Windows has always come with free text-to-speech voices. Windows 10 Anniversary Update, shipped August 2016, comes with new voices too. Hooray!
But there’s a catch: these are all Windows Mobile voices, not SAPI5 voices. So desktop Windows applications that use SAPI5 cannot use them: Universal Windows Apps (Windows Store apps, or Metro apps) that you get from the Windows Store can use them, and MSDN suggests that developers of desktop Windows applications (e.g. screenreaders) can now use them, but they need to write some code – they can’t use SAPI5. See my previous blog post explaining the difference between SAPI5 and Windows Mobile voices.
In simple English: Windows may have these voices, but it does not mean your Windows screenreader will be able to use them. They won’t show up. Contact the developer.
One application that CAN use them is Windows Narrator! Narrator can use both traditional SAPI5 voices and also the new Windows Mobile voices. So there is now (for example) a free Arabic screenreader!
On to the list. Windows 10 Anniversary Update provides the following new voices according to the MSDN Accessiblity blog and I’ve tested a few out:
- Arabic (Egypt)
- Catalan (Spain)
- Danish (Denmark)
- Dutch (Belgium)
- Dutch (Netherlands)
- Finnish (Finland)
- French (Canada)
- Norwegian (Norway)
- Portuguese (Brazil)
- Portuguese (Portugal)
- Spanish (Mexico)
- Swedish (Sweden)
- Turkish (Turkey)
You can access these from Start > Settings > Time & Language > Region & Language > Language section. This lets you add more languages to Windows and shows the languages you already have installed.
Click on Add to add a new language to Windows and add the language for the voice you want to use.
Click on any installed voice and an Options button appears. Clicking this displays an Options button, which lets you download the Voice if you haven’t already.
Finally, for completeness here are the Windows 8 and 10 SAPI5 voices you can get through Control Panel > Clock, Language and Region > Language, and listed on MSDN:
- English (US) David
- English (UK) Hazel
- English (US) Zira
- English (India) Heera
- Korean Heami
- Spanish (Spain) Helena
- Spanish (Mexico) Sabina
- French Hortense
- German Hedda
- Japanese Haruka
- Chinese (simplified) Hanhan and Huihui
- Chinese (traditional) Tracy
- Italian Elsa
- Polish Paulina
- Portuguese (Brazil) Maria
- Russian Irina