Voice / TTS
The Dhamma was originally an oral teaching. — AN 5.209
Live demo — voice mode starts automatically via a URL parameter, no clicking required (the floating player at the bottom is the point here, not the reader text behind it):
5 ways to activate Voice Mode
- Click the Voice link at the top of the page (next to En, Ru, etc.).
- Click the 🔉 icon to the left of the text's title.
- Click any Pali or translation sentence to highlight it, then click the Play button that appears bottom-right.
- Hover/tap before or after a line to reveal a ✦ link, then choose "Listen".
- Press Alt+R (Option+R on Mac).
Built-in player
Uses Google Cloud Voices or your browser's own speech synthesis.
- Controls — Play/Pause, previous/next sentence.
- Navigation — pause, click a Pali sentence to highlight it, press Play to resume from there.
- Settings — reading mode (Pali / Pali+Translation / Translation / Translation+Pali) and playback speed.
- Scroll — toggle auto-scroll.
- Autoplay — toggle automatic playback (subject to the browser's autoplay policy).
A-B loop — repeat a passage for memorization
The AB button next to the player is a separate tool layered on top of normal playback: pick a start and end point in the text, and the player repeats just that passage, with a pause between repeats and a repeat limit (or infinite).
- Click AB — if a line was already selected, it immediately becomes point A and the panel waits for you to click a line for point B; if nothing was selected, click a line for A first, then for B. As soon as both points are set, the loop starts automatically.
- Pause (sec) — how long to wait between repeats.
- Repeat count — defaults to ∞ (infinite); type your own number and the loop stops on its own once it's done.
- To move a point, click it again and pick a new line. To clear a point, right-click (or long-press on phones) directly on the A or B button.
- The passage between the two points is marked in the text with a vertical bar on the left.
Hotkeys
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Alt+R | Toggle Voice Mode |
| S | Toggle autoscroll |
| Space | Play / Pause |
| ← → or ↑ ↓ | Previous / Next segment |
| 1 | Mode: Pāḷi |
| 2 | Mode: Pāḷi + Translation |
| 3 | Mode: Translation |
| 4 | Mode: Translation + Pāḷi |
| + / - | Increase / decrease speed |
| R | Reset speed to default |
If "Autoscroll" is off (the S key, or the toggle in the player settings), Space and the arrow keys stop responding to player control — that's expected behavior, not a bug. The 1–4 keys and +/- always work, regardless of autoscroll.
Getting a Pali voice on your device
There is no dedicated Pali TTS engine. Install one of Sanskrit (India), Hindi (India), Nepali or Indonesian voices for the closest pronunciation; if none is installed, English is used as a fallback.
- Android — Settings → Language & Input → Text-to-Speech → Install voice data.
- iOS — Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices.
- PC / macOS — install a system voice via your OS settings.
Extra links (Voice panel footer)
- TTS — a dedicated page for external TTS apps (e.g. Read Aloud for Chrome, Voice Aloud Reader for iOS).
- VSC — link to Voice.SC (SuttaCentral Voice).
- File — direct link to an audio file, when one exists for that text.
- ? — link to this help page.
Google API key (optional)
Enables Google Cloud Text-to-Speech for higher-quality voices with generous free limits: create an API key in Google Cloud Console and enable the Text-to-Speech API.