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@Voice Aloud Reader - Android app - reads aloud text from web pages, news articles, long emails, sms, PDF files, eBooks and more.
@Voice Premium License removes all ads from the main @Voice Aloud Reader app and enables a few premium features. It can be purchased from Google Play Store. However if you need this license on a device where Play Store is not available, or for any other reasons prefer to order directly from us, click the above link. The Premium License is permanent and can be used on any Android device or emulator. After placing the order, your license key will arrive by email from sales@hyperionics.com - please make sure to unblock this address in your SPAM filters.
Downloads and Manual:
NOTE:
@Voice Add to List desktop browser extension that works through a Dropbox account (even a free account they offer) is available now. Read more here.
* Click "Share", "Send by Email" button or menu item in any app to send text
you read to @Voice Aloud Reader for aloud reading over speakers or headset.
* If "Share" is not available, copy text in other apps and paste it into @Voice
for aloud reading.
* Open text, PDF, DOC, EPUB/MOBI/FB2 or HTML files from Android file system for reading aloud.
* Save articles opened in @Voice to files for later listening. Construct
listening lists of many articles for uninterrupted listening one after the
other. Order the list as needed, e.g. more important articles first.
* Record spoken articles to sound files - WAV
(uncompressed) or OGG (compressed) formats supported.
* Use Android local Text-to-speech voices, or if you want - cloud voices from
Google (WaveNet), Amazon (Polly TTS) or Microsoft (Azure TTS). Note that the
cloud voices are paid services by Google, Amazon or Microsoft, respectively,
although each of them offers some free usage monthly.
* Switch voices or even languages with the special annotation
in the text. Read more at:
https://hyperionics.com/atVoice/VoiceChanges.html
* Easily control speech generator volume, pitch and rate of speech.
* Pause/resume speech as needed with wired or Bluetooth headset buttons, plus
click Next/Previous buttons to jump by sentence, long-click to switch to the
next/previous article on a list.
* Can automatically recognize the language of an article and use appropriate TTS
voice, if available, or set your preferred voices manually with "Select
language" menu item.
* Options for additional pause between paragraph, start talking as soon as a new
article is loaded or wait for a button press, start/stop talking when wired
headset plug is inserted/removed.
* Optional sleep timer to stop speech after a given timeout.
ABOUT PERMISSIONS:
The full Internet access is needed because the “Share” function from web
browsers and any news reading apps I tried, sends us only the URL address
(http://something...). They do not send the full text of articles, so @Voice has
to download the article from the Internet to be able to read it aloud or save
for later reading. Only by using Copy text function in one app, and pasting it
in @Voice, or by saving the full text in one app to storage and opening a file
in @Voice, you could avoid Internet connection, but this is not very convenient.
PLEASE send me your suggestions for improvements and bug reports welcome - send them to the email address listed on "Contact" page. Thanks and have fun! And a BIG THANK YOU! to Ilia Prokator for sending me the idea for this app.
Greg at Hyperionics
* Fix: clicking on "Ask AI" menu or button would crash the app on Android 9 or older.
* New Ask AI feature: send the current article or the currently loaded part
of a book to your preferred AI assistant for summaries, questions, or
discussion. It is available from the app menu, and can also be added to the top
toolbar in Settings > Extra buttons to show on top toolbar.
* Web article extraction is now more reliable. The app automatically uses
JavaScript loading when needed, and the old prefer JavaScript by default option
has been removed to simplify setup.
* Speech start/stop broadcasts now include the article title and reading
progress, improving integration with automation tools.
* Improved PDF-to-HTML extraction stability.
* The app can now open ebooks and PDF files protected with Readium LCP DRM,
if the user obtains .lcpl or protected file from an online book store or library
(for library loans). The user must know their correct passphrase to open such
files for the first time.
* Improved text extraction from some websites.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Fix: Opening PDF files on GrapheneOS was not possible
* Other important stability and performance improvements.
* Improved text extraction from some web pages.
