OST Read Aloud

Description

OST Read Aloud adds a “Listen to this article” player to your posts. The audio is made once with Google Cloud Text-to-Speech and saved in your media uploads folder, so visitors never call Google and you are only charged when you generate audio.

While the audio plays, the word being read is highlighted, along with its paragraph, and the page scrolls gently to follow along.

Everything is set up from Settings → Text to Speech. No code changes are needed.

Features

• Connect with a Google API key or a service account JSON key.
• “Test connection” and “Preview voice” buttons on the settings page.
• Choose language, voice, speed, pitch and audio format (MP3 or WAV).
• Choose which post types get audio, and whether the title is read first.
• Generate audio from a panel in the block editor or a box in the classic editor, or automatically when a post is published or updated.
• Long posts are split into small parts and made one part at a time, so there are no timeouts.
• Word and paragraph highlighting that keeps your links and formatting intact.
• Player above or below the post, or anywhere with the [ost_tts_player] shortcode.
• Sticky player while listening, custom highlight colours, auto-scroll that pauses when the visitor scrolls.
• Add the class ost-tts-skip to any block (Advanced → Additional CSS class) to leave it out of the audio.

External service

This plugin sends post text to the Google Cloud Text-to-Speech API (texttospeech.googleapis.com) when an editor or administrator generates audio or a voice preview, or when automatic generation is turned on and a post is published or updated. When a service account is used, a sign-in token is requested from oauth2.googleapis.com. No data is sent to Google when visitors view or play audio.

Google charges per character after the free monthly allowance. See the Google Cloud Text-to-Speech pricing and the Google Cloud terms and Google privacy policy.