Hands on with Microsoft Windows 11 24H2’s secret “Speak for me” feature

Microsoft has been working on a voice narrator app known as ‘Speak for me” that may learn the inputted textual content aloud. But not like the robotic voices you hear in most voice assistants, Speak for Me provides a more natural-sounding voice. It additionally has a Personal voice choice that you should use to create your voice avatar and browse out textual content in your voice.

Speak for Me isn’t instantly accessible within the Microsoft Windows 11 Build 26063, however it’s attainable to show it on by making modifications to the OS. So, what precisely is Speak for Me? In our exams, we noticed that the characteristic lets you create an artificial voice that may learn textual content out loud in a means that resembles their voice or a most well-liked kind of voice.

This may very well be helpful for individuals who wish to take heed to paperwork or emails learn out loud, or for individuals who can’t communicate and want to talk using a voice that feels like their very own. You’ll discover the ‘Speak for me’ app within the Start menu or the Accessibility web page in Settings, but it surely requires you to “create your voice” by way of a wizard course of:

1. To get began, search “Speak for me” within the Start menu and click on Select a pure voice choice. You also can decide the ‘My personal voice’ choice to create your voice avatar.
   
2. Select a language from the checklist. Then decide anyone voice kind. For instance, in case you selected English (India), you would possibly get completely different choices like “Microsoft Neerja” to pick a voice that sounds pure to that area.
   
3. You can now customise the characteristic by naming it and previewing the sound. If you’re happy with the standard, click on Download and set up choice.
   
4. The next display lets you customise the voice’s parameters like velocity, pitch, and quantity to raised match your private talking type.
   

Once completed, you kind the textual content and click on the Speak button to learn it aloud.

Initially, the characteristic didn’t produce any voice and gave the impression to be caught. However, after a couple of makes an attempt, it began working correctly. The narration voice has a surprisingly pure sound high quality.

If you wish to create a private voice, you solely must learn a couple of sentences to set it up

You can solely decide from eight languages: English, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. You also can use the Microsoft Windows + Ctrl + T shortcut to launch Speak for me.

Microsoft Windows 11 24H2 may have a number of helpful options

Speak for me isn’t the one attention-grabbing change in Microsoft Windows 11 24H2.

The next huge Microsoft Windows 11 updates will pack a number of latest options. One is an improved context menu for File Explorer with a label beneath the widespread file actions like Copy, Paste, and many others.

In addition, accessibility options like voice readability, mic check, pointer indicator, and listening to help help will even be included within the updates.

Microsoft has already built-in Copilot into Notepad, which might help you summarize the highlighted textual content using Copilot. Widget boards, notification badges for icons, higher Bluetooth discoverability, and exclusions of non-useful apps like Cortana, Mail, Calendar, Maps, People, and Movies & TV.