No BS TTS is a lightweight text-to-speech reader by bitbof that leverages your device's built-in voices through the Web Speech API. You can use it freely across your devices without limits.
Why does this website exist?
Trying a text-to-speech site typically goes like this: popups appear immediately, a premium voice is preselected, and when you hit play, you get showered in more popups. You are pushed to create an account or enter your credit card number. Free tiers are often very limited, or free offerings may just use the Web Speech API anyway. Other sites claim your browser doesn't support text-to-speech, even when it does. All this when it would actually be remarkably simple to offer a straight-forward web app with unlimited speech synthesis.
I still experience nonsense!
The Web Speech API is a promising web standard, though browser implementations vary and some features may not work reliably with every voice. This site works within those limitations.
Wishlist for a better Web Speech API
- Reliable and accurate boundary events for SpeechSynthesisUtterance
- Useful metadata for voices (style, quality)
- Immediate and clear feedback if a cloud-based voice has hit a quota
- Volume, rate, and voice can be adjusted while SpeechSynthesisUtterance is speaking
- Pausing and playing via media buttons triggers the pause and play event
- Reloading the browser tab stops the SpeechSynthesisUtterance
™