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@Voice Aloud Reader reads aloud the text displayed in an Android app, e.g. web pages, news articles, long emails, sms, PDF files and more.
IMPORTANT: You need Text-To-Speech engine and voices installed on your device to use this app. If you don't have it yet, pickup from Play Store. Examples: Speech Services by Google (pre-installed on most Android devices), Vocalizer TTS, Acapela TTS, Cereproc, RHVoice TTS and more. You may use more than one if you want.
@Voice Premium License removes all ads from the main @Voice Aloud Reader app and enables a few premium features. It can be purchased from Google Play Store. However if you need this license on a device where Play Store is not available, or for any other reasons prefer to order directly from us, click the above link. The Premium License is permanent and can be used on any Android device or emulator. After placing the order, your license key will arrive by email from sales@hyperionics.com - please make sure to unblock this address in your SPAM filters.
Downloads and Manual:
See also:
* Click "Share", "Send by Email" button or menu item in any app to send text
you read to @Voice Aloud Reader for aloud reading over speakers or headset.
* If "Share" is not available, copy text in other apps and paste it into @Voice
for aloud reading.
* Open text, PDF, DOC, EPUB/MOBI/FB2 or HTML files from Android file system for reading aloud.
* Save articles opened in @Voice to files for later listening. Construct
listening lists of many articles for uninterrupted listening one after the
other. Order the list as needed, e.g. more important articles first.
* Record spoken articles to sound files - WAV
(uncompressed) or OGG (compressed) formats supported.
* Use Android local Text-to-speech voices, or if you want - cloud voices from
Google (WaveNet), Amazon (Polly TTS) or Microsoft (Azure TTS). Note that the
cloud voices are paid services by Google, Amazon or Microsoft, respectively,
although each of them offers some free usage monthly.
* PREMIUM copy only: switch voices or even languages with the special annotation
in the text. Read more at:
https://hyperionics.com/atVoice/VoiceChanges.html
* Easily add saved Pocket articles to @Voice reading list - in Read List screen,
press Menu - Add articles from Pocket.
* Easily control speech generator volume, pitch and rate of speech.
* Pause/resume speech as needed with wired or Bluetooth headset buttons, plus
click Next/Previous buttons to jump by sentence, long-click to switch to the
next/previous article on a list.
* Can automatically recognize the language of an article and use appropriate TTS
voice, if available, or set your preferred voices manually with "Select
language" menu item.
* Options for additional pause between paragraph, start talking as soon as a new
article is loaded or wait for a button press, start/stop talking when wired
headset plug is inserted/removed.
* Optional sleep timer to stop speech after a given timeout.
ABOUT PERMISSIONS:
The full Internet access is needed because the “Share” function from web
browsers and any news reading apps I tried, sends us only the URL address
(http://something...). They do not send the full text of articles, so @Voice has
to download the article from the Internet to be able to read it aloud or save
for later reading. Only by using Copy text function in one app, and pasting it
in @Voice, or by saving the full text in one app to storage and opening a file
in @Voice, you could avoid Internet connection, but this is not very convenient.
PLEASE send me your suggestions for improvements and bug reports welcome - send them to the email address listed on "Contact" page. Thanks and have fun! And a BIG THANK YOU! to Ilia Prokator for sending me the idea for this app.
Greg at Hyperionics
* Stability and usability fixes
* Fix issue with sorting some file lists by file name.
* Fix - sometimes was repeating a sentence in ebooks.
* Fix - some ebooks read only headings, not text.
* Fix select all/none on the file selector.
* Better handle voice change annotations in EPUBs.
* Fix incorrect bookmarks sort after adding a new bookmark.
* Fix: setting bookmarks with headset button did not work for PDF files
extracted to HTML format.
* Fix: sometimes stops reading 1 minute after notification sound.
* Added "List to EPUB" function on the reading list menu. Converts only HTML files found on the reding list, ignores all others
* Voice change annotations within HTML or EPUB files may be hidden inside
comments <!--{{@...}}-->, to make the text display correctly in other book
readers and still change voices when reading aloud with @Voice app.
* Fix Amazon Polly cloud TTS access.
* Fix - the serial download to the reading list with "follow next links" option, was not working if the "Follow Next links..." option was also turned on under the Settings menu - Share icons, text and reading lists.
* Improved handling for following "next page" link for downloading serial
articles, e.g. web novel chapters
* Added Vietnamese translation - thank you, Quảng!
* On the Reading List - Paste links menu, added option "Download a series of articles following the NEXT links in them". Just paste the link to the first article or novel chapter, and it sill download them to the end or until you manually cancel.
* Enabled network timeout user setting also when Google TTS network voice is
selected.
* Option to show either aftricle titles, or file names on the reading list - set
under menu - Edit list (or pencil icon, if visible)
* Fix to avoid downloading duplicates in reading list "Paste links" function
* Articles and documents added to the reading list have now better, more
complete titles. The file name and path are available in Details view.
* For PDF pages scanned from paper at an angle (skewed), @Voice straigthem
the image before performing OCR for better text quality
* Reading list - Paste links - read links from a webpage, sometimes the titles
of articles were encoded (quoted printable) - now the app decodes them to show
the correct titles on the reading list.
* Stability and usability fixes
* Added the markdown (.md) format to supported files. The app will read it as
plain text, including all markup characters, so it may requires defining some
speech replacements.
* Stability and usability fixes, including translations.
* Stability and usability fixes, including translations.
* Added ability to set audio sampling rate (16000, 24000, 48000) to the cloud TTS voices that support such settings (Azure and Google Cloud voices)
* Stability and usability fixes.
* Text search function under the "Edit text" screen now offers case sensitive
and insensitive search, whole words only option and RegEx.
* The article info panel, shown when you swipe down from the top toolbar of
@Voice icons, lets you now edit the "Original URL" field, and upon pressing
Enter or the "go" button, the app loads a new article from the address you
entered.
