'Getting the list of voices in speechSynthesis (Web Speech API)

Following HTML shows empty array in console on first click:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <script>
            function test(){
                console.log(window.speechSynthesis.getVoices())
            }
        </script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <a href="#" onclick="test()">Test</a>
    </body>
</html>

In second click you will get the expected list.

If you add onload event to call this function (<body onload="test()">), then you can get correct result on first click. Note that the first call on onload still doesn't work properly. It returns empty on page load but works afterward.

Questions:

Since it might be a bug in beta version, I gave up on "Why" questions.

Now, the question is if you want to access window.speechSynthesis on page load:

What is the best hack for this issue?
How can you make sure it will load speechSynthesis, on page load?

Background and tests:

I was testing the new features in Web Speech API, then I got to this problem in my code:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){
    // Browser support messages. (You might need Chrome 33.0 Beta)
    if (!('speechSynthesis' in window)) {
      alert("You don't have speechSynthesis");
    }

    var voices = window.speechSynthesis.getVoices();
    console.log(voices) // []

    $("#test").on('click', function(){
        var voices = window.speechSynthesis.getVoices();
        console.log(voices); // [SpeechSynthesisVoice, ...]
    });
});
</script>
<a id="test" href="#">click here if 'ready()' didn't work</a>

My question was: why does window.speechSynthesis.getVoices() return empty array, after page is loaded and onready function is triggered? As you can see if you click on the link, same function returns an array of available voices of Chrome by onclick triger?

It seems Chrome loads window.speechSynthesis after the page load!

The problem is not in ready event. If I remove the line var voice=... from ready function, for first click it shows empty list in console. But the second click works fine.

It seems window.speechSynthesis needs more time to load after first call. You need to call it twice! But also, you need to wait and let it load before second call on window.speechSynthesis. For example, following code shows two empty arrays in console if you run it for first time:

// First speechSynthesis call
var voices = window.speechSynthesis.getVoices();
console.log(voices);

// Second speechSynthesis call
voices = window.speechSynthesis.getVoices();
console.log(voices);

Solution 1:^[1]

According to Web Speech API Errata (E11 2013-10-17), the voice list is loaded async to the page. An onvoiceschanged event is fired when they are loaded.

voiceschanged: Fired when the contents of the SpeechSynthesisVoiceList, that the getVoices method will return, have changed. Examples include: server-side synthesis where the list is determined asynchronously, or when client-side voices are installed/uninstalled.

So, the trick is to set your voice from the callback for that event listener:

// wait on voices to be loaded before fetching list
window.speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged = function() {
    window.speechSynthesis.getVoices();
    ...
};

Solution 2:^[2]

You can use a setInterval to wait until the voices are loaded before using them however you need and then clearing the setInterval:

var timer = setInterval(function() {
    var voices = speechSynthesis.getVoices();
    console.log(voices);
    if (voices.length !== 0) {
      var msg = new SpeechSynthesisUtterance(/*some string here*/);
      msg.voice = voices[/*some number here to choose from array*/];
      speechSynthesis.speak(msg);
      clearInterval(timer);
    }
}, 200);

$("#test").on('click', timer);

Solution 3:^[3]

After studying the behavior on Google Chrome and Firefox, this is what can get all voices:

Since it involves something asynchronous, it might be best done with a promise:

const allVoicesObtained = new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {
  let voices = window.speechSynthesis.getVoices();
  if (voices.length !== 0) {
    resolve(voices);
  } else {
    window.speechSynthesis.addEventListener("voiceschanged", function() {
      voices = window.speechSynthesis.getVoices();
      resolve(voices);
    });
  }
});

allVoicesObtained.then(voices => console.log("All voices:", voices));

Note:

When the event voiceschanged fires, we need to call .getVoices() again. The original array won't be populated with content.
On Google Chrome, we don't have to call getVoices() initially. We only need to listen on the event, and it will then happen. On Firefox, listening is not enough, you have to call getVoices() and then listen on the event voiceschanged, and set the array using getVoices() once you get notified.
Using a promise makes the code more clean. Everything related to getting voices are in this promise code. If you don't use a promise but instead put this code in your speech routine, it is quite messy.
You can write a voiceObtained promise to resolve to a voice you want, and then your function to say something can just do: voiceObtained.then(voice => { }) and inside that handler, call the window.speechSynthesis.speak() to speak something. Or you can even write a promise speechReady("hello world").then(speech => { window.speechSynthesis.speak(speech) }) to say something.

