Installing the ModelTalker App

Before you can download and use your voice (or any of the donated ModelTalker voices available on our website) you must first install a copy of the ModelTalker app. The ModelTalker app provides two functions:

1. Install and manage ModelTalker voices.
2. Enter text to have it spoken aloud for testing ModelTalker voices.

The ModelTalker app is presently distributed as a free beta test app via the Apple TestFlight program. To enroll in the beta test, send an email to beta@modeltalker.org to let us know that you want to be included. In the email, please include 1) the email address you use with Apple, and 2) your ModelTalker username (please don’t send your password). With this information we will add you to the list of beta testers and you will receive an email from TestFlight with instructions on how to download and install your voice. It is best to have TestFlight installed on you device before enrolling in the beta test.

Using the ModelTalker App

Home page

When the ModelTalker app starts, you will see a page like the top figure shown here on the right. This is a page where you can enter text and have it spoken aloud by the selected voice. The selected voice is shown in the Title bar above the text window. Tap the Speak button below the text window to hear the text spoken. The Stop button will cancel speaking immediately, and the Pause button with suspend speaking until the Speak button is tapped again to continue speaking from the point where it was paused. Tapping within the Text window will activate the keyboard, allowing you to add or edit text in the Window. If the keyboard obscures the Speak and other buttons, you can push the page up to expose the buttons. You can also Copy or Cut text from another app and Paste it into the text window to have it spoken aloud.

Sidebar Navigtion Drawer

Our new user interface has a slide-out navigation sidebar that is hidden by default on iPhones and iPads. To expose the sidebar, tap the small “…” icon in the upper left of the display (circled in red in the first figure on the right). This will open the drawer sidebar as shown in the second figure. From the drawer, you can return to the home page by tapping Home, navigate to the Voices page, or read about this version of the app and view our license agreement by tapping About.

Voices page

Tapping Voices in the sidebar opens the Voices page from which you can select among any installed voices, add new voices, or delete unwanted voices. The third image on the right shows the Voices page. It shows a list of voices that have been downloaded and installed from the ModelTalker.org site. A checkmark shows which voice is presently selected for use by the ModelTalker app (this selection does not affect any other apps that might also have a ModelTalker voice selected). The type of English for each voice is also indicated, for example, “en_US” indicates American English.

If you have loaded a voice that you do not wish to keep on the iOS device, swiping fully to the left on one of the voice bars will delete the voice from your device. Please be careful because the app does not ask for confirmation before deleting the voice (that’s coming soon). Fortunately, if you accidentally do delete your voice, it can be downloaded again from the website since removing the voice from the device does not remove the voice from the ModelTalker.org website.

When entering your username and password remember that both are case sensitive and must be entered exactly as you provided them when registering. If you have forgotten your password, it can be reset by logging into the website on another device and requesting a password reset. Also, while the ModelTalker app is free to all voice bankers, your voice is not and must be paid for before it can be downloaded.

To return to the home tap the upper left “…” icon to expose the navigation sidebar and tap Home.

About Page

The About page, also accessed from the sidebar navigation menu provides information about the installed version of the ModelTalker app and the License Agreement. The version information is something we might ask you for if you have run into any problems with the app. It could help us to diagnose issues you are experiencing. By registering with ModelTalker, downloading and using the app and your voice you are implicitly agreeing to the terms of the license. At the bottom of the About Page, we acknowledge several open source or freely available software libraries that we rely on to make the ModelTalker app.

Using Your Voice in Other Apps

The coolest thing about the ModelTalker app is that it also installs your voice as an iOS system voice that can be accessed by most speech-enabled apps or by standard system features that allow you to select voices and have them read selected regions of text aloud. To select your voice as the default system voice, open the Settings, scroll down to Accessibility, and in the Accessibility page select Spoken Content. In the Spoken Content page, select Voices and then English (right now, all ModelTalker voices are English variants). In the page with English voices, scroll down to ModelTalker.org and select it. That will bring up a list of all the ModelTalker voices currently installed on the device. Tap the Voice that you want to use as the system voice and it will become the default voice for spoken content.

Known Issues

1. Pitch Control in Settings – The pitch control is presently not enabled.
2. Word and Sentence Highlighting – In apps that track speech by highlighting each word as it is spoken, the highlighting is presently not well synchronized with the speech.
3. Keyboard difficult to dismiss – When entering text into the ModelTalker app text box to be spoken, the keyboard is opened. Sometimes you can slide it down to dismiss the keyboard, but it may pop back up. You can also slide the text area up to expose the Speak, Pause, and Stop buttons even if the Keyboard does not close.