Reviews & Comments of Talkie: text-to-speech, many languages! chrome extension

Payware, premiumware, and doesn't even do anything.

great tool and the dev is very generous.

Hi Joel, I want to make a donation to support this very helpful extension, but as of 13 January 2023 none of the relevant links for making a donation -- or even visiting your website -- seem to work (on Chrome under Windows 11). Writing this review was the only way I could find to report this problem.

Have to manual read from clipboard

I has donated but I can not be able to change the speed on voice. I wish it can be as simple as right click! but thank you for the work.

I love this, except for the tedious error message: "Talkie cannot read this kind of page. It is a very sp..." This is open source, so if you'd like to change that, just replace that text in the file at C:\Users\ [your PC user name] \AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Extensions\enfbcfmmdpdminapkflljhbfeejjhjjk\7.0.0_0\_locales\en\messages.json I replaced it with "BONK". If you don't see enfbcfmm.... in your Extensions folder, right-click on the Talkie icon > Manage extension to see what's in the "ID" section. Find the folder with that name in your Extensions folder instead.

Fabulous. Easy to use. Perhaps make the install process easier for younger users.

The clever functionality of right clicking on selected text to trigger the announcement is worth its weight in gold. It gets around iframe limitations. If this extension would highlight text as it announced it I would give it 5 stars.

Is eSpeak the only German voice available in the non-Premium version?

works good so far!

This app can't even pronounce version...no thanks

This is great when it's working.

It wasn't good at all. The default voice is worse than google translate and I tried everything to change it but nothing worked.

One of the best extensions i've used. LOVE this! I can EASILY understand better than 95% of what it reads. If it's not exactly perfect - then try different spellings and you're likely to find one that works better. This is one great extension! Well Done!

I really like the free version and it works great. My only complaint is that you have to buy the premium version for $24 / year to be able to control the pitch and the speed. I think these 2 things should be included in the free version and the paid version should be just for all the different languages....thus my reason for rating 4 instead of 5 stars.

Too slow and can't change the speed.

An amazing app. Finally, this is the first app that allowed me to change a type of voice.

Talkie is the best sounding and performing TTS extension I've found that still works in 2019 and actually functions on my tired, under powered laptop running Linux Mint 19.2. Now to be fair the quality and selection of voices are highly dependent upon the type of device (architecture/platform), OS (operating system) and the web browser (Chrome/Firefox) that you are using. Your results will likely vary but I am pleasantly surprised to find a feasible solution for my specific situation in which my health and quality of life is markedly improved by the ability to have articles read to me. Thank you Joel! -Ralph

Free version should include variable reading speed like other extensions.

I've used and trialed many text to speech (TTS) application from installed applications such as TextAloud to browser based. This is a pretty good one. I wish the the premium was a little less expensive or had a way to try it out for a few day or with a monthly subscription.

This program is not compatible with Danish language as written on the page

Crash when read arabic

Nice! Text to speech for Hindi is amazing.

Apart from the first example sentence, it never again uttered a word. (Win10 + Vivaldi, which is just about Chrome.) It apparently got stuck in "talking" mode forever, but remaining mute. And no Settings to be found?!... So, I selected the only applicable option: "Remove extension".

no voice

does not work for ubuntu 16.04 chrome

It wouldn't read pdfs for me, but other than that I think it worked wonderfully. The words were pronounced properly, it wasn't too fast or too slow. That's regarding the free version though.

useful when i was trying to explore new languages to learn

Ok, but after I changed the setting for the voices, the changes didn't apply at all to the site I do the TTS with. The default voice with its default setting still the one coming out.

not free

so nice to hear my messages in a female voice.....its a great app..time saver

[UPDATE 15/11/17: Ok, what I did was to uninstall those broken Voices I had in my PC from the past, and now it works great with your voices, and I gave 2 more stars. The voice of "English US Microsoft David Desktop" sounds super clear!! :-). By the way You don't support the Greek Language.] It seems to be a very promising extension. BUT, the fact that I need to become a premium member, I am not able to choose a default Language and I have a problem with that. Because I had some old voices installed on my PC before some years ago, and some are broken.. So this extension takes the first voice in my List which is broken, and I can not test this extension. To see its potential. If it works or not. And also the icon becomes Orange and it is disabled me to change other voices. That's why I gave only two stars for now. Fix it, add the Greek Language, and I might change my rating to more stars. For now the Top Text-To-Speech extension for chrome, that does not cause any problems to me, and has really natural voices, is the [TTSReader - Unlimited Text-To-Speech].

A lot of the features that I wish were free are behind a paywall (more voices than just two... even just 5 would be nice. As well as basic voice controls like speed)

For a free extension it is good, got disappointed especially during the long pauses when it comes to punctuation.

Works fine and allows start/stop of reading; however, for control of speed/tone requires premium at $25/year.

Great little helper to read my college assignments.

Needed to read a long paper for class, and it only mispronounced one word to my memory. It is a little choppy around less used punctuation, but it can make abbreviations into words (ex. it said 'misc.' as 'miscellaneous'). A very good TTS overall.

Works very well for me. Only wish there were more choices for voices.

wont let me use

I love this extension, especially how it works offline. One thing that would make it perfect would be if there was an option to alter the speed. I have used such a feature on similar extensions, and find it very useful to make it read at for example x2 when I have a lot of long emails to get through.

Great!

Very much appreciate this being free software! Can't wait to implement some features myself if I can figure out how.

Works great but doesnt work with google docs like most of these extensions though

Simple, works great, quick support responses.

well i dont now how to use it

yea nice gurl

Tried a few extensions like this for reading out interviews, this one was hands down the best. Loads quick, can handle large sections of text.