What is an easy way to get Android to speak the text of this web page?

[Larry Wolff]

What is an easy way to get Android to speak the text of this web page?

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1956/july/japans-losing-struggle-guadalcanal

[Andy Burns]

Post by Larry Wolff
What is an easy way to get Android to speak the text of this web page?
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1956/july/japans-losing-struggle-guadalcanal

Settings / Accessibility / Talkback

[Larry Wolff]

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Larry Wolff
What is an easy way to get Android to speak the text of this web page?
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1956/july/japans-losing-struggle-guadalcanal

Settings / Accessibility / Talkback

I had already tried the Android accessibility talkback before asking.
Once set, you hold the two volume buttons down to turn it on.
But after that, it is so obnoxious to use, you'll turn it back off.
You'd have to be on the verge of desperate to use it for this purpose.

Compare that to how beautifully custom-designed programs do it.

At first I tried a very nice AI program that spoke the text wonderfully.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codespaceapps.listeningapp
The description said nothing about only working for the first 30 minutes.

It took about 20 minutes to convert the web page to an on-device AAC file.
I couldn't believe how human sounding that AAC audio file turned out to be.
But it only gave you 30 minutes of free web page text to speech AAC.

I'm looking for an app like that one, but without the 30-minute limitation.

[VanguardLH]

Post by Larry Wolff
At first I tried a very nice AI program that spoke the text wonderfully.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codespaceapps.listeningapp
The description said nothing about only working for the first 30 minutes.

The web site link in the Play Store page points to a squatter or
placeholder web site. You won't get any more info on that app than what
the Play Store app page tells you. "In-app purchases" are listed for
that app, so you get something more by paying for it. You'd have to
install the app, and trigger it to show an in-app purchase, to have it
take you to wherever the author has their pricing list, and maybe also
lists restrictions, or quotas. The app showed up at the Play Store 5
months ago.

[Larry Wolff]

Post by VanguardLH

Post by Larry Wolff
At first I tried a very nice AI program that spoke the text wonderfully.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codespaceapps.listeningapp
The description said nothing about only working for the first 30 minutes.

The web site link in the Play Store page points to a squatter or
placeholder web site. You won't get any more info on that app than what
the Play Store app page tells you. "In-app purchases" are listed for
that app, so you get something more by paying for it. You'd have to
install the app, and trigger it to show an in-app purchase, to have it
take you to wherever the author has their pricing list, and maybe also
lists restrictions, or quotas. The app showed up at the Play Store 5
months ago.

You're right that there is something very fishy about that app, which I
apologize that I accidentally listed it instead of the one I had meant.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codespaceapps.listeningapp

That "Listen AI" doesn't even work on my phone, so I'm sorry I listed it.
I tried Speechify but it failed also. I don't remember the error messages.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cliffweitzman.speechify2

This is the app that did a wonderful job and which said "try for free" but
which turned out to only do that wonderful job for 30 minutes only. :<
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ai.articlereader.mobileapp

I am still testing this T2S app which has a built-in web browser and which
will save the audio file for reuse later on, but it says it will have ads.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=hesoft.T2S

Thank you for looking at the other app. We both agree it's garbage.

[Larry Wolff]

Post by Larry Wolff
I am still testing this T2S app which has a built-in web browser and which
will save the audio file for reuse later on, but it says it will have ads.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=hesoft.T2S

While the "lureware" named "Article Reader AI" spoke the most human so far,
I have been able play the web site using T2S output to voice using one of
the 3 speech engines which seem to be installed on my Android 13 phone.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=hesoft.T2S

T2S says it has ads but I haven't seen them yet. T2S has an internal web
browser which when pointed to the two pages, read each of them reasonably.

Part 1 (July 1956)
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1956/july/japans-losing-struggle-guadalcanal
Part 2 (August 1956)
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1956/august/japans-losing-struggle-guadalcanal

One specific problem with that web page is it only allows 5 views per IP I
think, so there's an advantage to being able to save to MP3 of easy re-use.

On small test samples of pasted text, T2S saved the MP3 file but on the
large 17K word combination of the two URLs above, it removed that option.

Since that web site is limited to 5 views and since I was getting close to
that limit, I copied and pasted the text from both into a single file.

That single tanaka.txt file was only 100KB but it was 16,882 words long.

I pasted tanaka.txt into the Zueira's Voice app, which doesn't read URLs.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brunopiovan.avozdazueira

Zueira's Voice also says it contains ads but I haven't seen any yet.
Of the ~17,000 words pasted into it, it read the whole thing but it stopped
at saving only the first hour (the last word was word 13,196 of 16,882).

I don't know if the one-hour audio limit is a mistake on my part or not.
The tanaka.mp3 file that Zueira's Voice saved was only 32MB in size.

Both T2S and Zueira's Voice are working for me, but T2S is reading the web
page but not saving the large audio file while Zueira's Voice can't read a
web page but it can save most of the large audio file.

There is a lot more testing I need to do so I will try any other apps
suggested (which I see in another post to test them before reporting back).

