edge-tts

edge-tts

edge-tts is a Python module that allows you to use Microsoft Edge's online text-to-speech service from within your Python code or using the provided edge-tts or edge-playback command.

Installation

To install it, run the following command:

$ pip install edge-tts

If you only want to use the edge-tts and edge-playback commands, it would be better to use pipx:

$ pipx install edge-tts

Usage

Basic usage

If you want to use the edge-tts command, you can simply run it with the following command:

$ edge-tts --text "Hello, world!" --write-media hello.mp3 --write-subtitles hello.srt

If you wish to play it back immediately with subtitles, you could use the edge-playback command:

$ edge-playback --text "Hello, world!"

Note that edge-playback requires the installation of the mpv command line player, except on Windows.

All edge-tts commands work with edge-playback with the exception of the --write-media, --write-subtitles and --list-voices options.

Changing the voice

You can change the voice used by the text-to-speech service by using the --voice option. The --list-voices option can be used to list all available voices.

$ edge-tts --list-voices
Name                               Gender    ContentCategories      VoicePersonalities
---------------------------------  --------  ---------------------  --------------------------------------
af-ZA-AdriNeural                   Female    General                Friendly, Positive
af-ZA-WillemNeural                 Male      General                Friendly, Positive
am-ET-AmehaNeural                  Male      General                Friendly, Positive
am-ET-MekdesNeural                 Female    General                Friendly, Positive
ar-AE-FatimaNeural                 Female    General                Friendly, Positive
ar-AE-HamdanNeural                 Male      General                Friendly, Positive
ar-BH-AliNeural                    Male      General                Friendly, Positive
ar-BH-LailaNeural                  Female    General                Friendly, Positive
ar-DZ-AminaNeural                  Female    General                Friendly, Positive
ar-DZ-IsmaelNeural                 Male      General                Friendly, Positive
ar-EG-SalmaNeural                  Female    General                Friendly, Positive
...

$ edge-tts --voice ar-EG-SalmaNeural --text "مرحبا كيف حالك؟" --write-media hello_in_arabic.mp3 --write-subtitles hello_in_arabic.srt

Custom SSML

Support for custom SSML was removed because Microsoft prevents the use of any SSML that could not be generated by Microsoft Edge itself. This means that all the cases where custom SSML would be useful cannot be supported as the service only permits a single <voice> tag with a single <prosody> tag inside it. Any available customization options that could be used in the <prosody> tag are already available from the library or the command line itself.

Changing rate, volume and pitch

You can change the rate, volume and pitch of the generated speech by using the --rate, --volume and --pitch options. When using a negative value, you will need to use --[option]=-50% instead of --[option] -50% to avoid the option being interpreted as a command line option.

$ edge-tts --rate=-50% --text "Hello, world!" --write-media hello_with_rate_lowered.mp3 --write-subtitles hello_with_rate_lowered.srt
$ edge-tts --volume=-50% --text "Hello, world!" --write-media hello_with_volume_lowered.mp3 --write-subtitles hello_with_volume_lowered.srt
$ edge-tts --pitch=-50Hz --text "Hello, world!" --write-media hello_with_pitch_lowered.mp3 --write-subtitles hello_with_pitch_lowered.srt

Progress

When stderr is a terminal, a progress bar is drawn on it while the audio is generated:

 42%|███████████████████▌                          | 1.5MB  00:03<00:04

The percentage is the audio received so far against the total length estimated from the service's boundary metadata, so it tracks how much work is left rather than how much text has been read out. The bar is suppressed when stderr is redirected, when subtitles are being written to stderr with --write-subtitles -, and when --no-progress is passed.

$ edge-tts --no-progress --text "Hello, world!" --write-media hello.mp3

Python module

It is possible to use the edge-tts module directly from Python. Examples from the project itself include:

• /examples/
• /src/edge_tts/util.py

Other projects that use the edge-tts module include:

• hass-edge-tts
• Podcastfy
• tts-samples - a collection of mp3 sound samples to facilitate picking a voice for your project.