Wavenet for Chrome

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Text-to-Speech (TTS) extension that transforms highlighted text into high-quality natural sounding audio using Google Cloud's…

Latest reviews

• (2023-10-15) J L: Very simple. Easy to use and really a brilliant idea. You should be proud of your work! Only thing is that, about 99% of the time, it doesn't do a single thing. No output whatsoever, no error message, nada. Even restarting the browser (or killing extension processes via system monitor) doesn't fix it. Since there's no documentation, I have no way to discover why this is happening or if the text I've selected might be breaking it or something. BB's version of your extension works for the same texts your extension fails at, and that's great and all, but his extension doesn't allow downloading for some silly reason! Perhaps related to the queuing, which I suspect is why that one works for me while yours doesn't, because I use it for long-form content. Regardless of length, though, once the extension decides to stop working, it won't work for anything, short or long. I do seem to recall an instance around maybe April, before the UI change, when I actually did receive an error message or two. Something about my sentences being too long. More documentation and more error messages would really be useful. If there's a tiny hint of an annoyingly entitled tone, by the way, it's just because your extension is so brilliant and it is totally frustrating that it won't work most of the time! :-( Really, take this as the highest praise. I want it and I can't have it, and it's driving me crazy! Thanks so much for making this. If you want to take it to the next level, figuring out a way to automatically rephrase texts that are incompatible with Wavenet (or the neural voices if there are any differences), as well as splitting up texts to skirt any length limits are probably the way to go. I've spent hours editing texts to get them to be compatible. It may seem silly, but it's for accessibility reasons, so it's worthwhile. I don't know if it's legal for you to make and sell one, but I would gladly pay $10 for a full application (assuming it's more reliable). But since you don't have one, is there a place people can donate to support this project? Thanks again for the wonderful extension—I just wish it were more reliable! Try out long texts to see if you can replicate the problem. If you want, I could send you a text file I know to be a problem for it, assuming you have contact info up on Google.
• (2023-10-10) David Solomon: Awesome extension. The SSML feature is not fully working, I have created an issue in github. Can you please lookinto it. The read aloud works but the download does not work. It will be really helpful if you can fix it.
• (2023-09-09) Ultimate Marketing Group: Fantastic extension, I love it. Nice and simple UI. Happy to see the extension get some updates, please keep it up. Wish it was available for firefox as well.
• (2023-08-27) Imran Q: I was using the read aloud extension and the google voices kept needing permissions from the demo site. This approach works much better and much more reliable! Amazing for reading articles and books especially when your eyes are tired or you want to take a walk!
• (2023-08-11) Gowri Shanker “GS Bellu” Bellu: 'Wavenet for Chrome' is the only chrome extension that I use. Simply superb. My heartfelt appreciation goes out to the developers for providing such a remarkable utility that greatly enhances my productivity.
• (2023-08-01) Marc-Olivier Bouchard (marcolivierbouch): Michael! What an amazing extension!
• (2023-08-01) Kyle Behse: This is a wonderful extension! Use it all the time! Latest release brought back sliders for speed and pitch. Better quality MP3s too! Great update!! Thanks, Michael!!
• (2023-07-27) Evgeniy Kuznetsov: Extension is great, I use it for my projects almost every day for MP3 downloads. And recent UI update was helpful too, I liked it. Thanks, Michael! Issue: After recent v.10 update it doesn't recognize SSML, not in sandbox, nor through context menu. Sorry but have you even tested it before release? And I was relying on you extension. Could please fix it ASAP. UPD: the issue is fixed in version 11. I had to install in manually just for now.
• (2023-07-27) Gina Benson: Using it everyday! Thanks! But the demo on the Google page has different audio profiles and some of them sounds much better than what it does on the extension,.. Any chance I get to customize this in the future??
• (2023-07-22) Andi Zulmai: I cannot download the voice in wav file more than 6 second. Please fix for more minutes..
• (2023-07-22) M Y: Hey, great work here! Since you made an update, I can't choose the speed I want. For example I was using 1.15 speed, but now it's just 1 or 1.25 open for choice. Thanks
• (2023-06-01) Saleh Almhameed: Great work, is there any way to improve the quality of the downloaded files?? they are kinda bad.
