Natural offline voices

Pro.

Anyone can hear the voices first: in Settings → Reading Vault, press ▶ next to a voice to play a short sample. Samples play straight away, with no big download (each is a small clip, downloaded the first time you play it).

Reading Vault Pro can read your books with 28 natural-sounding English voices, American and British, that sound much closer to a person reading than your computer’s own voices. They run on your own computer, on Mac and Windows, with no internet needed once they’re downloaded.

Setting them up

1. Open Settings → Reading Vault and find Natural voices (Kokoro).
2. Press Download (325 MB). This happens once. The download is kept on your computer, outside your vault, so it doesn’t sync to your phone or get backed up with your notes.
3. Tick the voices you want in Voices to choose from.
4. Turn them on: switch on Natural voices on the listening bar, or pick a natural voice as the Default voice in Settings.

Natural voices start switched off when you first get Pro, so Play reads with your computer’s voice until you turn them on. After that, press Play in the Reader as usual. The first sentence can take a few seconds while the voice gets ready; the listening bar says “Getting the voice ready…” meanwhile.

If you turn Natural voices on before downloading, Reading Vault asks first: Download now starts the one-time download and reads as soon as it’s ready, and Use a Mac voice for now reads with your computer’s own voice until you download. Nothing downloads without you saying so.

The voices

Settings offers 28 English voices, in two groups. “Best” marks the two voices rated highest.

Women

Voice	Accent
Heart (Best)	American
Bella (Best)	American
Nicole	American
Aoede	American
Kore	American
Sarah	American
Nova	American
Sky	American
Alloy	American
Jessica	American
River	American
Emma	British
Isabella	British
Alice	British
Lily	British

Men

Voice	Accent
Fenrir	American
Michael	American
Puck	American
Echo	American
Eric	American
Liam	American
Onyx	American
Adam	American
Santa	American
George	British
Fable	British
Lewis	British
Daniel	British

Good to know

• The natural voices read English. Other languages use your computer’s own voices. See Listen.
• Without Pro, Listen uses your computer’s own voices.
• Download again in Settings replaces a missing or damaged download.
• Your computer’s own voices stay available with Pro: they’re listed under the natural voices, in Settings and in the Reader’s voice list.
• The natural voice uses your computer’s processor and some memory while it reads. After five minutes without reading it lets go of that memory; the next Play gets it ready again in a few seconds. With two Obsidian windows open, only the window you’re listening in keeps it.