Google’s Text-To-Speech engine is baked into various parts of the Android operating system as well as other Google services, like Google on the web and the Google app on other platforms. Suffice it to say, Text-To-Speech does quite a bit even if most of what it does is on the sidelines or laying dormant until users decide to initiate a command which garners a voice response. Today, Google has started pushing out an update to the TTS app which brings in a couple of new features that will make it a little more enjoyable for some users.
Following today’s update for the app, people will be able to pick from some new variations of male and female voices to use for when something like the Google app kicks back a response to a question or command. This has apparently been requested pretty heavily by a larger number of users, so it seems that Google was listening and finally implemented the changes to appease the requests. As it stands right now as of version 3.7 of the app, users have only one voice to pick from, and in the case of English (US) it’s a female voice labeled simply as “female.”
After users end up downloading the update to version 3.8 of the TTS engine they should end up with 7 total voice options, which includes the default voice as well as 3 male variation voices and 3 female variation voices that one can select. If you have already installed the update per the Play Store notification or you’ve downloaded the apk through our link here at the bottom, you can find the TTS settings in the Language and Input menu under your standard device settings. From Language and Input, if you scroll all the way to the bottom you can find Text-To-Speech Output and on that last page you’ll find an option to download a voice pack. After selecting your chosen language, the next page reveals all of the voice variations you can pick from. That’s all there is to it. If you haven’t update the app just yet, as stated above you can grab the apk for the latest version of Google TTS from the apk link below.