* On the "Page Look" screen (T+/- icon on top) - FONT tab - the "Font" selection
box now offers all the fonts found in the Android system font folder. Depending
on your phone make and model, you may now find there more fonts than before.
* Also available an option to load fonts from files (TTF, OTF, WOFF, WOFF2)
* Added timeout option to cloud voices configuration - set a longer timeout than
the default 15 seconds, when connection breaks too often.
* Fix: text filters were not applied.
* Improve sizing and layout of images, to fit the screen or column size and
center them horizontally.
* Stability and usability fixes.
* Auto-detects Cloudflare security messages and loads with JavaScript enabled
* Stability and usability fixes.
* Automatically resume reading aloud, if interrupted by a screen reader
(TalkBack) saying e.g. "Screen off" with the same TTS voice as @Voice app is
using.
* Important stability and usability fixes.
* Important stability and usability fixes.
* Fix editing styles of ebook chapters.
* Fix PDF OCR operation run in background, was not loading text.
* Important stability and usability fixes.
* Fix: editing text from HTML/EPUB files with text extracted from PDFs.
* EBooks reading list is now available on the menu and can be sorted the way
user pefers.
* Important stability and usability fixes.
* Fix: editing text from an empty screen (no text loaded) would not save the
edits.
* Important stability and usability fixes.
* New improved text editor - full screen editing of visible text or HTML
source code.
* Important stability and usability fixes.
* Stability and usability improvements
* Fix for "Paste links" function, when downloading a long list and Skip or Cancel was pressed, in some cases was hanging indefinitely on the aborted article download.
* Added new sort option to Reading List screen: "Unsorted or manual". Each list now remembers its own sort order, and if it's anything else than "unsorted", and you drag/drop items to change the order on the list manually, the sort option for this list is automatically set to "Unsorted or manual".
* Added intents for controlling @Voice from other apps, e.g. Tasker, use
package name "com.hyperionics.avar"
- "com.hyperionics.avar.IS_SPEAKING" replies with boolean extra "IS_SPEAKING"
- "com.hyperionics.avar.SPEECH_START" may be sent to @Voice to start speech.
Also @Voice sends this as a broadcast intent when speech started.
- "com.hyperionics.avar.SPEECH_STOP" may be sent to @Voice to stop speech. Also
@Voice sends this as a broadcast intent when speech stopped.
- "com.hyperionics.avar.SPEECH_TOGGLE" may be sent to @Voice to toggle speech.
* Stability and usability improvements
* Removed completely Roman number processing. It's impossible to make it work right, know what is a Roman number, what is an abbreviation or just a normal word.
* Added Roman numbers processing
* Stability and usability improvements
* Stability and usability improvements
* Restored forward/reverse buttons on lock screen on Android 11+
* Paste links function on the Reading List screen now handles also RSS feed
links
* Stability and usability improvements
* The "Record sound file" has a new option to announce progress of recording
in a voice, every specified number of seconds. Could be used to monitor
recording progress with screen off, or by blind users.
* Stability and usability improvements
* Stability and usability improvements
* Stability and usability improvements
* Another correction to handle updated Google Translate app, to make the
popup window work.
* Other usability and stability improvements.
* Added Translate function to "Reload or clear" menu (circular arrows button)
* Stability and usability improvements
* Fix: after the last update of Google Translate app, the option to show the treanslation in a popup window stopped working.
* Added Search button to the Settings menu, to quickly find the necessary settings. Just press the magnifying glass icon, then start typing.
Minor corrections:
* Save the original URL address with a server error response, to enable "reload"
* Strip extra URL parameters added by the server redirect response, when saving
the original URL
* Improvements for showing correctly match equations, written with MathJax
code.
* Important stability and usability improvements.
* Fix: if play low volume sound to prevent freading fade in/out for each sentence was enabled, the sound would not stop by itself when the article ends and there is nothing else to play.
* Important stability and usability improvements.
* Important stability and usability improvements.
* Fix: while listening and watching the original PDF, the yellow highlight
was obscuring the text on older versions of Android.
* Important stability and usability improvements.
* Important stability and usability improvements.
* Fix: if PDF files were added to any reading list, reading aloud would not advance to the next article on the list, after finishing a PDF.
* Important stability and usability improvements.
* Improved the way some tables, and long, unbroken strings of characters are
displayed on @Voice's screen.
* Important stability and usability improvements.
* Added Share button to the screen that appears when recording a sound file
is finished.
* Added Hungarian UI translation - thank you, Sancho!
* Important stability and usability improvements.
* New feature: if you open a PDF and extract text to HTML format,
press the round PDF button at bottom-left to look at the
original PDF pages while the app is reading aloud. Press the Back button on your
phone/tablet to return from PDF to normal view anytime.
* Turkish translations reviewed and corrected, thank you, Ferhat!
* Stability and qualtiy improvements.
* Stability and qualtiy improvements.
* Improvements in recording to sound files function
* Voice change instructions are handled in a more efficient way.
* Fix: when switching TTS engine with voice change instructions, the sentence
pause was ignored
* Fix: when loading a next part of a long text file, or the next ebook chapter,
the voice definitions for voice changes, defined in the first part, were
forgotten.
* Option to save web pages added to the reading list with the Share button as
complete web archives, with all the images and other data, for offline reading.
* New search button added to the Bookmarks screen - search within bookmarks by
text and/or color.
* Long press on the bookmark button in floating toolbar lets you select color
first for the new bookmark.
* Option to hide voice annotations from the text window - available under the
Settings menu - Speech settings - READING tab
* Fix for voice changes getting out of order and crashing, when changing often
between the local and cloud voices
* Other important stability and performance improvements
* HTML files extracted from MHTML archives have now the origina URL
information added on top of the index.html, so that content filter that relay on
origin URL could work
* Stability and usability fixes
* Accepting user added security certificates for opening web articles
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Fix sleep timer - when reset timer on shake was enabled, and reading aloud
was manually paused, shaking the phone was resuming speech.