• (2023-02-19) Liam Taylor: Holy s**t, the new Studio voices are amazing! I haven't found a TTS service this good that's anywhere near this accessible. A highly useful extension!
• (2023-02-19) Jooyong Park: I sincerely thank the developers who created this program for the fantastic update!
• (2022-10-19) Deniz Perçin: When will you add Neural Link support? Thanks...
• (2022-06-28) Mani Shekar: Brilliant, extension! Thank you for this. Just a small issue with the SSML. It seems to work only with around 500 characters. Anything more and SSML is just plain ignored.
• (2022-06-10) Salman Tahir: Could increase the quality of the downloaded files. Right now there is a noticeable difference in quality. 5 stars.
• (2022-06-08) Bernhard K: It would be good to have the google Neural2 language as an option :)
• (2022-03-22) Sandra T.: I don't want to miss this little program anymore. The YouTube vid telling you how to set up your own API is really helpful -- so thanks for providing that. WaveNet for Chrome now reads all my texts -- and I love to have text read out loud to me, so I use it daily. As for the hotkeys, it takes a bit of getting used to the Ctrl-Shift-S for reading a text, but after a few days it's second nature.
• (2022-03-04) Kosta Kondratenko: This is awesome - I've been looking for a text to speech that actually sounds natural. I bought a Neutral Reader subscription which is $19 and was very close to shelling out $19USD p/month for NaturalReader. I loved IBM's Watson text to speech and also Google's cloud text to speech but they all had a character limit and I had a long list of notes that I wanted read back to me. Anyway - enough about my story - but I just wanted to show appreciation to the author. I had been working through API's, trying to figure out CURL commands, going back and forth with API teams and finally I have an extension that does EXACTLY what I want - highlight text - click to listen (to a real natural voice) - and click to download - and all I need to do is paste my Google API key. Beautiful. Thank you so much, I was staying up late trying to find a solution and now I can go to sleep feeling like a winner (L)
• (2022-01-05) Peter Jones: This is saving us a lot of time setting up Covid announcements on our PA system at work. No need to find an MP3 with Americanisms or clips that are not quite right. We can get Google WaveNet to voice our own scripts. Thanks! :)
• (2021-08-26) Felix Trautwein: Hey man, great app. Is there any way you would allow us to change the quality of the audio? The current downloaded audio sounds very low quality :(
• (2021-06-22) Rishit Shah: we are getting below error please make one new video for the setup as google system has changes and please allow to do download it as wave There was an error fetching the list of voices. Make sure your API key is valid.
• (2021-06-07) Alex Ruimy: Best extension in its class, thank you. Needs some improvements though: 1. If you enter the API key wrong (MacOS), you can't clear the textbox, so the wrong api message pops up every time the plugin window opens. That's all it does until you uninstall/reinstall. 2. Please allow us to regex the speech 3. Please add a setting to remove URLs from being spoken
• (2021-05-09) Matt S: Lmao they want to charge for this
• (2021-04-16) Prayers for Pets1 NonProfit: Love google always keeps old instructions up and they dont make sense because they are outdated. If a blog did that google would have fits.
• (2021-02-19) evil nero: Using Google Cloud is very hard to understand... This app does all the job.
• (2021-02-17) Mark Tran: Honestly the best program ever. I use it everyday and it has increased my productivity tenfold. I can't thank you guys who made this enough.
• (2020-10-18) Arthur Bisle: Possibly the best sound quality available in 2020. Unfortunately only 5000 characters limit for a single voice generation query (this limitation is set by wavenet, but a workaround could definitely be found). No playback button on the toolbar, only hotkey and right-click menu. Not hotkey for stop. And you've got to get a so-called API Key on WaveNet web site in the first place. Which is not that easy but there's a pretty good guide helping you get through.
• (2020-10-11) Matthew: It just works. You have to have an API key and know what you're doing, but if you do, it works and works well. I just wish it had an easier pause feature!
