How to convert text to speech using AVSpeechSynthesizer, AVSpeechUtterance and AVSpeechSynthesisVoice

Swift version: 5.1

Paul Hudson @twostraws May 28th 2019

If you're looking for text-to-speech conversion, it's baked right into iOS thanks to the AVSpeechSynthesizer class and its friends. As you can tell from the "AV" part of its name, you'll need to add AVFoundation to your project, like this:

import AVFoundation

With that done, you can speak whatever you want. For example, to say "Hello world" in a very slow British accent, use this:

let utterance = AVSpeechUtterance(string: "Hello world")
utterance.voice = AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language: "en-GB")
utterance.rate = 0.1 

let synthesizer = AVSpeechSynthesizer()
synthesizer.speak(utterance)

You can omit the rate property entirely to have a natural-speed voice, or change the language to "en-US" (English, American accent), "en-IE" (English, Irish accent), "en-AU" (English, Australian accent) or whichever other accents Apple chooses to add in the future.

Available from iOS 7.0