SpeechSynthesis: speak() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since September 2018.

The speak() method of the SpeechSynthesis interface adds an utterance to the utterance queue; it will be spoken when any other utterances queued before it have been spoken.

Syntax

js
speak(utterance)

Parameters

utterance

A SpeechSynthesisUtterance object.

Return value

None (undefined).

Examples

This snippet is excerpted from our Speech synthesizer demo (see it live). When a form containing the text we want to speak is submitted, we (amongst other things) create a new utterance containing this text, then speak it by passing it into speak() as a parameter.

js
const synth = window.speechSynthesis;

// ...

inputForm.onsubmit = (event) => {
  event.preventDefault();

  const utterThis = new SpeechSynthesisUtterance(inputTxt.value);
  const selectedOption =
    voiceSelect.selectedOptions[0].getAttribute("data-name");
  for (let i = 0; i < voices.length; i++) {
    if (voices[i].name === selectedOption) {
      utterThis.voice = voices[i];
    }
  }
  synth.speak(utterThis);
  inputTxt.blur();
};

Specifications

Specification
Web Speech API
# dom-speechsynthesis-speak

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also