* Fix - on some phones changing the app interface language under the Settings
menu caused erratic behavior on app start.
* Stability and performance improvements
* Added ability to set @Voice preferences, particuarly "hidden" options that are not available directly in the app for changing, with JSON files. This is meant mainly for support, to send such configuration .json files to the user by email, to change some of these "hidden" options. Currently the only hidden option is "sleepVolFade", which is default 'true', but can be set to 'false', which prevents volume fade before the sleep timer stops reading aloud.
* Added some controls from an external keyboard, if you have such keyboard
connected to your phone or tablet:
- Down and up arrows - scroll screen up or down
- Left and right arrows - jump to the previous/next sentence
- Enter key - pause/resume reading aloud
- Space or page down key - scroll to the next page
- Page up key - scroll to the previous page
- T letter key - open Google Translate on the currently highlighted
sentence.
* OCR package updated to Tesseract 5.0.1, slightly faster and using less memory. Also added STOP button to OCR progress message, to stop the process but preserve the text. .
* Sleep timer will now lower volume in the last 15 seconds to signal expiring
timer. Also it will wait additional 1 minute without exiting the app, after
reading is stopped. During that time you may wake it by shaking the device or
pressing Play button.
* Fix for importing FB2 ebooks from Google Drive
* Stability and performance improvements.
* The "Sync between devices" screen now shows the current Google account used
for syncing, and there is a button to change it.
* On Android 12 and higher you may place a sound file named ding.wav in .config
directory of @Voice home folder, to replace the "ding" sound it makes between
loading articles from the reading list.
* Added option to restart sleep timer on device shakes
* Important stability and performance improvements.
* Permitting clear text traffic again, too many complaints from the users,
when it's limited to https only.
* Important stability and performance improvements.
* Important stability and performance improvements.
* Added new option under Speech settings - AUDIO tab to play soft sound while
reading, to prevent sound fading out for each sentence on some external speakers
or headsets.
* Important stability and performance improvements.
* No more OCR on battery for more than 2 pages, otherwise there are too many
problems.
* Important stability and performance improvements.
* Added synchronization of reading position AND BOOKMARKS between devices, through the
user's Google Drive. Can be enabled under the Settings menu.
* Also changed the default color scheme of @Voice controls, but it's easy to set
them to the old scheme or anything else you like.
* Added synchronization of reading position between devices, through the user's Google Drive. Can be enabled under the Settings menu.
* Fix some Application Not Responding (ANR) errors
* Fixes to make the app work better Android TV and on Onyx e-paper devices.
* Fix - in some situations the same full screen app was shown over and over.
* Fix - adding files to the Reading list from Google Drive would not work
correctly, if two or more files had the same name.
* Stability and performance improvements
* Reading list - long press on up or down arrow button at the bottom bar to
move selected article to the start or end of the list.
* Stability and performance improvements
* Stability and performance improvements
* Fix for opening PDF files from the Reading list
* Fix: prevent ads from showing when sharing articles to @Voice Reading list, or
when opening the app when screen reader (e.g. TalkBack) is active
* Stability and performance improvements
* Stability and performance improvements
* Added Samsung Dictionary to the dictionary choices, but it appears only on
Samsung devices (the Samsung Dictionary app won't work on any other devices).
* Improved support for Android 12 on Samsung devices
* Stability and performance improvements
* Reading list screen has now selection check-boxes for moving, copying or
deleting articles in bulk
* Other stability improvements
* Fix: full screen ads should not appear when a screen reader (TalkBack or
other) is active
* Other stability improvements
* Fix - Sharing an article, document or book as a file did not work.
* Other important stability improvements
* App compiled to new Google requirements (API 30), asks the user for
permission to "manage all files". It's optional, but without it easy access to
files outside of the app private folder is very inconvenient, and many files
need to be duplicated in app folder to open them.
* Fix: would not read next article on reading list, if repeating sentences was
turned on.
* Stability and performance improvements
* Work-around Google Translate v6 bug when opening it in split screen mode.
* After selecting text, Google Translate can appear in a popup window.
* Volume rocker can be set to jump sentences.
* The voice definitions
for voice changes can now optionally contain # character followed by
instructions to set the voice speed, pitch and volume. Example below - Angel is
a Spanish voice definition accepted by older versions of @Voice, AngelFast is a
new definition with voice control instructions.
{{@+Angel=com.google.android.tts, es_ES, es-es-x-eed-local}}
{{@+AngelFast=com.google.android.tts, es_ES,
es-es-x-eed-local#s=1.3,p=1.4,v=0.5}}
* "clearCookies" in web site filters handled at the host level now, not page
level
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Fixing word and sentence splitting for Chinese and other Asian punctation
marks, also followed by closing double-quotation character.
* Fixing voice change annotations for some HTML files (or PDFs extracted to HTML
format).
* Working around yet another bug in Google TTS network voices...
* File browser and Open screen now go up all the way to root and then allow
entering mnt folder. This is necessary e.g. under BlueStacks emulator to access
folders shared with the host machine
* In "Custom colors" theme added an option to customize the word highlight
* Fixed some MHTML text import issues, for files exported to MHTML/MHT format
from MS Office.
* Fixed opening of some FB2 ebooks
* Fix a problem with the premium license on a few devices
* Stability and performance improvements
* Stability and performance improvements
* Added option to follow or not links, when opening and pasting a short text
containing a link. See Settings menu - Share icons, text and reading list.
* Fixed import of Evernote notes, possibly from other sites that have important
contents inside iframes
* Stability and performance improvements
* Reading lists have now optional default folder, where their articles will
be saved
* Fixes and improvement to Paste links function on the Reading List menu - will
not stop on download in background, when JavaScript is needed for the web page,
will notify of download progress and finish, and optionally let you cancel when
downloading in background
* Improvements to PDF text import
* Fix: create folder on file browsing screens was not working
* Other rare crash fixes
* Added Amazon Polly and Microsoft Azure cloud voices support (paid services by
Amazon and Microsoft)
* Fix for opening MHTML files generated by MS Word
* Other small changes, stability and performance improvements
* PREMIUM copy only: Added ability to switch voices, when reading aloud, with
special annotations within the text. They can also change the language of the
voice. Read more:
https://hyperionics.com/atVoice/VoiceChanges.html
* Other small changes, stability and performance improvements
* When editing speech replacements, added option to preview the sample text
with all replacements applied.
