How to Build a Text-to-Speech Converter using Python

Crafting a text-to-speech converter with Python is like teaching your computer to speak. Imagine taking a piece of text, maybe your favorite book excerpt or a note you’ve written, and then, with a little bit of coding magic, hearing it read back to you in clear, natural tones.

In today’s tutorial, we are going to write code that creates a basic text-to-speech converter with a graphical user interface (GUI) in which users can enter text into a text field, click a button, and the program will convert that text into speech using the pyttsx3 library.

Let’s get started!

Table of Contents

• Necessary Libraries
• Imports
• Initializing pyttsx3
• text-to-speech Function
• Creating the Main Window
• Designing the Input Section
• Adding the Conversion Button
• Running the Application
• Example
• Full Code

Necessary Libraries

First, make sure to install these libraries from the terminal or your command prompt for the code to function properly:

$ pip install tk
$ pip install pyttsx3

Imports

We start by importing everything (*) from the tkinter library, which allows us to create a graphical user interface (GUI). Additionally, we import the pyttsx3 library which is used for text-to-speech conversion.

from tkinter import *
import pyttsx3

Initializing pyttsx3

Next, we create this code to initialize the text-to-speech converter from the pyttsx3 library, which you’ll use to convert text into speech.

converter = pyttsx3.init()

text-to-speech Function

Following that, we create this function that is responsible for converting text to speech. It starts by retrieving the text entered by the user in the GUI’s text entry field. Then, it sets a conditional statement that checks if the text variable is not empty, meaning the user has entered some text. If the text is not empty, it uses the converter to convert the text to speech and finally ensures the text-to-speech conversion is executed and spoken out immediately.

def generate_vocals():
    text = text_entry.get()
    if text:
        converter.say(text)
        converter.runAndWait()

Creating the Main Window

root = Tk()
root.title("text to speech converter - The Pycodes")
root.geometry("400x200")

This part of the code creates a tkinter window (GUI), stores it in the root variable then sets the title of the GUI window to “text to speech converter – The Pycodes” After that, it defines the size of the GUI window, which is 400 pixels wide and 200 pixels tall.

Designing the Input Section

Now, we create a frame, which serves as a container for holding other GUI elements. Then, we pack this frame within the window, adding some padding (space) around it to ensure it fills both horizontally and vertically (BOTH). After that, we introduce a label with the text “Enter your Text” in Arial font, size 14, and place it within the frame.

Next, we craft a text entry field using the Entry widget, specifying a font style of Helvetica, size 14. Finally, we pack the text entry field with some padding, making it expand both horizontally and vertically within the frame.

frame = Frame(root)
frame.pack(padx=20,pady=30,fill=BOTH,expand=True)

label = Label(frame,text="Enter your Text :",font=("Arial",14))
label.pack()

text_entry = Entry(frame,font=("helvetica",14))
text_entry.pack(padx=10,pady=10,fill=BOTH,expand=True)

Adding the Conversion Button

Here, we created a button labeled “convert to speech” with the command to execute the generate_vocals function when clicked. It also sets the background color to orange and the text color to green, The button is added to the frame using the pack method.

convert_button = Button(frame,text="convert to speech",command=generate_vocals,bg="orange",fg="green",font=("helvetica",14))
convert_button.pack()

Running the Application

Finally, we run the main event loop of the GUI, allowing it to respond to user interactions and remain open until the user closes the window.

root.mainloop()

Example

Full Code

from tkinter import *
import pyttsx3


converter = pyttsx3.init()


def generate_vocals():
    text = text_entry.get()
    if text:
        converter.say(text)
        converter.runAndWait()


root = Tk()
root.title("text to speech converter - The Pycodes")
root.geometry("400x200")


frame = Frame(root)
frame.pack(padx=20,pady=30,fill=BOTH,expand=True)


label = Label(frame,text="Enter your Text :",font=("Arial",14))
label.pack()


text_entry = Entry(frame,font=("helvetica",14))
text_entry.pack(padx=10,pady=10,fill=BOTH,expand=True)


convert_button = Button(frame,text="convert to speech",command=generate_vocals,bg="orange",fg="green",font=("helvetica",14))
convert_button.pack()

root.mainloop()

Happy Coding!

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