Solution 4:^[4]

heres the answer

function synthVoice(text) {

  const awaitVoices = new Promise(resolve=> 
    window.speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged = resolve)  
  .then(()=> {
    const synth = window.speechSynthesis;

    var voices = synth.getVoices();
    console.log(voices)

    const utterance = new SpeechSynthesisUtterance();
    utterance.voice = voices[3];        
    utterance.text = text;

    synth.speak(utterance);
  });
}

Solution 5:^[5]

At first i used onvoiceschanged , but it kept firing even after the voices was loaded, so my goal was to avoid onvoiceschanged at all cost.

This is what i came up with. It seems to work so far, will update if it breaks.

loadVoicesWhenAvailable();

function loadVoicesWhenAvailable() {
         voices = synth.getVoices();

         if (voices.length !== 0) {
                console.log("start loading voices");
                LoadVoices();
            }
            else {
                setTimeout(function () { loadVoicesWhenAvailable(); }, 10)
            }
    }

Solution 6:^[6]

setInterval solution by Salman Oskooi was perfect

Please see https://jsfiddle.net/exrx8e1y/

function myFunction() {

  dtlarea=document.getElementById("details");
  //dtlarea.style.display="none";
  dtltxt="";

  var mytimer = setInterval(function() {

      var voices = speechSynthesis.getVoices();
      //console.log(voices);
      if (voices.length !== 0) {

        var msg = new SpeechSynthesisUtterance();

        msg.rate = document.getElementById("rate").value; // 0.1 to 10
        msg.pitch = document.getElementById("pitch").value; //0 to 2
        msg.volume = document.getElementById("volume").value; // 0 to 1

        msg.text = document.getElementById("sampletext").value; 
        msg.lang =  document.getElementById("lang").value; //'hi-IN';

        for(var i=0;i<voices.length;i++){

            dtltxt+=voices[i].lang+' '+voices[i].name+'\n';

            if(voices[i].lang==msg.lang) {
              msg.voice = voices[i]; // Note: some voices don't support altering params
              msg.voiceURI = voices[i].voiceURI;
              // break;
            }
        }

        msg.onend = function(e) {
          console.log('Finished in ' + event.elapsedTime + ' seconds.');
          dtlarea.value=dtltxt; 
        };

        speechSynthesis.speak(msg);

        clearInterval(mytimer);

      }
  }, 1000);

}

This works fine on Chrome for MAC, Linux(Ubuntu), Windows and Android

Android has non-standard en_GB wile others have en-GB as language code Also you will see that same language(lang) has multiple names

On Mac Chrome you get en-GB Daniel besides en-GB Google UK English Female and n-GB Google UK English Male

en-GB Daniel (Mac and iOS) en-GB Google UK English Female en-GB Google UK English Male en_GB English United Kingdom hi-IN Google ?????? hi-IN Lekha (Mac and iOS) hi_IN Hindi India

Solution 7:^[7]

Another way to ensure voices are loaded before you need them is to bind their loading state to a promise, and then dispatch your speech commands from a then:

const awaitVoices = new Promise(done => speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged = done);

function listVoices() {
    awaitVoices.then(()=> {
        let voices = speechSynthesis.getVoices();
        console.log(voices);
    });
}

When you call listVoices, it will either wait for the voices to load first, or dispatch your operation on the next tick.

Solution 8:^[8]

I used this code to load voices successfully:

<select id="voices"></select>

...

  function loadVoices() {
    populateVoiceList();
    if (speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged !== undefined) {
      speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged = populateVoiceList;
    }
  }

  function populateVoiceList() {
    var allVoices = speechSynthesis.getVoices();
    allVoices.forEach(function(voice, index) {
      var option = $('<option>').val(index).html(voice.name).prop("selected", voice.default);
      $('#voices').append(option);
    });
    if (allVoices.length > 0 && speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged !== undefined) {
      // unregister event listener (it is fired multiple times)
      speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged = null;
    }
  }

I found the 'onvoiceschanged' code from this article: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/01/firefox-and-the-web-speech-api/

Note: requires JQuery.