• (2020-10-09) John Gralyan: This extensions is absolutely awesome! Simple, functional, excellent! Thanks for this awesome, open source contribution!!! :)
• (2020-07-25) Chris Chong: Thanks for creating this wonderful tool & best of all it's offered for FREE OF CHARGE! How great is that! Thanks to the development team! Google's WaveNet is probably the closest human-like voices we can get on the internet! Try it now & you won't regret it, its output quality amazes me!
• (2020-03-18) Sales Audio Power Co., Ltd.: I've tried a lot of extensions and this one is the BEST
• (2020-03-02) Faruk F: Hi, is there any way to remove or change 5000 limit?
• (2020-02-27) Khelladi Oussama: Amazing joooooob thank youuuuuu, i have a question is there any way to integrate google cloud on android phone as a tts engine ?
• (2020-02-24) Phuong Phan: This's amazing. Let's enjoy your work. Thanks.
• (2020-02-18) Kostas K: I've never left another extension review despite using dozen for close to a decade. This extension is amazing.
• (2020-02-15) Qwerty: I love your chrome extention very much. and i am using it almost everyday by producing sentence to study dutch language. The reason i want to contact you is that i want to ask if it is possible to improve the mp3 quality? According to the documentation, 'The quality of the OGG_opus is considerably higher than MP3 while using approximately the same bitrate.' and The result will be a file which can be played natively on Android, and in browsers (at least Chrome and Firefox). so would you consider to improve the sound quality by adding OGG file output in the update ? let us know. here you can see the documentation: https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/reference/rest/v1/text/synthesize?hl=nl#audioconfig
• (2019-12-21) Chris Banach: while the extension is great, when i try to open the downloaded MP3 in Adobe Premiere or Soundbooth or even Audacity, the file crashes. I get an "unsupported format or damaged file. the weird part is, as if the mp3 file itself changes because of the crash, because when i originally play it, it works well. then when i open it in Premiere Pro, it doesn't import it. But then, when trying to play it again, it plays random weird noises instead, like an audio tape playing accelerated or a disk scratch. the only workaround that bug i found is to first convert the file through an online audio converter (such as https://online-audio-converter.com thereby reducing the kbps for example to 192kbps. then you download the new file and voila! magically now your file is opened properly by Adobe apps an Audacity. Not sure what causes this bug, but it may have to do with my Nvidia graphic cards (i have two GeForce GTX 660 Ti configured through SLI), just an idea, because since my displays are spanned with surround, Nvidia doesn't recognize for example Audio from one of the two screens. anyway, fantastic extension, but it sucks to download mp3s i can't edit directly. a waste of time, but in the end i got it to work through my workaround.
• (2019-12-14) Odin: Great tool, much appreciated, is there anyway to remove the 5000 character limit set by google when converting to mp3?
• (2019-11-26) Robert Woeger: I appreciate WaveNet for Chrome very much on my Mac. I really need to be able to save lossless files for importing the WaveNet audios into my videos and into other projects. The current MP3 mono 24Khz 16 bit saved format is rather limiting for me. Is there any way you can save to FLAC or WAV or Apple Lossless file formats as a stereo file at 44.1kHz 16 bit audio instead of as a mono 24kHz 16 bit MP3 file, which really limits the audio quality that is saved? Thank You.
• (2019-10-14) Matti Suomenaro: Thank you for making this. It is an incredible accessibility tool!
• (2019-09-24) PB M: Wonderful! Should add a shortcut to download Google API key costs money.
• (2019-09-13) DJay ': Easy to set up. Thanks for the YouTube Video how the get the API Key. Looking forward to you ongoing development. Thanks for the time you are investing and sharing.
• (2019-09-11) Dayn Wilkins: Fantastic extension! Just what we needed to generate audio for our e-learning projects! Many many thanks.
• (2019-09-09) phly95 :: Great extension. I wish I could input long text documents as well as download as a WAV or OPUS file.
• (2019-08-16) Miguel Ceja: This is, by far, the easiest way in which I've been able to get Wavenet audio as a downloadable file. I spent many hours last year trying to find an app that could do this. Thanks for the developer for such an amazing extension!
• (2019-08-15) Christian Lane: Works well, though I cannot get shortcuts to work. They simply don't work, anything I can try to fix it?
