Google Text-to-Speech 3.0 update brings high quality voices

March 6, 2014

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Another update from Google, joining an update to Google Play Music and Google Play Games, brings some enhancements to Google Text-to-Speech as it ratchets up to version 3.0. Perhaps the most significant change included in this latest release is support for high quality voices. The files are significantly larger for new voices with the female U.K. voice weighing in at 276MB. The larger files sizes do create some delays loading the voices and getting output in certain situations.

Along with the new high quality voices, Google has added some new languages – Portuguese (Brazil) and Spanish (US). With multiple voices available per language, Google had to add a toggle for languages with multiple voices so users can switch them and in a nice touch this can be done on the fly.

When uploading and downloading voices to a device, Google updated the UI to show file sizes and replaced the “Delete” button with a trash can icon.

The update should be rolling out to users over the next few days. You can use the Google Play links below to get Google Text-to-Speech or check for the update. If you cannot wait, a download link to the Google apk is provided below as well.