Best is free reading out loud of a web site where it can also save that
reading to an audio file for the kinds of web pages which limit view count.

[Andy Burns]

Post by Larry Wolff

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Larry Wolff
What is an easy way to get Android to speak the text of this web page?

Settings / Accessibility / Talkback

it is so obnoxious to use

I won't argue with you there ...

[Arno Welzel]

Post by Larry Wolff

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Larry Wolff
What is an easy way to get Android to speak the text of this web page?
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1956/july/japans-losing-struggle-guadalcanal

Settings / Accessibility / Talkback

I had already tried the Android accessibility talkback before asking.
Once set, you hold the two volume buttons down to turn it on.
But after that, it is so obnoxious to use, you'll turn it back off.
You'd have to be on the verge of desperate to use it for this purpose.

Well - Talkbalk is designed for people who can *not* see the display at
all. What you call "obnoxious" is absolutely required in this case,
since people who are blind don't have any other way of navigating their
device. In fact blind users usally turn off the display completely and
only use the device using Talkbalk - there is a feature in Talkbalk for
this to help keeping your privacy as a blind person since you may not
realize, that others are whatching your smartphone while you are using it.

Post by Larry Wolff
Compare that to how beautifully custom-designed programs do it.

What "custom-designed program" do you refer?

Post by Larry Wolff
At first I tried a very nice AI program that spoke the text wonderfully.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codespaceapps.listeningapp
The description said nothing about only working for the first 30 minutes.

Well - this is designed for people who *can* see, but just want to have
text *also* a spoken audio output. That's a totally different use case.

[Larry Wolff]

Post by Arno Welzel
Well - this is designed for people who *can* see, but just want to have
text *also* a spoken audio output. That's a totally different use case.

I want people who are helping me to know I've been testing a few apps to
try to get what turns out, in hindsight, what I think is most useful here.
a. Speaks the text of a URL (without time limits)
b. Speaks the text of a document
c. Saves the speaking into an audio file (without size limits)

I didn't really know what would be out there and what the limitations were
until I ran these tests, so I'll just summarize the progress to date below.

These apps worked to varying degrees.

Zueira's Voice (no URLs, takes large text, will speak & save mp3)
Saved 17K words to tanaka.mp3 32MB but only audio'd 1 hour & ten minutes
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brunopiovan.avozdazueira

Read - Text to Speech (takes url or text but text stops at 672 words)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ifeanyi.read

Talk FREE (takes text but not URL, can export audio wav but not 20K lines)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ktix007.talk

Voice Aloud Reader (TTS) (speaks text or web page)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hyperionics.avar

T2S (has its own browser, reads text and can save audio file but not large)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=hesoft.T2S

Text to Speech (won't save over 20K characters)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alpaca.android.readout

These quickly failed for various reasons so they were deleted.

Listen AI (doesn't work)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codespaceapps.listeningapp

Speechify (failed)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cliffweitzman.speechify22

Text to Speech
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stcodesapp.text2speech

Eleven Reader - Text to Speech
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.elevenlabs.readerapp

This "lureware" worked great, but only for the first 30 minutes of use.

Article Reader (lureware only works perfectly for 30 minutes)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ai.articlereader.mobileapp

At this point, the first half dozen on the list are what I'll be testing.
The perfect app would be free without ads and it would speak a URL.
Nice would be to speak text (and PDF) and nicer would be to save audio.
The last requirement is only some handled the full 17,000 word count.

[VanguardLH]

Post by Larry Wolff
What is an easy way to get Android to speak the text of this web page?
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1956/july/japans-losing-struggle-guadalcanal

For text you select within an app, go to Android settings -> General ->
Accessibility, and under Services enable the "Select to Speak" option.
The navpath to the option will vary depending on make and model of
smartphone.

When I click on the "Select to Speak" option on my ancient Android 8.0
smartphone, its help says:

When Select to Speak is on, you can tap specific items on your screen
to hear them read aloud.

Start Select to Speak. Then you can:

- Tap a specific item, like text or an image.
- Drag your finger across the screen to select multiple items.
- Tap the play button to hear everything on screen.
- Select text that appears inside the Camera view.

If, however, you are trying to get your web browser to speak out the web
pages it renders since you mentioned "web page" and gave a URL, some web
browsers have a "read aloud" option, or you install an add-on to provide
the feature. You never mentioned which web browser you use. For
Firefox, you can install the Read Aloud text-to-speech voice reader.
There are probably other text-to-speech add-ons for Firefox. However,
don't visit addons.mozilla.org to find them. Firefox Android allows
add-ons from a curated list, so go to its settings -> Extensions ->
Extension Manager, scroll to the bottom, and select "Find more
extensions". Read Aloud is one of those listed. I've never used them,
so cannot recommend which text-to-speech add-on works well, or best.

If you're using a different Android web browser, do an online search on
"<webbrowser> text to speech" to see if the web browser has the feature,
or add "add-on" or "extension" to the search to find add-ons to add the
feature.

