Text-to-Speech 101

Librarian
  • Updated

Microphones are great however sometimes you just want to be a robot, right?

The Text-to-Speech (TTS) function will help you achieve your wildest robot dreams by reading what you type directly to your channel.

Sending Text-to-Speech

This is the easy part. To have a sentence read in Text-to-Speech, just type /tts before your sentence. So, to read this sentence:

"Discord's pretty awesome"

Just type:

/tts Discord's pretty awesome

Important Note: TTS follows the default system settings of how Discord is being used. Internet browsers such as Chrome or Firefox have a different Text-to-Speech reading bot than Windows or Mac do. Depending on what platform you're using, you'll be hearing different TTS voices!

Make it stop!

We get it, the troll in your channel just had the TTS bot read "WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW"... Well, we have two selective methods to trim who and what channels have the privilege of utilizing TTS.

Method One: Notification Settings & Server-Wide Mute

The first TTS toggle setting can be found here:

User Settings -> Notifications -> Text-to-Speech

Text_to_Speech_1.PNG

 You'll see three selections here:

  • For all channels: This setting allows any channel, across any server, to have messages be read in Text-to-Speech, regardless if they use the /tts command or not. You'll be hearing a fair amount of TTS across all of your channels if you have this enabled. Use with caution!
  • For current selected channel: This setting means the current text channel you have selected will have messages read in Text-to-Speech.
  • Never: No matter how hard your friends try, you won't ever hear the dulcet tones of the Text-to-Speech bot anywhere within Discord. (Unless you engage it yourself, of course.)

This Screen is particularly useful if you want to hear what your friends are typing. 

Method Two: Read your own sentences!

The second TTS toggle setting can be found here:

User Settings button > App Settings > Accessibility

Use the Text to speech rate setting to adjust the speed at which the text is being read back to you.

Screenshot_96.png

What this does is enable or disable the /tts command. If you have this option de-selected, and type in a /tts sentence the Text-to-Speech bot will not read it aloud. A sad tale indeed.

Important Note: The TTS option in the Accessibility tab is completely separate from the TTS options in the Notifications tab. If a user has TTS notifications enabled like in method one, they will hear your sentences written in TTS, regardless of what TTS settings you've selected. Similarly, if they disable TTS notifications, they won't hear your sentences read in TTS at all.

That wraps that up! We wish you the best in your robot adventures and hope that these tips will help you Discord!

Related articles