OS X `say` command for Windows

The say command is perhaps OS X terminal's most compelling feature - it takes text as input and speaks it through the computer's speakers. Is there any equivalent command-line tool on Windows, either built-in or via a third-party program?

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5 Answers

PTTS is a very simple Microsoft Windows command line program to convert text to speech. If uses the Microsoft Text to Speech Engine and the Microsoft Speech SDK. The Text to Speech Engine is installed with Windows XP with one voice of somewhat poor quality. The Jampal installation program includes two better sounding voices. (quoted from website)

One can use it by simply entering the text into the program by redirection or by piping in text:

ptts < file.txt
echo Hello there|ptts

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I got tired of trying to make outdated tools work, so I created wsay.

It works like say, you can select different voices and you can easily output to a wave file.

Cheers

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I've created a simple Batch Script for doing this. Here's the source code

@echo off
echo Dim Speak >> %HOMEPATH%\speak.vbs
echo Set Speak=CreateObject("sapi.spvoice") >> %HOMEPATH%\speak.vbs
echo Speak.Speak "%*">> %HOMEPATH%\speak.vbs
%HOMEPATH%\speak.vbs
del %HOMEPATH%\speak.vbs

Save this script in a file called "speak.bat" and move it to a directory referenced by your PATH variable.

This program creates a simple vbs with your input, then speaks it with system voice. At the end of the execution, the script will be deleted to give space for another execution.

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This question was asked on Stack Overflow. I like the answer with the VBS script.

Also, espeak is available for Windows and Linux and has been ported to OS X. I don't believe it uses the built-in Windows TTS engine.

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They have this library in the SDK, where you could probably make a more advanced utility with some personal effort.

Although this is probably the most convenient way as it is natively built into the system, and is accessible via powershell.

Call the function from the namespace ((v=vs.110).aspx)

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Speech

Instantiate the Object

 $synth = New-Object -TypeName System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer

Call the function and input your words as it's argument.

 $synth.Speak('hey man')

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