say

Installing say.js

npm install say

Usage

// automatically pick platform
const say = require('say')
 
// or, override the platform
const Say = require('say').Say
const say = new Say('darwin' || 'win32' || 'linux')
 
// Use default system voice and speed
say.speak('Hello!')
 
// Stop the text currently being spoken
say.stop()
 
// More complex example (with an OS X voice) and slow speed
say.speak("What's up, dog?", 'Alex', 0.5)
 
// Fire a callback once the text has completed being spoken
say.speak("What's up, dog?", 'Good News', 1.0, (err) => {
  if (err) {
    return console.error(err)
  }
 
  console.log('Text has been spoken.')
});
 
// Export spoken audio to a WAV file
say.export("I'm sorry, Dave.", 'Cellos', 0.75, 'hal.wav', (err) => {
  if (err) {
    return console.error(err)
  }
 
  console.log('Text has been saved to hal.wav.')
})

Methods

Speak:

• Speed: 1 = 100%, 0.5 = 50%, 2 = 200%, etc

say.speak(text, voice || null, speed || null, callback || null)

Export Audio:

• MacOS / Windows Only
• Speed: 1 = 100%, 0.5 = 50%, 2 = 200%, etc

say.export(text, voice || null, speed || null, filename, callback || null)

Stop Speaking:

say.stop(callback || null)

Get List of Installed Voice(s):

say.getInstalledVoices(callback)

Feature Matrix

Unfortunately every feature isn't supported on every platform. PR's welcome!

Platform	Speak	Export	Stop	Speed	Voice	List
macOS	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	🚫
Linux	✅	🚫	✅	✅	✅	🚫
Windows	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅

macOS Notes

Voices in macOS are associated with different localities. To a list of voices and their localities run the following command:

say -v "?"

As an example, the default voice is Alex and the voice used by Siri is Samantha.

Windows Notes

None.

Linux Notes

Linux support requires Festival. As far as I can tell there is no sane way to get a list of available voices. The only voice that seems to work is voice_kal_diphone, which seems to be the default anyway.

The .export() method is not available.

Try the following command to install Festival with a default voice:

sudo apt-get install festival festvox-kallpc16k

Requirements

• Mac OS X (comes with say)
• Linux with Festival installed
• Windows (comes with SAPI.SpVoice)
  • Needs to have Powershell installed and available in $PATH (see issue #75)