Tech Forum

What a hoot. I was working in the Topical Guide, saw the orange button, and could not resist. An extraordinary female rendering of a computer attempt to read the topic was absolutely hilarious.

When I stopped the entertainment, I got a popup saying that a high quality voice file will be downloaded for the English (USA) language. When I clicked OK, I was taken to a Legal Information page and asked to agree to Terms and Conditions. I got the impression that I was no longer in Gospel Library land.

Was I? Or have the electronic voices in my head taken over my phone, as well?

What happened?

In the Android version of Gospel Library, any content that doesn't have an audio recording provides the option to listen using text-to-speech. Although it's not the best example of something without a recording that people might want to listen to, the Topical Guide is one of those places without an audio recording.

Other examples of content without audio recordings are Handbook 1, old issues of the Ensign, or new manuals. The feature is especially useful in other languages, where very few items have audio recordings. For example, Gospel Library has the Book of Mormon in 67 languages, but the full book is only recorded in 5 of those languages. Recordings of manuals and magazines in other languages are even more scarce.

Text-to-speech is generated by Android's built-in text-to-speech engine and will vary between OS versions and devices. The popup you saw about downloading a high-quality text-to-speech voice comes from the text-to-speech engine, not from Gospel Library directly.

Gospel Library for Android will also fall back to text-to-speech if you don't have audio recordings pre-downloaded and you're trying to listen while offline (or if you're on a cell network with "Limit Mobile Network Use" turned on). As a bonus feature, if you're feeling adventurous, you can go into audio options in Gospel Library and set text-to-speech as your preferred voice. The hymns are always fun to listen to spoken instead of sung.

Thank you very much for the explanation. Makes good sense. I'll send the voices back to rattle around in my head.