error messages generated by https://validator.w3.org. This feature is useful for news publishers and webmasters who want to improve the coding of their RSS feeds.
• Improvements to special character HTML code translation.
• New option in Settings for Bookmarks view: Use dot bar for item count
• If smooth scrolling is interrupted by manual scrolling, then smooth scrolling will resume after a moment.

Speak News lets you listen and read RSS news feeds. Now you can import your Feedly OPML file into Speak News to expand your bookmark library.

Start by logging into your Feedly account in Safari on the iPhone or iPad.

Open http://feedly.com/i/opml in your web browser. Tap the "DOWNLOAD YOUR FEEDLY OPML" button.

Copy the link of the page that appears from the URL box at the top of the web page.

Open the Bookmarks view in Speak News. Tap the + button and Add Manually to create a new bookmark in Speak News.

Paste the URL of your OPML file into the URL field.

Tap OK to save the new bookmark. The Edit bookmark view closes and the Bookmarks view appears. The OPML file should load automatically, otherwise tap the Feedly OPML bookmark to open it. Tap the circle arrow button at the bottom of the News view, and tap Update This Feed and it will load the OPML file.

A confirmation alert appears. Tap OK to import the RSS news feed URLs from the Feedly OPML bookmark as new bookmarks in Speak News. New bookmarks will be created for unique XML URLs in the OPML file. Duplicate URLs in the OPML will be skipped.

An alert will appear with the results of the import, including how many bookmarks were added or skipped.

The new bookmarks are added to the end of the collection in the Bookmarks view.

To reorder the newly imported bookmarks, tap Edit in the top right and drag bookmarks using the drag control of the right side of the bookmark.

The Feedly RSS feeds can be updated in Speak News. Open the existing Feedly bookmark in Speak News and tapping the Update button at the bottom and Update This Feed.

Support

For questions, bug reports, and feature requests for Speak News, please contact Imaja via e-mail. We will try to respond within a day, usually much sooner.

E-mail Support: support@imaja.com

Open the Perspectiva app.

Tap the Display Settngs button (the gear) in the top right toolbar.

In the Display view, scroll down and tap Background Image.

To choose one of your own photos, tap Photo Library.

To choose from images included in the Perspectiva app, tap Next Built-in.

To take a photo to be used as the background, tap the camera button.

To clear the background photo, tap the X button.

Change the calendar layout:

Tap the Display Settngs button (the gear) in the top right toolbar.

In the Display view, scroll up and tap View Layout Style.

Choose the desired layout style.

With screenshots:

Change the calendar photo, on the iPad:

Tap the Display Settngs button (the gear) in the top right toolbar.

In the Display view, scroll down and tap Background Image.

To choose one of your own photos, tap Photo Library.

To choose from images included in the Perspectiva app, tap Next Built-in.

To take a photo to be used as the background, tap the camera button.

To clear the background photo, tap the X button.

The newly chosen photo will appear in the Image Picker view and in the calendar view.

Change the calendar layout:

Tap the Display Settngs button (the gear) in the top right toolbar.

In the Display view, scroll up and tap View Layout Style.

Choose the desired layout style. The blue area is where the calendar will be overlaid on the background photo.

Here the bottom 2/3 layout is selected.

Use pinch and spread touch gestures with two fingers to change the event text and event box size in a calendar view.

See also: Perspectiva Help: Edit Calendar Properties: Title and Color.

• Speak News reads RSS news feed stories to you using text-to-speech
• Use Siri to open Speak News and listen to news stories hands-free using the earphones remote control. Just say "Hey Siri, Open Speak News" and the app will start reading your current news stories
• Toolbar functions in the News view include Play/Pause, Stop, Previous, Next, Update All Feeds, View Mode, Share, Settings
• Speak News offers a spoken word introduction to the main views and button actions
• Share news headlines and links, or entire news feeds through the standard iOS Share social media activities view, including Message, Mail, Notes, Reminders, Twitter, Google+, OneNote, Wunderlist, Flipboard, Facebook, Pinterest, Evernote, etc.
• All stories are saved on your device for later reading and listening while offline.
• Current story info and Play/Pause, Previous, Next functions are available in the media player controls in the device's lock screen and Control Center.
• Speak News automatically rotates through available voices for the current language for each story. This gives more variety in the sequence of spoken news stories. For instance, in English, this gives U.S., U.K. Ireland, New Zealand, and Australian voices.
• Efficient text-only story display makes loading and reading faster, and saves money on your cell phone plan by downloading minimal data.

• task organization
• drag and drop
• import/export
• auto/manual sort
• search filtering
• customizable colors
• speech commands
• text-to-speech
• and more...