* You may also view the text of current sentence as it is after applying all
replacements - long press the sentence, then long press the magnifying glass
icon.
* Added option to read aloud alt text for images (Settings - Share icons, text
and reading lists...)
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Stability and performance improvements
* with DexProtector
* Added option to keep SSML tags, under @Voice Settings - Share icons, text
and reading lists. It's for advanced users who want to modify speech synthesis
by embedding special instructions (SSML) into HTML code.
* Added Czech translation - thank you, Lukas!
* Stability and performance improvements
* The default interface under the Open button to search for documents by type
(BOOKS, PDF, DOC, HTML, TEXT) has now a search by file name, author, title etc.
function - press magnifying glass icon on top
* On the BOOKS tab, if you press on book image next to each book title, a more
detailed info and book cover are shown. Press on the text to open at once, as
before. Release notes provided for 12 of 12 languages
* Additiuonal option on "Record sound file" screen, to slow down recording to
the rate of speech, if using cloud voices (i.e. for now only Google WaveNet or
Standard cloud voices). Otherwise, if recording speed is too fast, the server
may issue "too many requests" error and refuse further service.
* Quality and performance improveents
* Added "Reset progress" function to the Reading list menu
* Fix opening PDF files from the reading list
* Generate speech for 2 sentences ahead is now active only when using Google
cloud voices. For local voices only 1 sentence ahead is generated.
* Improved message about image-only PDFs, instructing the user how to enable
OCR.
* Important quality and performance improvements
* Improved reading with Google cloud voices - shorter pauses between
paragraphs and more reliable connection
* Fix problem with the Open button sometimes closing instantly and re-opening
the same file
* Important quality and performance improvements
* Important quality and performance improvements
* Important quality and performance improvements
* Auto-save reading progress every 1 minute, in case the app is killed
* Access to files in network library plugin under Android 11 fixed
* Fix: was not listing Chinese language selection for Google Cloud voices
* Other important quality and performance improvements
* Fix: Chinese language selection was not available on Google Cloud voices screen.
* Correct handling of <pre> tags in web pages
* Handle MathJax (math equations) in web pages
* Other quality improvements
* Added "clearCookies" boolean argument handling for filter files
* Fix for Arabic text import from PDF
* Fix article duplication on reading lists when importing from Google Drive
* Other quality and performance improvements.
* Fix for a rare error in exporting bookmarks
* When manually cropping a PDF for text extraction,
long-press defined region to change its type - the default is Text, but can be
change to Image (to include selected page area as an image in the extracted
HTML, or to Exclude region. There is also a Delete option on this menu.
* HTML with images option is now available also when doing OCR on PDF files, but
works only for manually defined "Image" regions.
* Add from Google Drive function on Reading List menu now supports CSV files
with lists of links to import and add to the list.
* "Explore by touch" (TalkBack) active over the
entire text are of @Voice, when the app is not reading aloud - is now an option
under the Settings menu - Accessibility. It is disabled by default, enable it
there if needed, but on some devices it does not work correctly. Disable if it
causes problems.
* Other usability, stability and performance improvements
* Added change of app interface language, without changing
the system language of the phone/tablet - see Settings menu - Language. Works
only under Android 8 and higher.
* Added an extra button "Examine sentence using screen reader", when running
with a screen reader (TalkBack or other). Use to read by words, examine spelling
using screen reader gestures etc.
* Fix occasional error with translation language selection
* Added option to show two pages (columns of text) per
screen. Useful particularly in landscape mode, or e.g. on Galaxy Z Fold2 after
unfolding screen.
* Many stability and performance improvements
* Stability and performance improvements
* Added Chinese - Traditional user interface translation
* A few rare crashes fixed.
* Added OCR (recognizing text from images) to PDF file opening options. Based on Tesseract 4.1.1 open source OCR package. Enable if straight text extraction from PDF does not yield good results. It is slow though and battery consuming, best use when connected to external power.
* Fix: Import speech replacement file from Download
directory or clouds did not work
* Improvement in cropping some PDF files
* Improved text extraction from some PDF files
* Stability and code quality improvements.
* Improved text extraction from some web sites
* Long reading lists can now be scrolled very fast with the blue circle at the
right margin, that appears as soon as you scroll the list a little bit.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Small improvements in PDF text extraction
* Added selections to choose automatically reading direction, or force
left-to-right or right-to-left reading direction
* Stability and performance improvements
* Added Search button on top of Reading List screen. Currently it searches file names present on the currently opened list. Will consider search through all lists and adding search buttons to the file open screens in the future.
* Fix for changing between Chinese (Mandarin) and Cantonese voices
* Stability and performance improvements
* Fix: Rel. 20.1.14 was crashing on startup on certain LG and Samsung phones
* When following links to download multiple part of split
articles, will now also download correctly pages that require JavaScript support
* Backup/Restore functions under @Voice Settings menu
will now also save and restore all user options and preferences
* Stability improvements
* Fix: for some PDF files, lines were not joined correctly into paragraphs
* Compatible with Android 11 beta 1 release
* Disabled full screen reading mode when a screen reader like TalkBack is in
use, as it was very confusing in this situation
* When exporting bookmarks from ebook formats (or PDFs extracted to HTML/EPUB
format), now the page on which the bookmark was placed is listed in the exported
file
* Fix: some files with name extension in upper case, like .PDF instead .pdf,
were not opening correctly.
* Fix encoding problems when opening some MHT or MHTML
files
* Fix opening some DOCX files
* Fix: entering a very long file name in "Save" function (like 200 characters or
more) would crash the app.