* Stability and performance improvements
* Fix: when sharing new links to @Voice - add to list or open, too fast,
corrupt files could be saved.
* Improved text extraction from some web pages.
* Fix: Chinese language could not be selected for Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure voices.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Improvements to text extraction from some web pages.
* Silenced "Starting @Voice service" announcement for TalkBack users.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* More fixes due to many web pages not loading, as they are blocked by Cloudflare or similar services from loading into non-standard web browsers. Now most should load normally, without the need to save from a separate browser.
* More fixes due to many web pages not loading, as they are blocked by Cloudflare or similar services from loading into non-standard web browsers.
* Fix: sharing or using "open with" a PDF file from other apps to @Voice did
not work.
* Opening the Reading List screen no longer automatically adds files saved in
Dropbox to be added to the reading list. One has to select manuall menu - "Add
from Dropbox".
* Under the Settings menu - "Sync progress/bookmarks and reading lists", added a
new button to "Reset Download Time" - for the cases where you want to
re-download from Dropbox all pending files to be added to a reading list, no
matter when they were saved.
* Fix inconsistencies in handling bilingual translations and how the
sentences are highlighted then
* Fix link navigation problems within the app, when used under screen readers
like TalkBack.
* Opening PDF files with Android Files app from remote locations, e.g. Google
Drive, would often show error 10 message.
* Improvements in web page text filtering
* Fixes for desktop browser plugins - "Open in @Voice" not always working.
* Improved sync between devices and desktop browsers extension handlers
* Stability and performance improvements
* Improved some bookmark import code.
* Fixes to web page content extractor and serial downloader
* Now saves web articles in ZIP format instead of MHTML, using at least 50%
less of storage space
* Improved text extraction from some websites
* Stability and performance improvements
* New: @Voice Add to List Chrome browser extension (for desktop browsers) has
now a choice to open at once the current page in @Voice app on your phone,
tablet or Android emulator. This update to @Voice app is necessary for this new
feature to work.
* Improved text extraction from some PDF files.
* Fix: Recent update of Android 16 by Google (Gson component) caused crashes
when opening some web pages. Working around that bug.
* Fix some inconsistencies in opening PDF files
* Fix issues with translate widget, when "Show bilingual text at once" option
was on
* Fix word highlighting for network voices
* More accurate word highlighting with complex speech replacements.
* Improved back and forth history navigation, and added buttons to go forward
or back to the bottom bar with round buttons.
* When sync is enabled, the app now check if the progress of another device is
further along upon starting playback, and announces this by voice, if screen is
not on.
* in PDF view mode change the length of horizontal sweeps to switch pages to be
much longer, to avoid confusion when using other gestures, e.g. pinch zoom
* Added "Send/Receive" item to the menu on "Reload or clear" button (circular
arrows icon) - to send the currently read file, reading progress and bookmarks
to another device, through the user's Dropbox account. Seamlessly resume reading
on another device, e.g. from phone to tablet
* Better explanation what to do in some sync scenarios.
* Fixed some bugs that crept into rel. 37.0.0
* Better "sync between devices", particularly for PDF files
* Better bookmark handling, ability to recover them if the file to which they
refer is modified
* New function on Bookmarks screen to bulk-export all bookmarks
* Serial download on the Reading list menu has now options to retry any link
several times, in case of errors, and to limit the max. number of downloaded
files
* Fix error in pinch zoom in PDF viewer
* PDF viewer page rendering is now much faster and by default at higher
resolution
* Some web pages were saving with wrong encoding, when using Share - Add to list, the option "Save pages as web archives..." under Settings - Share icons, text and reading lists, was disabled.
* PDF manually crop pages function - copy to other pages - defaulted to copy just one current region, which was confusing. Changed to default to copy all regions as older versions did.
* PDF View improved - long press on text on any PDF page will highligh the sentence at that place, and resume reading aloud from that place, either automatically, if "read at once" option is turned on, or upon pressing the Play button
* Upgraded Tesseract OCR library code to ver. 5.5.1, the latest at this time
(prev. version was 5.0.1). Slightly better and faster OCR
* Table of Content (TOC) is now imported better from PDF files, creates
multi-level TOC instead of one flat list as before.
