TTS ReaderOffline text to speech on iPhone
TTS Reader reads text aloud without an internet connection. Its 10 multilingual voices are built into the app and work offline from the first launch in 31 languages; 15 English voices work offline after a one-time download of about 190 MB.
How it works
Most text-to-speech apps send your text to a cloud service and stream the audio back. TTS Reader runs neural voice models directly on the iPhone with Core ML, so the text never leaves the device and reading does not depend on a connection.
| Voices | Languages | Offline |
|---|---|---|
| 10 multilingual voices (Supertonic 3), part of the app | 31 | Yes, from the first launch |
| 15 English voices, US and UK (Kokoro), optional | English | Yes, after a one-time download of about 190 MB |
Languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.
What needs a connection
- downloading a book from the free Project Gutenberg catalog;
- importing a web article from a link;
- downloading the optional English voice pack.
Everything else — your PDFs, ebooks and documents, scans, photos and pasted text — is read entirely on the iPhone. Download books and articles before a flight, and they stay in your library.
Offline or cloud voices?
Cloud services offer more voices, voice cloning and audio export, and they work on many devices. On-device voices are fewer, but they are free to run, private, quick to start and work anywhere. TTS Reader uses only on-device voices, which is why it can be free without a listening limit.
Questions
Can TTS Reader read without internet?
Yes. The 10 multilingual voices are part of the app and read 31 languages offline from the first launch. The 15 optional English voices work offline after a one-time download of about 190 MB.
What still needs an internet connection?
Only downloading a book from the free catalog, importing a web article from a link, and the optional English voice pack. Your own files, scans and pasted text are read entirely on the iPhone.
Is offline text to speech worse than cloud voices?
The on-device voices are neural voices and sound natural, but large cloud services offer more voices and celebrity or cloned voices. In exchange, on-device reading is free, private and works on a plane.