* Fix: in Japanese text, Furigana characters should not be read aloud
* Fix: the app was forgetting reading position for some PDF files
* Many other important quality improvements
* Fix: entering a very long file name in "Save" function (like 200 characters or more) would crash the app.
* Added option to assign headset Forward or Back button to "Bookmark"
function, to easily bookmark interesting places when your listen with such
headset. Select this option under the Settings menu - Speech settings - HEADSET
tab.
* Fix reading Google Docs files from Google Drive
* Fix opening DOCX files created by WordPerfect 2020
* Other quality and performance improvements
* Small improvements to PDF text import - remove almost transparent text,
which is often used for watermarks, and remove word splitting on some
incorrectly created PDF documents
* Improved compatibility with Chromebook devices
* Other important quality and performance improvements
* ALERT - BETA TESTERS FEEDBACK NEEDED! Google finally relented and is now permiting standard file access for reading files in Android 11 and beyond. So I'm largely giving up on their "Scoped Storage" file access, which was a disaster, and re-worked the app again to use regular files access. Please test how opening files works now, send me feedback if it's any better, and of course send me all the bugs you notice! Thanks!
* Important fix: sometimes would skip entire chapter when reading aloud an
ebook
* The action items that other apps add to the menu, which appears when you
select some text in any app, are now also available when you press the 3
vertical dots in @Voice toolbar appearing upon text selection. For example, some
3rd party dictionary app, which we may have not included into our "Dictionary"
button, may add a "Dictionary" action there, and you may now access it easily
from @Voice screen.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Better filtering of very long Reddit.com pages
* Correction: sometimes reading progress was not saved
* Ukrainian translation added - big thank you! to volunteer translators:
Konstantin, Marinka and Volodymyr!
* Added ability to use Google Cloud voices, including WaveNet - under "Change voice or language" press on top and select "Use Google cloud voices". You need to establish API key, enter payment method and pay Google for usage above their free tier. I don't think they are worth the trouble, but some users were asking for this for months.
* Important stability and performance improvements
* Added Sort option to file browser that appears when + button pressed at the
bottom of Reading list screen.
* Added file size and date for file to the above screen as well, can be hidden
from the menu there.
* Added simple file manager to copy/move/delete/rename files, including hidden
files and folders, find it at the bottom of the Settings menu.
* Stability and performance improvements.
* Added new option to "Delay before pausing speech, when other sounds are
played...", can be now set to up to 5 seconds. This may help to avoid pausing
reading aloud on short notification sounds for example.
* Fix: some EPUB ebook files were not opening correctly.
* Conforms to Google policy to use scoped storage for file access. User needs
to give permission (once) to access each directory. Huge chunks of app code had
to to be re-written, but without it we'd have to abandon the app.
* It's now possible to open files from Google Drive and other cloud storage in
@Voice directly (Open button - Browse by folders)
* Sync devices function is removed, it with recent changes in Android it became
impossible to support it.
* Fix: wired.com web site did not allow login from
"Reload from browser..." command. May fix other sites using DOM Storage API too.
* The "Open" screen in "Browse by file type" mode now shows the full file name,
does not truncate it to fit into one line.
* Stability and performance improvements
* Added support for .mhtml (or .mht) file format, which
is used by Chrome browser on Android when you press the Download page button on
its menu
* More improvements to PDF text extraction, trying to avoid unnecessary letters
separation in some documents.
* Epub books now open about 2x faster
* Fixed @Voice home screen widget, now it works directly
after a reboot too, and opens @Voice app screen if you tap the title in it.
* Improved content filtering for some web site, e.g. reddit.com
* Correct PDF text extraction, from some files characters were extracted in
wrong order
* Other stability and performance improvements
* Improved text extraction for PDF files written in
Right-to-Left scripts (Arabic, Hebrew...)
* Fixed text selection for Right-to-Left scripts
* Work-around implemented for a crash on many Android 5.0 and 5.1 Lollipop
devices (caused by a bug in Google appcompat libraries)
* Fix: incorrect sentence splitting in ebook files, when an abbreviation with a
space was encountered, e.g. "et al." or German "z. B." and similar.
* Fix: under the Open button, in “Browse by file type” mode, it was impossible
to add a folder to scan that was located on an external SD card.
* Added "Read aloud" item to the toolbar that pops up when you select text in
any app on Android (it's usually accessible after pressing the 3 vertical dots
button). Sends selected text to @Voice app and reads it aloud at once. The
option (and button in @Voice notification) to instantly read copied text no
longer works on Android 10, this seems like a good alternative.
* Added status bar to Edit speech screen, showing the number of active and total
items.
* Removed ability to swipe off @Voice notification - it was causing problems
on some devices. Use the X button at notification right to remove it if
necessary
* Reading list improvement - you may change the order of articles with finger
swiping, holding the icon at right of each list item
* Stability and performance improvements
* @Voice notification can now be swiped out or closed with CLEAR ALL button,
if the app is not reading aloud.
* Open button in the default "Browse by file type" mode now scans whole storage
for files to open, on the first use and once per week, also has a "Scan whole
storage" button on top to repeat the search for files anytime.
* Fix problem with "Speak text copied to clipboard" function not working on some
devices.
* Other important stability and performance improvements.
* When another app is playing a very short sound (shorter than 500 ms),
@Voice will not pause speech.
* Fix PDF text import - for some files lines of text appeared in wrong order,
when more than one cropping areas were defined in manual crop.
* Other small stability and performance improvements.
* @Voice now reacts to the Export chat function in WhatsApp, you may open a
chat for reading aloud.
* Implementing a work-around for a bug in Android WebView control/Google Chrome
browser, which crashes the app for about 2% of users. Google Chrome team says
they are working on fixing this, but no progress for several weeks. Maybe this
work-around will work...