• (2019-08-12) Tim Faber: I rarely write reviews but in this case I'll make an exception: I simply love this extension! Leveraging the powerful Wavenet text-to-speech from Google, with this extension you can simply select text and have the computer read it out loud in a close-to-human fashion. A way to make this extension even better, would be to get rid of the 5.000 character limit.
• (2019-07-21) Zhou Peng: Very good. ^ ^

Latest issues

• (2023-08-30, v:12) Richard Rosenman: Quality Option
  Hi there; I just went through the process and got Google Cloud Text-To-Speech set up. Your Chrome extension seems to be working so far (just with one line of text). I will be using this for videos. However, I noticed the maximum quality for download is MP3 64kb, which is very, very low! WAV and OGG don't seem to specify the bit rate. Is there any higher quality download option? The audio will have to be quite clear for these videos... Please advise. Thanks, -Richard
• (2023-08-10, v:12) Kyle Behse: Feature Request - Saved Audio Playback Settings
  Hey Michael, I was just using your extension again (like a seem to do a lot) and was thinking... wouldn't it be cool if I could save all my different characters profiles? ie: a Save Profile button, where I get to name the profile and saves the language, the voice, speed, pitch and gain. Just like you have with the pre-selects (Audio Profile), except they would be unique to my selections. Not even sure if it's doable, as I'm not sure where the data would be saved (locally, or in the cloud) but it crossed my mind and I thought I would bring it up. Cheers!!
• (2023-08-03, v:12) Sean S. Modd: Cannot Read Aloud... Can Only Download the Audio File!
  I am also having th eexact same problem... please help! This holds true in every single way. For example: 1. If I right click > wavenet for chrome > read aloud it doesn't work. 2. If I use the shortcut, read aloud doesn't work. 3. If I go to the extension's sandbox and enter a sample text, read aloud doesn't work. In all three instances however, I can download the audio file and it works perfectly. I have also uninstalled and reinstalled the extension and still have the same problem. I have also created a new API key and still have the same problem. I'm not sure what else I can do but it's not working... please help! Thank you!
• (2023-07-22, v:8) Leon Brown: Read aloud stopped working.
  Hi there. Great work on the plugin. The latest update has stopped the read aloud functionality from working. Speech can be downloaded as a file, but not played when selecting the read aloud option.
• (2023-07-21, v:8) Mark Henry: Hey
  I am trying to add a new API key however, the extension shows the old API key. How can I remove this please? Thanks.
• (2023-07-21, v:8) Jason M: Voice Pitch
  Pitch settings set to low, normal, or high is not very intuitive. The sweet spot for each specific voice has its own range sometimes in the 0.5-0.8 while others have the ideal pitch in the 1.15-1.4. Please restore the old pitch range options! Thanks!
• (2023-07-20, v:8) Kyle Behse: Wav and Ogg download will only export first sentence. Sometimes skips sentences in mp3 mode too.
  •Wav and Ogg download will only export first sentence. •Sometimes skips sentences in mp3 mode too. •Speed has defaults (1, 1.25, etc), can we fine tune to 1.1 again? •Pitch has defaults, can we fine tune? The voices I was using can no longer be created. I have a character that is fine tuned with the speed and pitch, and can no longer recreate his voice. Is there a way to roll back to a previous version? This update still has a lot of bugs. *Thanks for all your hard work though, it's a great extension!
• (2023-05-11, v:7) Tom Baratella: ajuda
  Olá tudo bem? consigo através desse programa alterar a voz de um cantor pelo outro?
• (2022-10-19, v:5) Deniz Perçin: Neural Link Support
  Please add Neural 2 support <3
• (2021-09-02, v:5) Vagif Gasimov: wavenet
  It does not work. can you help me?
• (2021-08-27, v:5) Felix Trautwein: Low audio quality
  Hey man, great app. Is there any way you would allow us to change the quality of the audio? The current downloaded audio sounds very low quality :(
• (2021-08-03, v:5) Susan Nicholson: Have to create an audio file per sentence and encoding issue
  We are experiencing an issue where we have to create an audio file for every sentence of text. Previous we could create one audio file of multiple sentences / paragraphs. I suspect this could be due to the feature added: "Splits texts into sentences to prevent the 5000 character limit as well as reducing Google API usage." Please advise how we can proceed - can we use a previous version of the extension? In addition, we now also get an "unsupported audio stream" error when using the .mp3 file in any of our video editors. This could be due to encoding. Has something changed in the latest release?
