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windows-10text-to-speech

Windows 10 TTS voices not showing up?


I installed a few English language packs (US, UK and Canada) with their Speech options and I can access them in Windows 10 setting -> Speech but they doesn't show into text to speech option available from control panel and I can't use the voices with apps !

I can just use default voices which are David and Zira !

Any idea how can I use other voices ?


Solution

  • Windows 10 has two different TTS engines installed by default. There are the WinRT speech synthesis APIs (in the Windows.Media.SpeechSynthesis namespace), and the SAPI speech synthesis APIs (in the System.Speech.Synthesis namespace, and the COM ISpVoice interface).

    David and Zira are SAPI voices; the language packs install WinRT voices.

    The SAPI APIs and voices are legacy APIs, and are not being further developed; all new voices and effort are going into the WinRT APIs and voices.

    If you want to use the language pack voices, you'll need to move your application over to WinRT and use the WinRT APIs.