* Fix: sentence highlight on double-tap or long press, or instant translate on
tap, did not work in split screen mode, when @Voice was at right
* Stability and performance improvements
* Tap or long press any image to examine it closely, zoom and pan it if
necessary
* Under Edit speech list screen, long press the add or insert buttons to
add/insert a copy of the currently selected item (to edit and modify it easily)
* Stability and performance improvements
* Sync with Pocket can be now sent to background, continue listening or using
other apps while articles download
* Edit speech tag improvements - add/remove tags for all selected items, export
enabled only (e.g. after selecting by tags)
* Improved language detection for some web sites
* Stability and performance improvements
* Fixes to Edit speech list search and screen layout when defining new speech replacements, adding tags on small screens.
* Avoiding white flash when deleting articles from the reading list, and for other operations that need to run in the background, but are very fast to execute.
* Using a new version 3 of Google CLD library for language detection - hopefully will be more accurate and crash less...
* Improvements for text extraction from quora.com and other sites
* New option under Speech settings - Pauses tab, to pause after each article for
specified time or indefinitely
* New option to hide disabled items on Edit speech menu.
* Premium license only: speech replacements under Edit speech now can have tags,
one may enable/disable items by tags.
* Better text filtering for CNN and some other sites
* Android Q Beta 3 compatible
* Highlight spoken words option moved to Speech settings - START tab, and is now
turned off by default. It affects negatively performance and battery, don't turn
on unless necessary
* Important stability improvements
* Fix for reading aloud Scientific American articles
* Better handling of ebook files with very long HTML content inside
* Stability and performance improvements
*Custom content filters may be now easily installed from email attachments,
local files or web links
* Stability and performance improvements
* New option under Edit Speech screen to insert new replacement at the
current position
* Stability and performance improvements, Android Q Beta 2 compatible.
* First release compatible with Android Q beta
* The "Repeat" button at the bottom, if enabled, has now an extra option to stop
reading at the end of current article (do not continue to the next article on
the reading list)
* Trying to fix TalkBack saying repeatedly "Service @Voice" on some phones. If
you experienced this problem before, please tell me if this update fixes it for
you.
* Stability and performance improvements
* Long-press a word, then press Play button - app starts reading from that
word, not start of the sentence.
* For TTS engines that can highlight the word read aloud (currently only Google
TTS under Android 8 or higher), pause reading - resume, reads from the last read
word, not start of the sentence.
* Fix for some FB2 files not opening, and TOC/Links not working in some
MOBI/AZW3 ebooks
* Security improvements for PDF files handling
* Improved content filtering for some web sites
* Better abbreviation handling
* The app now asks for Storage access only when the user tries to open a file
from outside of @Voice private directory, not on app startup
* Stability and performance improvements
* Better help in installing new Text-to-speech engines and voices.
* New bookmarking - arbitrary selection may be bookmarked now. Bookmarks can
be exported to a text file with the complete text of the bookmarked range, and
imported back if needed.
* New options in Speech settings: START tab - choose to start reading from top
of screen, if last read aloud position is behind, and HEADSET tab - ignore
Next/Previous (or FF/Rewind) buttons from headset when reading is paused. Should
help for problems with certain car stereos.
* Faster loading of ebook chapters
* Restored asking for Storage read/write permission at app start, if it was not granted yet. Previously asked when using Open file function, but some users would send files to @Voice from other apps without every using Open button, and were getting cryptic error message only.
* @Voice has now a "Reload" button on article pages that did not download.
* Reload is also found on "Reload or clear" menu (circular arrows) for any HTML
article
* If error articles were added to a reading list, you may now use "Reload error
articles" on the menu to try to reload them.
* Added "Reload all articles" to the reading list menu, to reload all HTML
articles. If only some need reloading, prepare first a smaller reading list with
them, then use this function.
* Modified handling of very long web pages and HTML files, trying to save
memory and prevent some out-of-memory crashes.
* Finally figured out what caused crashes on OnePlus One phone with Android
6.0.1, and a few other devices - Google's new App Bundle format for uploading
apps to Google Play. Reverting to the old APKs for now, which works fine.
* Fix: text search was not working correctly for long texts or ebooks
* Avoid excessive showing of voice selector screen
* Other fixes and performance improvements
* Divided extra-busy "Speech settings" screen into 4 tabs
* New options on Pauses tab of Speech settings - pause for the same duration as
it took to read aloud a sentence or paragraph, or percentage of it.
* Improved sorting of articles on reading lists and file names - numbers in
names are taken into account correctly, e.g. "Article2" will be now before
"Article11", not after it.
* Repeat button at bottom is hidden by default, enable it under Screen settings
* Bug fixes
* Added instant sentence translation option on single or double-tap, via
Google Translate app. Enable if needed under Settings menu. Works best in split
screen mode on Android 7 and higher.
* If absolutely necessary, you may long-press the round (>) button next to
speech speed slider to increase the upper speed limit the slider allows. What a
TTS engine will do with high-speed request is beyond my control.
* Better single letter abbreviation detection for Russian language.
* More messages shown with possible solutions, when correct TTS voice is
missing or has no voice data installed
* Fixed some file association to open from file browsers files of type .fb2,
.fb2.zip, .azw3 etc.
* Edit speech items can now be individually activated or deactivated with
check-boxes on the list. There are also options to activate/deactivate all on
the menu there, and delete all inactive if necessary.
* Fix for "end of part" info for ebooks and other long files to have the same
text background and color as the rest of the pages.
* Improved import from MOBI/AZW ebook formats
* Other bug fixes and performance improvements
* Fixed issues with some web pages constantly prompting for GDRP consent or
forgetting passwords
* Added "Clear password" function to Settings menu, to clear all saved passwords
and cookies if needed
* Other important bug fixes
* Added @Voice Network Library Plugin to download books from online book
catalogs published in OPDS format.
* When running under TalkBack, full screen ads are no longer shown to avoid user
confusion.
* Fix - working around a bug in newest Android WebView control, hanging or crashing the app under TalkBack.