[Larry Wolff]

Post by VanguardLH
If, however, you are trying to get your web browser to speak out the web
pages it renders since you mentioned "web page" and gave a URL

You're right for mentioning I didn't provide all necessary information.
I don't actually use a web browser on Android because the text is so small.

I was on my desktop computer reading the web page, but then I went to bed
and I wanted the Android phone to read the rest of the web page to me. :>

I know enough about talkback accessibility to know that it's not useful due
to the way it works. It works. But I'm seeking a more usable solution.

I'm looking for an app that turns these web pages into saved audio files.

Part 1 (July 1956)
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1956/july/japans-losing-struggle-guadalcanal
Part 2 (August 1956)
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1956/august/japans-losing-struggle-guadalcanal

If you paste that URL into this article-reader app, you will be blown away.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ai.articlereader.mobileapp
The audio file it creates is so perfect, it's as if a human is speaking it.

The problem with that app is it only has 30 minutes of free speaking time.
I'm hoping to find an app that doesn't have that arbitrary time limitation.

Best is an app that saves to a reusable audio file, but if the app just
speaks the page on call (without a time limitation) that's almost as good.

[VanguardLH]

Post by Larry Wolff
If you paste that URL into this article-reader app, you will be blown away.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ai.articlereader.mobileapp
The audio file it creates is so perfect, it's as if a human is speaking it.

That is adware which I typically shy away from. Sometimes, however, the
"ads" are not in the app's main window or even in its menus, but under
Help, or some other user-selected location, or the payware features are
crippled to show you what the app could do.

The app page says "Try for free". That typically means it is trialware
(expires after a while), or is a crippled version. Its web site at
https://articlereader.ai/ lists the pricing plans, including the trial
version which is limited to 30 minutes of audio (but no mention if that
is an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly quota).

Post by Larry Wolff
The problem with that app is it only has 30 minutes of free speaking
time. I'm hoping to find an app that doesn't have that arbitrary time
limitation.

I wouldn't say it is arbitrary. The free version is lureware. They
need to limit it to provide some impetus to buy it. I'm sure it wasn't
an overnight slop job to build their app. You need their
subscriptionware versions to get more reading time, but again they don't
mention if the amount of reading time is a quota over a day, week, or
month. Plus, it is not a cheap subscriptionware app at $6/month for the
Standard edition, and $12/month for the Premium edition.

Post by Larry Wolff
Best is an app that saves to a reusable audio file, but if the app just
speaks the page on call (without a time limitation) that's almost as good.

So, your inquiry is not how to get Android to read aloud, or how to get
a web browser to read aloud, but which free Android apps can perform
similar to Article Reader AI. I'm not expert in that area since I've
never needed nor used a text-to-speech app.

There's https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%25speechify which has 5
million downloads and 225 thousand reviews wit a 4.5/5 star rating.
However, it's another "Try for free" apps meaning it costs money to get
a better feature set or less restrictive quotas. I didn't find pricing
at their web site, but an online search says the free version has
limited features, and the premium plan costs $139/yr (barely cheaper
than the $12/month of Article Reader AI).

There is also Text To Speech (TTS) app listed at
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stcodesapp.text2speech,
but no web site is listed for more information, so no pricing info
available from the author. Seems a worse app: while both say in-app
purchases in the Play Store pages, "contains ads" are also mentioned for
TTS.

I suspect you won't find a decent or unlimited free Android app to do
the text to speech conversion. For advanced features in those apps,
they have to use Google Cloud's Text-to-Speech API which is billed on
the number of characters processed. Unlikely someone is going to foot
that bill for you, so you can get for free what they are charged.
Altruism works only if expense is minimal to the author, and they choose
to keep paying for everyone else.

https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing
"... will be automatically charged if your usage exceeds the number of
free characters allowed per month."

No mention of what is the number of free characters per month (quota).
The app author needs to charge you more than what Google charges them.

https://micmonster.com/is-google-tts-free/

That mentions free quota of characters per month as the free quota.

Neural2 Voice: 1 million bytes/month for free.
Studio Voice (Preview): 100k bytes/month for free.
Standard Voice: 4 million characters/month for free.
WaveNet Voice: 1 million characters/month for free.

A million characters sounds like a lot, and even more than 30 minutes of
audio would encompass, so the TTS app authors are restricting their apps
to much less than Google allows for the free quota. However, Google's
measure is in characters, not words. Could you read aloud an article
having 1 million characters in however many words in under 30 minutes?
One of the world's fastest speakers, Steve Woodmore, can read aloud 637
words per minute. Excepting time to inhale, that would be 19,110 words
in a 30-minute quota. That would be 573,300 words within Google's free
million quota.

The largest .doc file I have is 484KB in size with 1,312 words. I
didn't time how long it would take me to read aloud that document, but I
very much doubt I could read it 437 times within 30 minutes.

[Arno Welzel]

Post by Larry Wolff
What is an easy way to get Android to speak the text of this web page?
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1956/july/japans-losing-struggle-guadalcanal

In Chrome and Vivaldi for Android you can select the text, then tap the
"..." symbol in the popup menu and the choose "Read aloud".