pietz Text-to-Speech
Use pocket-tts for local text-to-speech. It is installed at
~/.local/bin/pocket-tts and is usually on PATH. Pass -q to keep logs quiet.
Start with the CLI help when details matter:
pocket-tts --help
pocket-tts generate --help
pocket-tts export-voice --help
Speak Aloud
Generate into a temporary directory, play it, then remove it:
d=$(mktemp -d /tmp/tts_XXXXXX) && f="$d/out.wav" && pocket-tts generate --text "Your message here" -q --output-path "$f" && afplay "$f"; rm -rf "$d"
Use a temp directory because pocket-tts writes WAV output and macOS mktemp
does not safely randomize templates like /tmp/tts_XXXX.wav.
Save Audio
When the user asks for a file, write the WAV to the requested path:
pocket-tts generate --text "Chapter one. It was a bright cold day in April." -q --output-path ~/Desktop/narration.wav
Output is WAV: mono, 24 kHz, 16-bit PCM.
Languages
Use --language for non-English text. The English model will pronounce German
and other languages badly.
pocket-tts generate --text "Guten Morgen, wie geht es dir?" --language german_24l -q --output-path "$f"
Useful language values: english, french_24l, german_24l, spanish_24l,
portuguese_24l, italian_24l. The _24l models are larger preview models;
first use may take a minute or two while weights download or load.
Voices
Default English voice is alba. Non-English defaults are selected by language:
estelle for French, juergen for German, lola for Spanish, rafael for
Portuguese, and giovanni for Italian.
Use --voice only when the user asks for a specific voice:
pocket-tts generate --text "Hello there." --voice paul -q --output-path "$f"
Examples of built-in voices: alba, anna, vera, mary, jane, jean,
paul, george, michael. Run pocket-tts generate --help or try a short
sample if you need to compare options.
Voice Cloning
For a one-off custom voice from a clean 5-30 second sample:
pocket-tts generate --text "Hello" --voice /path/to/sample.wav -q --output-path "$f"
For reuse:
pocket-tts export-voice /path/to/sample.wav ~/voices/myvoice.safetensors -q
pocket-tts generate --text "Hello" --voice ~/voices/myvoice.safetensors -q --output-path "$f"
Voice cloning can require one-time Hugging Face access to kyutai/pocket-tts.
If it fails with a gated-model message, tell the user to accept the model terms
and run uvx hf auth login.
Practical Options
--temperature: adjust variation if the result sounds too flat or unstable.--max-tokens: change chunk size for longer text if needed.--quantize: reduce memory usage.pocket-tts serve: keep the model warm for many generations in a row.