gtts

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name: gtts description: "Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS) for converting text to audio. Use when creating audiobooks, podcasts, or speech synthesis from text. Handles long text by chunking at sentence boundaries and concatenating audio segments with pydub."

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Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS)

gTTS is a Python library that converts text to speech using Google's Text-to-Speech API. It's free to use and doesn't require an API key.

Installation

pip install gtts pydub

pydub is useful for manipulating and concatenating audio files.

Basic Usage

from gtts import gTTS
Create speech
tts = gTTS(text="Hello, world!", lang='en')
Save to file
tts.save("output.mp3")

Language Options

# US English (default)
tts = gTTS(text="Hello", lang='en')
British English
tts = gTTS(text="Hello", lang='en', tld='co.uk')
Slow speech
tts = gTTS(text="Hello", lang='en', slow=True)

Python Example for Long Text

from gtts import gTTS
from pydub import AudioSegment
import tempfile
import os
import re
def chunk_text(text, max_chars=4500):
    """Split text into chunks at sentence boundaries."""
    sentences = re.split(r'(?<=[.!?])\s+', text)
    chunks = []
    current_chunk = ""
    for sentence in sentences:
        if len(current_chunk) + len(sentence) < max_chars:
            current_chunk += sentence + " "
        else:
            if current_chunk:
                chunks.append(current_chunk.strip())
            current_chunk = sentence + " "
    if current_chunk:
        chunks.append(current_chunk.strip())
    return chunks
def text_to_audiobook(text, output_path):
    """Convert long text to a single audio file."""
    chunks = chunk_text(text)
    audio_segments = []
    for i, chunk in enumerate(chunks):
        # Create temp file for this chunk
        with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(suffix='.mp3', delete=False) as tmp:
            tmp_path = tmp.name
        # Generate speech
        tts = gTTS(text=chunk, lang='en', slow=False)
        tts.save(tmp_path)
        # Load and append
        segment = AudioSegment.from_mp3(tmp_path)
        audio_segments.append(segment)
        # Cleanup
        os.unlink(tmp_path)
    # Concatenate all segments
    combined = audio_segments[0]
    for segment in audio_segments[1:]:
        combined += segment
    # Export
    combined.export(output_path, format="mp3")

Handling Large Documents

gTTS has a character limit per request (~5000 chars). For long documents:

1. Split text into chunks at sentence boundaries 2. Generate audio for each chunk using gTTS 3. Use pydub to concatenate the chunks

Alternative: Using ffmpeg for Concatenation

If you prefer ffmpeg over pydub:

# Create file list
echo "file 'chunk1.mp3'" > files.txt
echo "file 'chunk2.mp3'" >> files.txt
Concatenate
ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i files.txt -c copy output.mp3

Best Practices

Split at sentence boundaries to avoid cutting words mid-sentence

Use slow=False for natural speech speed

Handle network errors gracefully (gTTS requires internet)

Consider adding brief pauses between chapters/sections

Limitations

Requires internet connection (uses Google's servers)

Voice quality is good but not as natural as paid services

Limited voice customization options

May have rate limits for very heavy usage

Split at sentence boundaries to avoid cutting words mid-sentence

Use slow=False for natural speech speed

Handle network errors gracefully (gTTS requires internet)

Consider adding brief pauses between chapters/sections