• (2021-06-08, v:5) Pardeep Kumar: Error Message: There was an error fetching the list of voices. Make sure your API key is valid
  Error Message: There was an error fetching the list of voices. Make sure your API key is valid
• (2021-06-08, v:5) janice rivera: API KEY
  I DONT HAVE API KEY
• (2021-04-02, v:5) Umar Farooq: Gives an error.
  Hi. Whenever I click the play audio button, it gives me this error: https://i.imgur.com/4OeO8Fd.png Can you please share what this issue is? Thanks!
• (2021-02-15, v:2.1.1) Chiew Peng Tan: Error Fetching The List of Voice
  Hi, the below message appeared "There was an error fetching the list of voices, make sure your API key is valid". How can i correct the error? Thanks.
• (2021-01-27, v:2.0.1) Lifetime Magazin: merhaba ben uygulamayı çalıştıramıyorum
  uygulamayı çalıştıramıyorum
• (2021-01-11, v:2.0.1) Refik Yolu: wavenet for chrome
  You must add your Google Cloud's text-to-speech API Key in the extension's popup.
• (2021-01-11, v:2.0.1) Refik Yolu: wavenet for chrome
  You must add your Google Cloud's text-to-speech API Key in the extension's popup.
• (2021-01-01, v:2.0.1) Skin: Support of Cantonese for HK
  Hi, GCP supports Cantonese for HK as below. Can you please help to add that in your extension? "voice": { "languageCode": "yue-HK", "name": "yue-HK-Standard-A" } Thanks a lot
• (2020-12-08, v:2.0.1) Marius Andreiana: improve usability
  Hi, would you please consider making this quicker to use? * when having no text selected and pressing the start shortcut key, simply start reading from current mouse position * have another shortcut key for pause * pressing the start shortcut key while already reading should start again from mouse position (user moved somewhere else) * highlight current sentence * auto-scroll page See how this works: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/natural-reader-text-to-sp/kohfgcgbkjodfcfkcackpagifgbcmimk/related Thanks!
• (2020-12-04, v:2.0.1) Sherry Fataie: in gebruik nemen
  Hi, ik wil deze extensie graag in gebruik nemen, maar ik weet niet hoe. ik wil graag een Nederlandse tekst laten oplezen.
• (2020-11-19, v:2.0.1) MK8: Google Docs Support
  I am writing a presentation on Google Docs and highlighting text for WaveNet to export as MP3. WaveNet is not an option on the right-click (MacOS). Can you recommend a browser-based notepad or document app compatible with WaveNet? Thanks!
• (2020-10-21, v:2.0.1) r r: Windows
  Does this work with windows or only Mac OS?
• (2020-10-21, v:2.0.1) r r: Can't hear anything
  I can't hear anything when I try to right click and select "start speaking".
• (2020-10-06, v:2.0.1) Butter Techno: Internal Error Encountered
  Hi, First of all, many thanks for developing this huge extension. From last 2 hours the plugin is displaying "Internal Error Encountered". I have reinstalled wavenet for chrome but it is still now working. any ideas what i am doing wrong.
• (2020-09-05, v:2.0.1) KISA BİLGİLER: wave net for corume
  wave net for corume anahtarı etkinleştirmek istiyorum
• (2020-07-04, v:2.0.1) Artemis Vouzouni: I cannot use it for reading comments in PowerPoint
  I have not figured out how to use for my Powerpoint slides. I would appreciate your help!
• (2020-05-02, v:2.0.1) svenluebke: Shortcuts don't work
  Hello, my problem is that the shortcut doesn't work STRG+SHIFT+S to read the text. This is really anyoing and comes with a lot of clicking. Can you do something about it?
• (2020-03-07, v:2.0.1) Kevin Levine: Issue Fetching voices
  Good Morning, I keep getting a message to check my API, since it can't fetch the voices when I try to use the extension. I followed the video instructions, so not sure why it isn't working. Thank You.