* Added option to show extra buttons in the top toolbar, if there is space -
Settings, Paste and Bookmarks menu. Select what to show under Settings
* Copying text from @Voice app will not automatically read it aloud, if option
to read aloud copied text is turned on
* Important bug fixes and performance improvements
* Moved Setup function from the menu to gear icon in top toolbar for easier
access
* Added option to reset "Open by default" setting to Setup screen, and warning
user if a file of some type is opened by default, with option to reset. The
warning may be turned off.
* Other important bug fixes and performance improvements
More enhancements under "Page look" T+/- icon:
Better text extraction from HTML sources that have text inside <dt> and <dd> tags.
v. 4.7.4, 2014-03-17
* Performance improvements and bug fixes
v. 4.7.3, 2014-03-15
* New on Read List menu: "Delete articles not on lists."
v. 4.7.1, 2014-03-14
* New "Page Look" options on the menu - Day and Night themes, keep
original page colors or set custom color.
* New option under "Page Look" menu - Preserve styles, e.g. font shape & sizes
etc.
* Correctly shows tables
* Reload from browser option will now save selected options and saved passwords
for a give web site.
* More custom filters for specific sites (Orthobullets.com Orthopaedic Review
site, Hacker News), more custom filters in the future.
v. 4.6.0, 2014-03-04
* Fixing a problem with opening attachments from Gmail or similar
situations
* Fixing an occasional crash when trying to open a PDF file.
v. 4.4.3, 2014-01-28
* Now will open or add to list also PDF files from http links, and
better format TXT files from such links.
* Fixes for Share - Add to list sometimes not working as expected.
v. 4.4.2
* Using Share/Add to @Voice List will no longer interrupt reading of
current article
* Fixed highlight and voice getting out of sync sometimes
v. 4.4.1, 2014-01-28
* Using Share/Add to @Voice List will no longer interrupt reading of
current article
* Fixed highlight and voice getting out of sync sometimes
v. 4.4.0, 2014-01-24
* New settings, under "Text, Icons and Reading List" section: "For
plane text, separate lines by default" and "For HTML, load full content by
default".
* The same settings can be switched for individual articles or files under menu
- "Reload or clear...". Change the options there if you don't like the way a
plane text or HTML article is displayed.
* Bluetooth device feature is now optional, which will make the app available to
about 500 more devices on Google Play.
v. 4.3.1, 2014-01-16
* It is now possible to reload an article from a web browser, for
entering passwords etc. See menu - "Reload or clear" - "Load from browser"
* Fix crash on Android 2.x when pasting text.
v. 4.2.0, 2014-01-14
* Option to treat new-line characters as new paragraphs, when pasting
text
* Fix for an occasional trouble when switching TTS voices
v. 4.1.7
* Fix: sentence highlighting would stop if screen turned off, then on
again while the program is talking.
v. 4.1.6 Fixes:
* Small change to let FBReader TTS+ Plugin to use speech replacement
created in @Voice, or import them from TTS+ to @Voice (under Settings menu)
Version 4.1 - 2013.12.23
* Swipe gesters to show-hide control panel at the bottom,
reading list etc.
* Multiple reading lists
Version 4.0 - 2013-11.12
* Added "Edit speech" feature under Settings menu, to
change pronunciation of some words, delete unwanted fragments of sentences
(using RegEx) and more.
* Added "Clear contents" function to the menu, to clear the current text from
@Voice screen.
* If HTML page declares text encoding different from auto-detected, we let you
switch between the two from the menu, to display text correctly.
* Made the APK file to download smaller.
* Many smaller new features, improvements and bug fixes.
Version 3.4.0 - 2013-10.18
* Added "fast scroll" feature - a blue circular button on
right, that appears if you touch screen and move it up or down, then fades out
if not needed. Touch and slide up/down to scroll fast to any part of the
document.
* Fixed issue with PDF files sometimes losing position (bookmark)
* PDF files can be now added to reading list.
* Fixed issue with Dropbox leaving incomplete (damaged) files if connection was
broken while downloading.
Version 3.3.2 - 2013-10.12
* Showing progress bars under article titles in the
Reading List, to show how much was read.
* Fixing bug in extracting text from big PDF files
* Layout improvement for high resolution screens
* Bug fixes and performance improvements.
Version 3.2.3 - 2013.09.28
* Improved search interface, e.g. ending search with
"Play" button starts playing from the currently found place.
* Better - sharper and flat - buttons in the bottom row
Version 3.2.1 - 2013.09.26
* Added Search function to the top bar of @Voice
* On Android 2.x implemented the same "Action Bar" and menu as on Android 4.x
* Bug fixes and performance improvements
Version 3.1.0 - 2013.09.24
* Sending PDF files from Adobe Reader through "Share"
function to @Voice now works.
* Pressing "Next" sentence when at the end, or "Previous" when at start, now
loads a next or previous article from the list, or provides spoken feedback.
Version 3.0.7 - 2013.09.17
* Fixed a mixup of Russian texts appearing in Bulgarian
translation
* Fixed a possible "null pointer" crash
Version 3.0.6 - 2013.09.16
* Fixed opening password-protected PDF files from Dropbox
app, file explorers etc.
* Better multitasking, sometimes was blocking on article loading.
Version 3.0.3 - 2013.09.11
* Fixed: could not open files from Dropbox app.
Version 3.0.2 - 2013.09.10
* Made possible opening PDF files by a press in Android
"Download" area and similar situations.
* Several bug fixes.
Version 3.0.0 - 2013.09.05
* Now extracts text from PDF files for reading aloud or
on screen. Select "Open" from menu and navigate to folder with any PDF files.
* Stability and speed improvements. Version 2.8.9.1 - 2013.08.21
Version 2.8.9 - 2013.08.10
Version 2.8 - 2013.08.01
Version 2.7 - 2013.07.01
* Loads very long text files in segments to avoid running
out of memory
* Fixes for some encoding errors
* Long press now also highlights the sentence to start speed from that point, in
addition to starting text selection. This makes possible selecting a sentence to
start reading from when TalkBack is enabled.
