@Voice Aloud Reader
Free Android App - Now with Dropbox sync!
Current version number: 2.7.3
@Voice Aloud Reader reads aloud the text displayed in an Android app, e.g. web pages, news articles, long emails, sms and more.
IMPORTANT: You need Text-To-Speech engine and voices installed on your device to use this app. If you don't have it yet, pickup from Play Store Acapela, Ivona or SVOX TTS package. You may use more than one if you want.
Downloads and Manual:
* 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 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.
* Dropbox sync! Enable it, then build your reading list on one device,
e.g. a tablet, then listen on your phone. Or from your computer, use File/Save
As - "HTML only" function in the browser to save in a Dropbox folder, then
listen on your phone.
* 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.
Also - the new Dropbox sync function needs Internet access, of course. There is
no need to avoid it.
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
Version 2.7 - 2013.07.01
* Loads very long text files in segments to avoid running
out of memory
* Fixes for some encoding errors
* Long press now also highlights the sentence to start speed from that point, in
addition to starting text selection. This makes possible selecting a sentence to
start reading from when TalkBack is enabled.
* Performance improvements, including armeabi-v7a native code
* Several bug fixes
Version 2.6.1 - 2013.06.21
* Correcting problem with listing all voices (countries
and speaker names were not displayed)
* Added character encoding recognition when loading text files. Should now
display correct characters even if text is not in UTF-8 format.
Version 2.5.0 - 2013.06.12
* Added "night" reading mode to the menu
* Many bug fixes and performance improvements.
Version 2.3.8 - 2013.05.28
* Several bug fixes and performance improvements
Version 2.3.4 - 2013.05.23
* For Android 4 (ICS) and higher, added a better lookup
of TTS engines, languages and voices.
* Many bug fixes and performance improvements
Version 2.2.3 - 2013
* Added option to read aloud at once text copied to
clipboard
* Redesigned Settings for more streamlined use
* Added notification to Android notification bar, with the title of currently
played article. On Android v.3 and higher it also has progress bar, buttons to
start/stop, skip sentences and turn on/off the option to speak clipboard aloud.
* Asking how to handle Stop button on its first use
Version 2.1.0 - 2013.04.27
* Dropbox login was broken if new Dropbox app installed. This release fixes the problem.
Version 2.0.9 - 201.04.22
* Bug fixes and performance improvements.
Version 2.0.7 - 2013.03.29
* More crashes and no-reponses fixed. Thank you for sending the bug reports!
Version 2.0.5 - 2013.03.27
* Several bug fixes again.
Version 2.0.3 - 2013.03.24
* Fixed crash when pressing Help button on some devices
* Fixed English pronunciation of words ending with ST and a dot.
* Paste button or menu item now appears even if you copy text as short as 1
character.
* Auto-start speech when headset connection option now also works when Bluetooth
headset is connected.
* Fixed an issue with reader not always remembering the text position after
return form another screen
* Fixed occasional crash in Dropbox sync
* Zoom controls added to enlarge text as needed. Can be
disabled under Settings.
* Now remembers the scroll position for each article
* Many bug fixes and performance improvements
* Bookmarks improved - now remembers exact position for all saved articles read, plus remembers how to load the contents (all or "essential")
* Auto-bookmarks the last read article, and restores it and the last read sentence when the app is stopped and re-started later. This also synchronizes through Dropbox, if you use this feature.
* Corrected a problem with ads sometimes showing even after buying and installing the "@Voice No Ads Upgrade". Sorry about that!
* Fixed another crash
* Fixed a rare crash on Android v.3 and higher
* Added French translation
* Added German translation
* Bug fixes and performance improvements
* Added Russian translation
* Small bug fixes.
* Option to move @Voice folder to another location, e.g.
external SD card, if needed.
* Dropbox sync now has option to be on demand (when you click the menu to sync
only) or continuous.
* Option to not exit the app when the on-screen STOP button is pressed, just
stop speech and reset position to the top of article.
* Faster start with slow data connection
* Auto-add to list articles added to our folder from outside @Voice app, e.g.
saved to Dropbox from desktop browser
* Added Polish translation
* Dropbox sync! Enable, then build your list on one device, e.g. a tablet, then listen on your phone. Or from your computer, use File/Save As - "HTML only" function in the browser, save to @Voice Dropbox folder, then listen on your phone.
* Several bug fixes, including a crash on some long articles from RADIO SVOBODA.
* Improved contents extraction from Twitter tweets.
* Updated video tutorials in Help
* Modified to prevent speech stopping on empty paragraphs with some speech engines (e.g. Loquendo)
* Android package name changed to com.hyperionics.avar -
will uninstall the older version upon first run, but preserve any saved articles
and reading lists.
* Performance improvements and bug fixes
* Ready for an optional purchase of No Ads Upgrade from Google Play Store
* Corrected issue with voice change when starting to read the next article from list.
* Better contents extraction, loads the main article only
and omits navigation etc. from Web pages.
* Optional menu to load the full contents of page, if necessary.
* Optional "share" icon to just add an article to list. Choose icons to show in
Settings.
* Added move and delete selected files buttons to reading list "add files"
panel.
* Swipe left/right to load next/prev article from list.
* Billing permission added for future premium/no-ads edition.
* Bug fixes and performance improvements.
Double click of headset next/previous buttons to advance articles from list did not work well, changed to LONG-PRESS (about 1 sec.) - much better.
Sound divider between articles from the list, speaks article number and total of articles.
Option to auto-add saved articles to reading list, on by default.
Fixed Open -> HTML file saved from any browser, now opens it in correct format for reading aloud.
Reading lists for uninterrupted listening of many previously saved articles
Headset Previous/Next button double-click jumps to the previous/next article on a list
Ability to select TTS voices by language, country and speaker name, e.g. "English (US, Heather)"
Many other improvements and bug fixes
Added paste, save and open commands
First non-beta release
Again faster text processing for speech
Downloading and processing progress bar was sometimes missing.
Much faster text loading and processing
Fixed speech stopping upon rotating phone or lock/unlock
More bug fixes.
Performance improvements and bug fixes
Language recognition is now very fast, made auto-select language the default selection.
Bug fixes and speed improvements.
Faster startup with auto-select language option enabled.
Many more bug fixes and smaller improvements.
Please email us your comments! Also don't forget to click the banner ad to send us a few cents as a reward for our hard work :)
Added automatic language recognition option, but it causes app to start slowly, so it's off by default.
Many more improvements and fixes, see yourself!
Now works on Android 2.2 (Froyo) and higher
You may use "Send by Email" button/menu in many news reading apps to get the text to @Voice
Some HTML style is used in reader window, e.g. headers are bigger, if text was downloaded from a web page.
Many smaller improvements and bug fixes.
Bug fixes, of course...
Cosmetic changes - removed title bar for more reading space, fixed "rate" link on "About" dialog.
Initial beta-test release. Please download and help us test and improve this app!