Ditch Speechify 🎙️

Stop paying $139/year for Speechify. This does the same thing for FREE.

A completely free, open-source text-to-speech reader that runs locally on your computer. Upload PDFs, Word documents, or paste any text—and have it read aloud with natural voices.

---

✨ Features

• 🆓 100% Free — No subscriptions, no hidden costs, no ads
• 🔒 Privacy First — Runs entirely offline, your data never leaves your computer
• 📄 Multiple Formats — Upload PDFs, Word docs (.docx), or plain text files
• 🎙️ Natural Voices — Uses your system's built-in high-quality voices
• ⏯️ Pause & Resume — Pick up right where you left off
• 🖱️ Click to Start — Double-click anywhere in the text to start reading from that point
• 🎛️ Adjustable — Control speed and pitch to your preference
• 💾 Auto-Save — Your text is saved automatically between sessions

---

🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Python 3.8 or higher
• pip (Python package manager)

Installation

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/nihal-5/ditch-speechify.git
   cd ditch-speechify

2. Install dependencies

   pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Run the app

   python main.py

4. Open in browser

   http://localhost:8888
   

That's it! Start pasting text or uploading documents. 🎉

---

📖 Usage

Basic Usage

1. Paste any text into the text area (or upload a file)
2. Select a voice from the dropdown (⭐ = premium quality)
3. Adjust speed and pitch if desired
4. Click Play to start listening

Pro Tips

• Double-click anywhere in the text to start reading from that sentence
• Pause saves your position — click Resume to continue
• Stop resets to the beginning
• Your text is automatically saved — come back anytime!

Keyboard Shortcuts (coming soon)

• Space — Play/Pause
• Escape — Stop

---

🎙️ Getting the Best Voice Quality

The app uses your browser's built-in text-to-speech voices. For the best experience:

macOS Users

1. Go to System Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content
2. Click the (i) next to "System voice"
3. Select "Manage Voices..."
4. Download any voice marked "Enhanced" or "Siri" (e.g., "Samantha Enhanced")
5. Restart your browser and refresh the app

Windows Users

• High-quality voices are built into Windows 10/11
• "Microsoft Zira" and "Microsoft David" work great

Chrome/Brave Users

• "Google US English" and "Google UK English" are excellent choices

---

🛠️ Tech Stack

• Frontend: Vanilla HTML, CSS, JavaScript
• Backend: Python FastAPI
• TTS Engine: Browser's native Web Speech API
• PDF Parsing: PyPDF2
• Word Parsing: python-docx

No frameworks, no complexity. Just clean, simple code.

---

📁 Project Structure

ditch-speechify/
├── index.html      # Main application HTML
├── style.css       # Glassmorphic UI styles
├── script.js       # TTS player logic
├── main.py         # FastAPI backend server
├── requirements.txt
├── README.md
└── LICENSE

---

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

---

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.

---

💡 Why I Built This

I was tired of paying $139/year for Speechify when all I needed was a simple way to listen to articles and PDFs. The browser already has great text-to-speech built in — so I built a nice interface around it.

Save your money. Use this instead. 💰

---

⭐ Star This Repo

If you find this useful, consider giving it a star! It helps others discover this free alternative.

---

Made with ❤️ by Nihal Veeramalla