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How to have a note read aloud

MemoKey can read any note aloud with the voices already on your phone. It needs no account and no MemoKey server: the speech comes from your phone’s own text-to-speech.

Start reading a note

Open the note and tap Read aloud (the speaker icon) in its toolbar. Reading starts on its own and the word being spoken is highlighted. Read aloud is greyed out while the note has no text.

The buttons at the bottom stop reading, pause and continue, and open the speech settings. Leaving the screen stops reading. A locked note needs your passcode to open first, as for anything else in it.

How to lock MemoKey and single notes

Voice, speed and pitch

Tap the settings button on the reading screen to open Speech Settings. Speed goes from 0.5x to 2.0x in steps of 0.1, with 1.0x as normal speed. Pitch goes from 0.5 to 2.0. The voice list shows the English and Vietnamese voices installed on your phone, grouped by language.

MemoKey remembers your speed, pitch and voice for the next note. Changing them while a note is being read does not start it over.

The voice follows the note’s language

MemoKey reads in Vietnamese when the note contains a Vietnamese letter such as ă, ơ, đ or ệ, or when the app language is Vietnamese; otherwise it reads in English. Read aloud only uses English and Vietnamese voices.

The voice you pick is used for notes in its language. A note in the other language gets the first voice installed for that language. When the phone has no voice for the note’s language, MemoKey falls back to another installed voice, so add one as shown below.

Download a better voice on iPhone

  1. 1. Open Spoken Content

    Open the Settings app and go to Accessibility > Spoken Content > Voices.

  2. 2. Choose the language

    Tap English or Vietnamese to see its voices.

  3. 3. Download a voice

    Pick a voice and tap the download button. Enhanced and Premium voices sound more natural than the default ones but take more storage; the download needs Wi-Fi or mobile data once.

  4. 4. Choose it in MemoKey

    Open a note’s Read aloud again (voices are loaded when the reading screen opens), tap the settings button and pick the new voice.

Download a better voice on Android

  1. 1. Open Text-to-speech output

    Open Settings and search for “Text-to-speech output”. It is under Accessibility or System > Languages, depending on the phone.

  2. 2. Pick the engine

    Under Preferred engine, choose Speech Services by Google (or your phone maker’s engine). MemoKey uses the engine set here.

  3. 3. Install voice data

    Tap the settings icon next to the engine, then Install voice data, choose English or Vietnamese and download it. Some languages offer several voices to choose from.

  4. 4. Choose it in MemoKey

    Open a note’s Read aloud again, tap the settings button and pick the new voice.

Long notes and the background

Android’s text-to-speech accepts only so much text at once, so MemoKey reads a long note in parts, cut at the end of a sentence. The first part is short so reading starts quickly. You may hear a short pause between two parts.

On iPhone, MemoKey reads only while it is open on screen: switching to another app or locking the phone stops the reading.

Still stuck? See the FAQ or Support page.