AVSpeechSynthesisVoice not working for some users

Question

Hello,

In my iOS app most users can hear the AVSpeechSynthesisVoice correctly, but some report that it simply does not work. I haven't been able to reproduce the issue locally, but here is how I use the API:

Code Block let sentence = "the sentence to be told"
let synthesizer = AVSpeechSynthesizer()
let utterance = AVSpeechUtterance(string: sentence)
utterance.voice = AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(
  language: "en-GB"
)
utterance.rate = AVSpeechUtteranceDefaultSpeechRate * 1.05
synthesizer.speak(utterance)

This works perfectly fine on iOS 13 (tested most minors), all iOS 14 versions, all the devices I could find... but I keep getting reports of people not getting any audio feedback.

Do you have any pointers on where to look, or at least reproduce the issue?

Thanks

2.5k

Posted by

MGG9

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Answer 1

Do you set the volume of the utterance ?

Check it is not 0.0

Code Block utterance.volume = 1.0

Posted by

Claude31

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Answer 2

Please be more specific.

it simply does not work.
What does this mean? No sound? Broken as "en-GB"? Does it work for "en-US"?

Isn't the user setting the device to Silent Mode? Or running some app which would mute other audio output?

Posted by

OOPer

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Answer 3

@Claude31 I'm not touching the volume at all, I've put the entire code I use in my post.

@OOper By "does not work" I meant that there is no sound on the user's device. I am not able to replicate the behavior on my side, so I don't have much more info than users saying that they don't hear the sound. I'll check with them if they are in silent mode

Posted by

MGG9

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Answer 4

Same thing happened here... no sound, running on iOS14 on my iPhone 11.

Then, I realized that the Ring/Silent Switch Button on my phone was turned to OFF. Turning it on fixed the problem.

Could this be it? It is worth trying.

This still seems a bit wrong... so you have to set the ringer on in order to hear tts? What if I want to keep the ringer off?

Posted by

felipefromweston

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Answer 5

Same issue on iOS 15.0.1. I just get this error AVAudioSession setActive FALSE error: The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error 560030580.). I have no idea how to recovery. Does any one have idea for this ticket?

Posted by

SunXiaoShan

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AVSpeechSynthesisVoice not working for some users

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