Skip to content

Text-to-speech

Text-to-speech (TTS) means the computer reads text out loud. Cuebot can read chat, thank people for follows, and say anything your actions tell it to. It is built in: you do not need Speaker.bot or any other app.

Everything is on Audio > Speech. It has these tabs: Overview, Engines, Voice aliases, Users, Chat & commands, Filters, Events and VoiceGate & queue.

The Speech page

This page sets up a voice and makes an action talk. To read chat or events out loud, see Reading chat and events aloud.

1. Pick an engine

Audio > Speech

An engine is the thing that makes the voice. Open the Engines tab.

Engine Where it runs What you need
Windows voices Windows Nothing. These are the voices already in Windows.
eSpeak NG Windows and Linux Free, works without internet. On Linux, install espeak-ng (the Flatpak has it).
Piper Windows and Linux (not on a Mac yet) Free, works without internet, and sounds much more natural than eSpeak. Cuebot downloads it for you: see Piper below.
OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Polly, IBM Watson The internet Your own account and key with that company
Acapela Cloud, CereProc (CereVoice Cloud), TTS Monster, UberDuck The internet Your own account and key

Internet ("cloud") engines often sound nicer, but the company may charge you for each letter spoken. Cuebot only sends them the text to say. Your keys are hidden on screen and never written to the log.

Click Test next to an engine to hear it.

Experimental

Of the internet engines, only OpenAI has been tried with a real account so far. ElevenLabs, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Polly, IBM Watson, Acapela Cloud, CereProc, TTS Monster and UberDuck are built and tested with pretend services, but not yet with the real ones. Piper, eSpeak NG and OpenAI were tried for real. See What's experimental.

Piper: free voices on your computer

Piper is a free voice engine that runs on your own computer. It needs no account, costs nothing, and keeps working without internet. Cuebot downloads it for you:

  1. On the Engines tab, find the Piper (free, offline) card and press Get Piper. It downloads about 25 MB, once.
  2. Press Show voices. Type your language in the small box (for example English or Spanish) to make the list shorter.
  3. Pick a voice and press Download. Medium voices sound good and are quick; high ones sound a little better but are bigger. Most voices are 20 to 120 MB.
  4. Press Test on the Piper card. Your voice is now in every voice picker, so you can use it in a voice alias.

Download as many voices as you like. To remove one, press Delete next to it under Your Piper voices. Some voices, like en_GB-vctk-medium, contain many speakers; each one shows up as its own voice.

Where Piper and its voices come from

Piper comes from the Piper project on GitHub, and the voices from Piper's voice collection. Cuebot checks every file after downloading it and throws away anything that doesn't match. Each voice has its own licence, listed in the voice collection; most allow streaming.

Piper's speed slider works, but its pitch slider does nothing.

OpenAI: voices you can describe

OpenAI's voices are natural and you can tell them how to talk, like "cheerful and a bit fast" or "whisper like a secret". It costs a little money: reading a normal chat message out loud costs a fraction of a cent.

  1. Go to platform.openai.com, sign in, open API keys and make a new key. You need to add a little credit (billing) to your OpenAI account first.
  2. In Cuebot, on the OpenAI card, paste the key into API key.
  3. Optional: type how the voices should sound into How the voices should sound. In a voice alias, pick a Speaking style (Cheerful, Calm, Excited, Spooky, Like a pirate and more) to change it for just that alias.
  4. Press Test to see the 13 voices (Alloy, Coral, Marin and more).

Model: leave it on gpt-4o-mini-tts. The older tts-1 models ignore the "how it should sound" text.

2. Make a voice alias

A voice alias is a nickname for a voice and its settings, like "Narrator" or "Robot". Your actions use the alias, not the voice itself. Later you can change the voice behind "Narrator", and every action that uses it changes too.

  1. Open Voice aliases and click + Alias.
  2. Give it a Name, like Narrator.
  3. Under Voices, click + Voice and pick a voice. (Add more than one and Cuebot picks between them by Weight.)
  4. Choose an Output device (speaker) if you do not want your normal one.
  5. Click Test voice.

Set Default alias at the top. It is used whenever an action does not name an alias.

3. Make an action talk

Add the Speak sub-action to any action:

  • Voice alias: which alias to use. Empty means the default.
  • Text: what to say, like %user% just followed! Welcome!
  • Wait until spoken: tick it if the next step should wait until the voice is done.

The Thank new followers example action already uses Speak.

Filters

Filters clean up what viewers write before it is spoken: swap or skip bad words, links and emotes, and limit very long messages and "loooooool". You can make different filter profiles and pick one for reading chat, one for reading events, and one for a single Speak step.

The queue and VoiceGate

Texts are spoken one after another, like a line at a shop. The Overview tab shows what is speaking now, what is waiting and what was spoken, with Pause, Skip, Clear and Speak next.

VoiceGate (on VoiceGate & queue) waits while you are talking into your microphone, so the computer voice does not talk over you. Pick your Microphone in a profile. The same tab sets how long the waiting line may get.

Silent on Linux?

Install espeak-ng for the free voice. If there is still no sound, see Linux.