* New option under the Settings menu - Screen and sleep timer settings, to
either hide or show the screen cutout or camera hole in the full screen reading
mode.
* Fix some issues with bookmarks for HTML files extracted from PDFs.
* Fix: edit bookmark screen shown after long-pressing a bookmark on the list of
bookmarks was incorrect, showing a different bookmark, if some bookmarks about
it on the list were deleted.
* Fix for extracting text from some PDF files, which do have a valid table of content for example, but in @Voice this table does not appear correctly, and the navigation by page numbers was then also not available
* Modified the PDF view, when you are reading a PDF file and presses the PDF view button at the bottom left, the currently read aloud lines, which are highlighted in yellow, will auto-scroll into view, if you have zoomed in and these lines are outside of the visible area.
* The language selection screen for OCR and translation has now a search box
where the languages on the list are filtered by the characters you type, to let
you quickly find what you need.
* Some more compatibility fixes for Android 16
* Improvement for opening web pages that show an online view of a PDF file - now
the part which informs you of this fact and offers a Download button, is visible
again.
* Fix for inoperational table of content in some ebook files.
* Under the Reading list screen - menu - Paste links, better parsing of links
from downloaded HTML or MHTML files. Now works if you e.g. download a page with
TOC of some web novel and want to extract chapter links from it for downloading.
* Some special Unicode characters, like ‌ caused Google TTS to read words
letter by letter - now filtering such characters out automatically.
* Rebuilt to target Android API 36 (Android 16), per Google requirements.
* Fixed: When using paid cloud voices from Google, Microsoft or Amazon, and
reading articles from the list, the articles after the first one were using the
default speed and pitch of voice, instead of what the user set at the bottom
control panel
* Fixed: Some FB2 ebook files were not opening correctly.
* Fixed: camera punch hole was covering text on some devices in full screen
reading mode.
* Fixed: in voice change annotation, the controls for speed and pitch were not
working.
* Fixed: tutorials were not working correctly.
* Fixed some problems with changing voices in regular articles or ebooks,
introduced with ver. 35.8.1.
* Added ability to pre-define voice changes in an EPUB file, currently
working only on the experimental copy of the "Syntax of the Deep" ebook from
https://hyperionics.com/downloads/atVoice/deals/Syntax_of_the_Deep.epub
* Added ability to pre-define voice changes in an EPUB file, currently working only on the experimental copy of the "Syntax of the Deep" ebook from https://hyperionics.com/downloads/atVoice/deals/Syntax_of_the_Deep.epub
* Added option to center the text being read aloud, when vertical scrolling
is selected.
* Stability and performance improvements
* Added MP3 options to "Record sound file" function
* Better handling of Markdown (.md) files, can be sent to @Voice with Android
Share functions
* Stability and performance improvements
* Making sure that full screen ads disappear, if during their display you
press or swipe to go to Android home screen and then return to this app.
* Stability and performance improvements
* Fix: some EPUB files with special characters in the internal chapter file
names were not loading correctly.
* Stability and performance improvements
* Fix: reset progress on the Reading List screen did not work correctly for
ebooks and long HTML files.
* Stability and performance improvements
* Improvement for some websites' text extraction (filtering)
* Stability and performance improvements
* Fix: OCR of PDF files was not working in the previous release
* Stability and performance improvements
* Stability and performance improvements
* Stability and performance improvements
* Improved processing of zalgo text.
* Fix: when using volume rocker as page turner, the pages were turning fine,
but also the volume control was appearing on the screen.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Fix horizontal scrolling in e-paper mode
* Fix opening some FB2 files, what have syntax error in their code.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Under the "Page look" button on top (T+/- icon), MODE tab, added an option to force e-ink mode. It is available when you switch the app into the horizontal scrolling mode. This mode avoids page change animation and flashes the page with black and white to minimize e-ink "ghosting". It also changes the color scheme of the icons and buttons for better contrast.
