Better reading voices

Install high-quality text-to-speech voices for the reading features on iOS and Android — including the recommended Google voices.

Why better voices?

The reading features (the reader and read-aloud in the exercises) use your device’s text-to-speech voices. The preinstalled ones often sound a bit robotic — with a few steps you get much more natural voices. Which of them VocaBox uses is then chosen under Select voice (up to five per language).

iOS: download high-quality voices

Apple offers “Premium” and “Enhanced” voices for many languages, free to download:

Open your iPhone or iPad Settings.
Go to Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices.
Pick the language you want.
Tap the download icon on a voice — the ones marked “Premium” or “Enhanced” sound best.

The new voices then show up automatically in VocaBox.

Android: install Google voices (recommended)

On Android we recommend Google’s speech engine — it sounds natural and covers many languages:

Install Speech Services by Google from the Play Store (often already preinstalled).
Open your device Settings.
Go to Text-to-speech — depending on the manufacturer under General management, Languages & input or Accessibility.
Set the preferred engine to Google Text-to-speech and use Install voice data to download the voices for your language.

Then pick the voices in VocaBox under Select voice.

Tip: some of the best voices need an internet connection. In VocaBox each voice shows whether it works offline.