Works in Firefox/Safari and Chrome (and in Google Apps Script too - but only in the HTML).

Solution 9:^[9]

async function speak(txt) {
    await initVoices();
    const u = new SpeechSynthesisUtterance(txt);
    u.voice = speechSynthesis.getVoices()[3];
    speechSynthesis.speak(u);
}

function initVoices() {
  return new Promise(function (res, rej){
    speechSynthesis.getVoices();
    if (window.speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged) {
       res();
    } else {
      window.speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged = () => res();
    }
  });
}

Solution 10:^[10]

While the accepted answer works great but if you're using SPA and not loading full-page, on navigating between links, the voices will not be available.

This will run on a full-page load

window.speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged

For SPA, it wouldn't run.

You can check if it's undefined, run it, or else, get it from the window object.

An example that works:

let voices = [];
if(window.speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged == undefined){
     window.speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged = () => {
     voices = window.speechSynthesis.getVoices();
   }
 }else{
    voices = window.speechSynthesis.getVoices();
 }
 // console.log("voices", voices);

Solution 11:^[11]

I had to do my own research for this to make sure I understood it properly, so just sharing (feel free to edit).

My goal is to:

Get a list of voices available on my device
Populate a select element with those voices (after a particular page loads)
Use easy to understand code

The basic functionality is demonstrated in MDN's official live demo of:

https://github.com/mdn/web-speech-api/tree/master/speak-easy-synthesis

but I wanted to understand it better.

To break the topic down...

SpeechSynthesis

The SpeechSynthesis interface of the Web Speech API is the controller interface for the speech service; this can be used to retrieve information about the synthesis voices available on the device, start and pause speech, and other commands besides.

Source

onvoiceschanged

The onvoiceschanged property of the SpeechSynthesis interface represents an event handler that will run when the list of SpeechSynthesisVoice objects that would be returned by the SpeechSynthesis.getVoices() method has changed (when the voiceschanged event fires.)

Source

Example A

If my application merely has:

var synth = window.speechSynthesis;
console.log(synth);
console.log(synth.onvoiceschanged);

Chrome developer tools console will show:

Example B

If I change the code to:

var synth = window.speechSynthesis;

console.log("BEFORE");
console.log(synth);
console.log(synth.onvoiceschanged);

console.log("AFTER");
var voices = synth.getVoices();

console.log(voices);
console.log(synth);
console.log(synth.onvoiceschanged);

The before and after states are the same, and voices is an empty array.

Solution

Although i'm not confident implementing Promises, the following worked for me:

Defining the function

var synth = window.speechSynthesis;
// declare so that values are accessible globally
var voices = [];


function set_up_speech() {

    return new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {

        // get the voices
        var voices = synth.getVoices();

        // get reference to select element
        var $select_topic_speaking_voice = $("#select_topic_speaking_voice");

        // for each voice, generate select option html and append to select
        for (var i = 0; i < voices.length; i++) {

            var option = $("<option></option>");

            var suffix = "";

            // if it is the default voice, add suffix text  
            if (voices[i].default) {
                suffix = " -- DEFAULT";
            }

            // create the option text
            var option_text = voices[i].name + " (" + voices[i].lang + suffix + ")";

            // add the option text
            option.text(option_text);

            // add option attributes
            option.attr("data-lang", voices[i].lang);
            option.attr("data-name", voices[i].name);

            // append option to select element
            $select_topic_speaking_voice.append(option);
        }

        // resolve the voices value
        resolve(voices)

    });

}

Calling the function

// in your handler, populate the select element    
if (page_title === "something") {
set_up_speech()
}

Solution 12:^[12]

Android Chrome - turn off data saver. It was helpfull for me.(Chrome 71.0.3578.99)

// wait until the voices load
   window.speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged = function() {
    window.speechSynthesis.getVoices();

};

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution	Source
Solution 1	craveytrain
Solution 2	Salman Oskooi
Solution 3
Solution 4	skyfoot
Solution 5
Solution 6	Jayanta
Solution 7	Jimmy Breck-McKye
Solution 8
Solution 9	Muhammad Umer
Solution 10	Hujjat Nazari
Solution 11
Solution 12	Eugeny Aladov

'Getting the list of voices in speechSynthesis (Web Speech API)

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