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iOS

Posted by Tobias Schmidt
Tobias Schmidt
1,526 Points

AVSpeechSynthesizer with Swift

Hello All,

I want to use the AVSpeechSynthesizer to make an iOS iPhone App say "Hello World".

I can only find tutorials for Objective-C and I don't understand the Apple Documentary.

I understand that I need to pass the text into a AVSpeechUtterance and then use AVSpeechSynthesizer to make the App speech, but I have no clue how to do this in code.

I did the following in my ViewController for now:

import AVFoundations

let speechSynthesis: AVSpeechUtterance = AVSpeechUtterance(string: "Hello World")

this should create a Object of the AVSpeechUtterance class with the initial text value "Hello World" right?

From here I tried different ways to use a function that uses AVSpeechSynthesizer but I am always getting errors.

Can you help me please? Thanks, Tobias

3 Answers

Thorsten Herbst
Thorsten Herbst
11,935 Points
Thorsten Herbst
Thorsten Herbst
11,935 Points

Hello. Initializing the Utterance was no bad afford, but you have to do a little bit more to get your speech running. You had forgotten the most important thing.

First you must initialize a Speech Synthesizer. Then you have to pass the Utterance to the Synthesizer. I would recommend to configure the Utterance. As i found at stackOverflow the iOS8 System has a bug which causes the First Utterance to very silent. The which i had found is to place a singleCharacter Utterance at first and then let speak the real Utterance.

Heres is the Code for it: 

        var speechsynt: AVSpeechSynthesizer = AVSpeechSynthesizer() //initialize the synthesizer

        //workaround for iOS8 Bug

        var beforeSpeechString : String = " "
        var beforeSpeech:AVSpeechUtterance = AVSpeechUtterance(string: beforeSpeechString)
        speechsynt.speakUtterance(beforeSpeech)
        //realstring to speak
        var speechString : String = "Hello World! This is a Speech from iphone"

        var nextSpeech:AVSpeechUtterance = AVSpeechUtterance(string: speechStringGermanRepresentation)
        nextSpeech.rate = AVSpeechUtteranceMinimumSpeechRate; // some Configs :-)
        speechsynt.speakUtterance(nextSpeech) //let me Speak!
       //Debugging  
        println("Hello Swift World")
        println("\(beforeSpeech)")
        println("\(nextSpeech)")

Hope i helped you..:-) Feedback is very welcomed

Greets Thorsten

Tobias Schmidt
Tobias Schmidt
1,526 Points

Hello Thorsten thank you for the reply.

I think I now got how to use the Utterance and Synthesizer, but I now run into some errors :)

When I use your code I get troubles with the GermanRepresentation added to speechString.

When I remove that I got the following error for each Utterance I pass to the Synthesizer: Speech initialisation error: 2147483665

After searching a bit in the web I found out that it might be that I need to activate SpeechSelection under Accessibility.

When I do that for my Simulator I get the following error after the error above: Cannot find executable for CFBundle 0x78e420f0 /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator.sdk/System/Library/AccessibilityBundles/QuickSpeak.bundle (not loaded)

Is it just not possible to do this on a Simulator?

Thanks,

Tobias

Thorsten Herbst
Thorsten Herbst
11,935 Points
Thorsten Herbst
Thorsten Herbst
11,935 Points

Hello Tobias,

sorry the germanrepresentation was my fault. It is a var which i had used to test the speech in german because i am from germany. instead of that, use the speechString variable. then it should work. For being sure i had tested it on my device. Greets Thorsten

Tobias Schmidt
Tobias Schmidt
1,526 Points
Tobias Schmidt
Tobias Schmidt
1,526 Points

Cool Danke Dir :)

I wanted to learn a bit before buying an account, but not the time might have come :D