I’ve just deployed a big change to how Readlang’s voices work. This adds new MS Azure generated voices and allows selecting from the same set of voices for both Auto-Pronounce (previously Speaking Mode) and for Read Aloud. Read more about this here: Better voices in Readlang - Readlang Blog
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This is great news, especially for mobile!
If you’re updating voices, would you consider adding a male Hong Kong accent for Cantonese (yue-CN-YunsongNeural) ? As a male cantonese learner, it’s much harder for me to shadow the tones when the voice is so much higher pitch than my own.
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Wow this works great! Thanks Steve, this is a terrific boost for using Readlang on my iPhone.
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I’ve just added a LOT more voices across all the languages, including this one.
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oh my god, just pressed play on the text that didn’t have audio (and expected to hear those low-quality voices) and discovered they’ve been updated. i’m shocked! thanks a lot Steve!
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I was literally just fantasizing about an update like this. So helpful. Thank you!
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I’m having a problem with read aloud in Edge.
When reading in Japanese, it can’t detect any browser voices in the settings, and trying to use the browser’s own read aloud doesn’t work (the bar appears at the top of the screen, but pressing play does nothing).
When reading in French, only the non-France voices (Canada, Switzerland, etc) work.
I tested the browser’s read aloud on other sites, and both Japanese and French (France) work fine, so it seems like a Readlang issue.
I’m also having trouble with getting my texts to be read aloud since this update. I’ve changed the Swedish auto-pronounce voice to Sofie, which is working beautifully and is so much better than the old robotic voice. Thank you so much for this!
However, using Read Aloud has been really hit and miss since the update. I’m a Premium user, not Premium Plus so I need to stick with my in-built Swedish voice for Read Aloud. It worked fine (albeit wasn’t nice to listen to) before the update. After the update, initially the play button for Read Aloud just wasn’t there at the bottom of the screen. When I went into the settings, they said I had no browser voices available for my language even though I always did before. That seemed to spontaneously fix itself within a couple of days, and I could use Read Aloud again.
Unfortunately, I am now finding that although my Read Aloud settings show that Sweden Swedish is there as my chosen voice (and the only one available to me), it just won’t play. The play button is there at the bottom of the screen. Pressing it results in the first word being highlighted in brown like usual, but then… nothing. No sound. No movement of the highlighted word, it just fades but never goes on to the next sentence. If I change the Auto-Pronounce setting back to the in-built Sweden Swedish then that doesn’t work either - I get the green highlight and the translation but no sound.
I mostly use Readlang via Chrome (but having added it to my home screen as recommended, so it opens like an app) on an Android phone. My phone’s sound is definitely turned on and I can play media from other sites within the Chrome browser.
It still works fine on my Android tablet and on my Onyx Boox device, but I’m getting nowhere on my phone. This may well be a browser issue rather than a Readlang issue, but I had no problems at all until this Readlang update so thought I’d flag it.
The browser voices should be back for Japanese. Sorry about that. Please refresh your Readlang tab and give it another try.
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Sorry about this. I’ve tried to reproduce this issue but can’t. If you have any more info that might help me please let me know.
And if anyone else is having this issue, please comment.
Thank you very much for looking into it!
The problem of the play Read Aloud button being there but nothing playing seems to have resolved itself. I’m not sure what changed as it previously persisted even after I tried a force stop and then a full phone restart.
I’m still having intermittent problems with the button not appearing at all due to there apparently being no available browser voices for my language (or the selection area just saying Loading), even though there definitely are built-in browser voices available (robotic as the Chrome one is). I’m getting this with both Android Chrome and Edge (which I thought I’d try in case it made the problem go away). Right now, the Read Aloud button is available when I open Readlang in Chrome, but not when I use Edge.
In Android Edge, I can sometimes fix the problem by using the browser’s own Read Aloud button. If I open that, then reselect the voices, then leave the text and re-enter it, the play button at the bottom of the text does seem to come back. My Android Chrome browser doesn’t seem to have any setting that lets me do the same so I just have to wait until it spontaneously comes back, which can be anywhere from 15 minutes to a day or so.
Apologies if this doesn’t make a lot of sense. I do primarily use Readlang for straight up reading so it’s far from a site-breaking issue for me and more of a minor niggle.
Hi, Steve.
Is it possible to bring back the previous voice options in Speaking Mode for iPhone users on the free plan? The current voices sound very robotic.
The voices available on the free plan in Readlang depend on the browser you use. I would recommend trying Microsoft Edge browser which has a very good selection of voices.
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For Readlang, but for nothing else, I always use Edge, on Android, specifically for the quality and choice of voices. What you say about the button is true, and also about activating Edge’s own Read Aloud. So my standard procedure is 1) Activate Edge’s Speak Aloud feature from the Edge menu, then 2) Most important - Close the text in Readlang, 3) Open the text again. The Readlang button always appears then.
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Thank you. I’m glad it’s not just me.
And while you are here, thank you very much for all the Swedish texts/AI stories you’ve created on Readlang!
Thanks. Just to say that the Edge voice thing seems to be specific to Edge. I’ve just vibe-coded a clone of Steve’s practice feature. It’s one of several vocab practice apps I’ve had Canvas build me, including a Clozemaster clone. (All for purely personal use, and without any spaced repetion, working from CSV files).
In my app, I included a Read Aloud feature for both the word and the sentence, which works very well, but which is browser dependent. I was initially rather surprised, as Edge only offered me about five languages, while the range of languages and speakers in Chrome was much larger, the opposite of what I had expected. What’s more, the voices in both browsers were exactly the same.
Then I remembered about using Read Aloud in Readlang in Edge, and clicked on Read Aloud in the Edge menu, and lo and behold, when I went back to the start page of my app, I had the whole range of voices to choose from.
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I was in a learning rut for a while and then I’m coming back to Readlang and there are so many cool new features 
That’s great that we now have so many voices to choose from and Read Aloud now also works great on my phone, which I’m very happy about.
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