* Performance improvements, including armeabi-v7a native code
* Several bug fixes
Version 2.6.1 - 2013.06.21
* Correcting problem with listing all voices (countries
and speaker names were not displayed)
* Added character encoding recognition when loading text files. Should now
display correct characters even if text is not in UTF-8 format.
Version 2.5.0 - 2013.06.12
* Added "night" reading mode to the menu
* Many bug fixes and performance improvements.
Version 2.3.8 - 2013.05.28
* Several bug fixes and performance improvements
Version 2.3.4 - 2013.05.23
* For Android 4 (ICS) and higher, added a better lookup
of TTS engines, languages and voices.
* Many bug fixes and performance improvements
Version 2.2.3 - 2013
* Added option to read aloud at once text copied to
clipboard
* Redesigned Settings for more streamlined use
* Added notification to Android notification bar, with the title of currently
played article. On Android v.3 and higher it also has progress bar, buttons to
start/stop, skip sentences and turn on/off the option to speak clipboard aloud.
* Asking how to handle Stop button on its first use
Version 2.1.0 - 2013.04.27
* Dropbox login was broken if new Dropbox app installed. This release fixes the problem.
Version 2.0.9 - 201.04.22
* Bug fixes and performance improvements.
Version 2.0.7 - 2013.03.29
* More crashes and no-reponses fixed. Thank you for sending the bug reports!
Version 2.0.5 - 2013.03.27
* Several bug fixes again.
Version 2.0.3 - 2013.03.24
* Fixed crash when pressing Help button on some devices
* Fixed English pronunciation of words ending with ST and a dot.
* Paste button or menu item now appears even if you copy text as short as 1
character.
* Auto-start speech when headset connection option now also works when Bluetooth
headset is connected.
* Fixed an issue with reader not always remembering the text position after
return form another screen
* Fixed occasional crash in Dropbox sync
* Zoom controls added to enlarge text as needed. Can be
disabled under Settings.
* Now remembers the scroll position for each article
* Many bug fixes and performance improvements
* Bookmarks improved - now remembers exact position for all saved articles read, plus remembers how to load the contents (all or "essential")
* Auto-bookmarks the last read article, and restores it and the last read sentence when the app is stopped and re-started later. This also synchronizes through Dropbox, if you use this feature.
* Corrected a problem with ads sometimes showing even after buying and installing the "@Voice No Ads Upgrade". Sorry about that!
* Fixed another crash
* Fixed a rare crash on Android v.3 and higher
* Added French translation
* Added German translation
* Bug fixes and performance improvements
* Added Russian translation
* Small bug fixes.
* Option to move @Voice folder to another location, e.g.
external SD card, if needed.
* Dropbox sync now has option to be on demand (when you click the menu to sync
only) or continuous.
* Option to not exit the app when the on-screen STOP button is pressed, just
stop speech and reset position to the top of article.
* Faster start with slow data connection
* Auto-add to list articles added to our folder from outside @Voice app, e.g.
saved to Dropbox from desktop browser
* Added Polish translation
* Dropbox sync! Enable, then build your list on one device, e.g. a tablet, then listen on your phone. Or from your computer, use File/Save As - "HTML only" function in the browser, save to @Voice Dropbox folder, then listen on your phone.
* Several bug fixes, including a crash on some long articles from RADIO SVOBODA.
* Improved contents extraction from Twitter tweets.
* Updated video tutorials in Help
* Modified to prevent speech stopping on empty paragraphs with some speech engines (e.g. Loquendo)
* Android package name changed to com.hyperionics.avar -
will uninstall the older version upon first run, but preserve any saved articles
and reading lists.
* Performance improvements and bug fixes
* Ready for an optional purchase of No Ads Upgrade from Google Play Store
* Corrected issue with voice change when starting to read the next article from list.
* Better contents extraction, loads the main article only
and omits navigation etc. from Web pages.
* Optional menu to load the full contents of page, if necessary.
* Optional "share" icon to just add an article to list. Choose icons to show in
Settings.
* Added move and delete selected files buttons to reading list "add files"
panel.
* Swipe left/right to load next/prev article from list.
* Billing permission added for future premium/no-ads edition.
* Bug fixes and performance improvements.
Double click of headset next/previous buttons to advance articles from list did not work well, changed to LONG-PRESS (about 1 sec.) - much better.
Sound divider between articles from the list, speaks article number and total of articles.
Option to auto-add saved articles to reading list, on by default.
Fixed Open -> HTML file saved from any browser, now opens it in correct format for reading aloud.
Reading lists for uninterrupted listening of many previously saved articles
Headset Previous/Next button double-click jumps to the previous/next article on a list
Ability to select TTS voices by language, country and speaker name, e.g. "English (US, Heather)"
Many other improvements and bug fixes
Added paste, save and open commands
First non-beta release
Again faster text processing for speech
Downloading and processing progress bar was sometimes missing.
Much faster text loading and processing
Fixed speech stopping upon rotating phone or lock/unlock
More bug fixes.
Performance improvements and bug fixes
Language recognition is now very fast, made auto-select language the default selection.
Bug fixes and speed improvements.
Faster startup with auto-select language option enabled.
Many more bug fixes and smaller improvements.
Please email us your comments! Also don't forget to click the banner ad to send us a few cents as a reward for our hard work :)
Added automatic language recognition option, but it causes app to start slowly, so it's off by default.
Many more improvements and fixes, see yourself!
Now works on Android 2.2 (Froyo) and higher
You may use "Send by Email" button/menu in many news reading apps to get the text to @Voice
Some HTML style is used in reader window, e.g. headers are bigger, if text was downloaded from a web page.
Many smaller improvements and bug fixes.
Bug fixes, of course...
Cosmetic changes - removed title bar for more reading space, fixed "rate" link on "About" dialog.
Initial beta-test release. Please download and help us test and improve this app!