• (2020-02-23, v:2.0.1) Justin Leon: Keyboard shortcut stop speaking
  Hi. I use this for proofing my academic papers. Once I find a mistake, I correct it, but need to stop the text-to-speech engine. Using the right mouse context menu is cumbersome. Can we get a keyboard shortcut to stop speaking please? Thank you.
• (2020-02-20, v:2.0.1) Vasilios Golfinos: Can't easily preview voices
  There appears to be no easy way to preview the many different voices from the extension itself before deciding on which one to use. Is there a plan to allow voice preview as I seen in other TTS apps?
• (2020-02-08, v:2.0.0) El Jefe: mp3 file problem
  I have used your extension for awhile with no problem creating mp3 files so I think your latest update changed something or google has changed something on their end because the mp3 files will not play and sound editors cannot open them.
• (2020-02-03, v:2.0.0) Medical App: mp3 file empty/corrupted
  Hello, None of the mp3 files I have downloaded using the wavenet extension are producing any sound. They all are about 270 kb but all appear empty. The extension plays/reads the highlighted text properly but can't seem to create a playable mp3 version of said text.
• (2020-01-30, v:2.0.0) Mateusz Kozłowski: Name of downloaded files
  It would be great if there was an option to set a downloaded file name to the beggining of the spoke words, for example ("This is a text to read" would have a file ("This is a text.mp3")
• (2020-01-30, v:2.0.0) Henry Giesen: Downloaded MP3 files have no properties
  It seems this was an issue you were working in 2019. Audacity and Windows Media Player don't recognize the downloaded MP3 files because their media properties don't exist.
• (2020-01-22, v:1.8.1) Mateusz Kozłowski: Shortcut for download
  Is there a shortcut for mp3 download? Is see one for reading, but not downloading.
• (2020-01-01, v:1.8.1) zero k: Auto character count filter and multi-file downloading
  I can see that your plugin it gives a warning for the 5k character count but is it possible to use this to auto separate large documents to meet the limitations and download the files after it does. I think I remember reading it can do up to 300 quires a minute.
• (2019-09-25, v:1.8.1) Ashutosh Tripathi: 5000 character limit.
  Hello, Is there any way to suprass the 5000 character limit? Awesome app though!
• (2019-09-20, v:1.8.1) HY POON: New Languages
  How can we use the new voices that are updated by Google? For example, Mandarin from China. Also, is that possible to include non wavenet voices and option to download as wav?
• (2019-09-11, v:1.8.1) Hasse Hall: SSML
  What is the best way to use SSML in a WordPress page so it can be read correctly? I need important pauses and abbreviations.
• (2019-09-09, v:1.8.1) phly95 :: Only MP3 download?
  Could you offer WAV download as well please? The MP3 sounds harsh compared to a wav I generated manually. Also, it would be very helpful to autosplit at 5000 characters and download either a combined audio file or a bunch of numbered files that can be used in a VLC playlist.
• (2019-09-06, v:1.8.1) robertoamarillas: No spanish?
  Hello, amazing extension, but, there is no spanish? how come!
• (2019-08-20, v:1.8.1) Patrick Taylor: Options page is blank
  Hello I'm trying to access the options page as I want to adjust the speed of speech and get a blank page every time. Any ideas? Thanks Patrick
• (2019-08-15, v:1.8.1) Christian Lane: Google Docs and shortcut key probelm
  Does this work with google docs? I don't get the right click context menu option in Docs. Also, is there any troubleshooting for shortcuts keys not working? Thanks
• (2019-06-05, v:1.6.1) Lorant Boros: SSML tag to use multiple user voices.
  Hello, I would like to know if there is an SSML tag that could be used to change the speakers voice. So say, is there a voice tag that could be used to markup the headlines of a literature to be read by one voice and the rest of the text by a different voice please?
• (2019-04-28, v:1.6.1) Lorant Boros: SSML
  Hello, Would you be able to advice me on how to use the extension with the SSML features please. So far I have been unsuccessful in figuring it out. If I feed the code directly through the browser eg. inserting the desired text that has been marked up into a text box in the web browser, the text will be read out as is including the mark up code?