* Important stability and performance improvements.
* Avoiding animation when changing pages on e-ink screens and flashing screen
between pages to minimice ghosting.
* Added Korean translations of the app's screens, menus etc.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Changed the way to select target folder for Record sound file function, to
the internal file browser of @Voice - makes it possible to navigate e.g. to host
shared folders under BlueStacks Android emulator.
* Added Japanese and Indonesian translations of the app's screens, menus etc.
* Removed "Add from Pocket" and related functions from the Reading list menu, as
Pocket is shutting down.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* New Replace function added to "Edit text"
* Improved website filtering
* Fixed opening some FB2 files, which previously failed
*Other important stability and performance improvements
* Important stability and performance improvements
* Fix: edit text function, when started in dark mode, had black letters on
black background.
* Important stability and performance improvements
* Added fast scroll bar to the "Edit speech" screen, as some users define
close to 2000 speech replacements.
* Fix: start talking at once option did not work correctly after a new article
or book chapter was loaded.
* Important stability and performance improvements.
* More fixes to translation mode, it did not work correctly when e.g. the
@Voice app was swiped off the screen or exited with Back button and restored,
and similar situations.
* Other important stability and performance improvements.
* Better filtering of some very long web pages, that load in parts into
@Voice app to avoid memory overflow errors.
* Translations still failed in some situations or did not show an obvious way of
adding new languages, fixed.
* Other important stability and performance improvements.
* Better filtering of some very long web pages, that load in parts into @Voice app to avoid memory overflow errors.
* More improvements to the Translate function, and it's now available as one
push button on top. Try it out. Also look what's new under the Settings icon
(gear graphics), after you pressed the Translate button.
* Decoding "Zalgo" monster speech, used in some fantasy novels, so that it could
be read aloud. Also lowered the Zalgo text pitch by 50% to give a clue that a
monster is speaking.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Translate function on the "Reload or clear" menu (circular arrows button on
top) is much more reliable now. If you are learning foreign languages, after
translating text try also the "Bilingual text" option on that menu, and listen.
* Backup/Restore @Voice folder functions now preserve the file date/times -
important if sorting lists by time
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Translations work better and faster now
* Better handling of <iframes> inside downloaded MHTML files
* Fix: HTML <pre> text passages were not read correctly, when paragraphs were
separated with empty lines.
* Continuing the on-going struggle to find and eliminate the bad banner ads or ad sources, that crash
the app occasionally.
* Website filters can now contain some speech replacement, e.g. to still show
in the text emojis, or reference links, but not read them aloud.
* Still trying to find and eliminate the bad banner ads or ad sources, that crash
the app occasionally.
* Added support for Amazon Polly "generative" and "long-form" voices.
* Work to eliminate app crashes caused by some banner ads
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Improvements to how Math tags are either read or ignored when reading
aloud.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Added search boxes to the language and voice selectors on "Change voice or
language" screen.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Now opens also .txtz files
* Improved link sharing from @Voice to other apps
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Detects on many pages that offer an online view of a PDF file, and offers
to download that file for local reading aloud
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Stability and performance improvements
* Website filtering improvements
* Stability and performance improvements
* The app is now supported only on Android v8 (Oreo) and higher. Sorry, due
to some software components incompatibility can no longer support older versions
of the system.
* Website filtering improvements
* Stability and performance improvements
* Important bug fix, the online configuration was not read in some
situations.
* The "Monitor Download folder..." function, if enabled to add dowloaded
pages to the reading list, will now move the files from Download directory to
the directory assigned to the current reading list.
* RegExp matching in text processing filters (edf, edp) is now set to SINGLELINE
mode (or DOTALL) for more flexible matches across mutliple lines of text.
* Website filtering improvements
* Performance and memory saving improvements
* Website filtering improvements.
* Updated some translations.
* Updated some translations and minor filtering improvements.
* Improvements to web page text filtering, reporting bad filters and following links within @Voice app.
* Stability and performance improvements
* More improvements to website text filtering and serial download