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Open Source Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text on Android? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by andrew0@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/foss@beehaw.org
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Hello everyone! I am interested in replacing the Google Speech Recognition and Synthesis app on Android. For Speech-to-Text (STT), I've tried Whisper and FUTO, and settled on the latter because it seemed to be more versatile. Also, FUTO seems to have some decent recognition, but not yet capable of handling all the languages that I want. Regardless, so far happy with STT. The only annoyance I have is that it does not appear as an option in the settings for Speech recognition :(

However, I can't seem to find any replacements that have good Text-to-Speech (TTS) quality. I tried espeak-ng and RHVoice, but both have robotic outputs.

Given the recent advancements in AI, I was expecting that there would be ways to incorporate open source TTS models like Kokoro to generate speech on the go. Nevertheless, I could not really find any such apps so far.

Has anyone managed to completely replace the Google app with (an)other privacy-focused FOSS app(s)?

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[-] infeeeee@lemm.ee 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Sherpa onnx is very good: https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/tts/index.html

Apks are here: https://k2-fsa.github.io/sherpa/onnx/android/apk.html

[-] andrew0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Thanks! I was actually looking at this, but I gave up because I couldn't really figure out how to get a multilingual model running through Obtainium. I'll try again :D

[-] mustbe3to20signs@feddit.org 5 points 2 days ago

I (rather seldom) use FUTO Voice for STT and SherpaTSS for TSS.

[-] Pirata@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

My setup exactly. I can highly recommend this approach.

[-] andrew0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Thanks for the SherpaTTS suggestion. I really like the GLaDOS voice <3

I am not sure which phone you use, but are you able to set FUTO Voice as the default "Voice input" in the Android settings? I played around with a few apps, which show up. However, FUTO is not an option here :(

[-] mustbe3to20signs@feddit.org 2 points 11 hours ago

Honestly, idk. Anysoft Keyboard and Firefox integrated seamlessly, so I never really checked on system level.
Settings says there is no app set up, but if I tap it, it is listed as the only choice?

[-] Ulrich@feddit.org 4 points 2 days ago

Transcribro

[-] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago

Thanks for that. It works quite well.

Even though I'm using FUTO (paid for it), I don't mind trying new things. I just wish these produced text in real-time as I sometimes dictate long-form content, and it's unnerving to wait a while for it to process (not knowing if it actually heard everything).

[-] andrew0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

Thanks for the suggestion! I gave this a try, but it seems that it won't register any voice 🤔 However, it seems like it shows up in my settings, so it's a good sign. I'll try to get it to work :D

[-] Ulrich@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago

Weird! Worked fine out of the box for me!

[-] said@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 2 days ago

I'm using one of the models here . It's working for voice instructions for navigation in Organic Maps. It's also showing in the text to speech menu in the android settings.

The app it's based on (SherpaTTS) already exists on fdroid repos, but the APKs on that link has the model embedded already.

this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
31 points (100.0% liked)

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