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Audio Interface

by Johannes Kaindl
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Description

Read notes aloud with system voices and export them as WAV with a local, downloadable German voice. No cloud, no account.

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Latest Version

0.3.0
a day ago

Changelog

Added

  • A second downloadable voice: English (Piper LJSpeech, en_US, medium, dataset public domain) next to the German Thorsten. A new setting Voice for export switches between them; it also applies to reading aloud with the downloaded voice.
  • On first start the voice follows Obsidian's display language (English UI → English voice). A choice you have made is never overwritten.

Changed

  • Worker and ONNX runtime are now shared between voices: a second voice downloads only its model (≈ 60 MB instead of ≈ 75 MB), the voice list shows what each one still costs, and Remove keeps the shared runtime as long as another voice needs it.
  • The synthesis worker carries both eSpeak-NG dictionaries (English and German), ≈ 2.8 MB instead of ≈ 2.2 MB; only the one the selected voice needs is loaded at runtime.
See all version on GitHub

README file from

Github

Audio Interface

🇬🇧 English · 🇩🇪 Deutsch

Read your notes aloud and turn them into WAV files — locally, with no cloud, no account, no Python.

License: AGPL-3.0 Release Obsidian

Reading aloud works the moment you install the plugin, with the voices already on your computer. Exporting a note as a WAV file — say, a mailbox greeting for your phone system — is a deliberate opt-in: you enable it, you press Download, and only then does a voice (English or German) arrive on your disk.

Features

  • Read aloud the current note or selection with your system voices — start, pause/resume and stop from the command palette, the ribbon icon or the status bar. Nothing to set up.
  • Export as WAV with a downloadable voice — English (Piper, LJSpeech) or German (Piper, Thorsten), medium quality, switchable in the settings. Choose the phone-system profile (8 kHz mono 16 bit — what PBX mailboxes such as 3CX expect) or the voice's native 22.05 kHz. Files land next to the note or in a folder of your choice and are never overwritten.
  • Read aloud with the downloaded voice instead of the system voice, once it is there.
  • Speech-ready text: frontmatter, code blocks, images/embeds and comments are skipped; links speak their display text; headings, lists, tables and callouts are read with natural pauses.
  • Honest network use: one download, from this repository's release, only after your click, verified against checksums, removable again — see How it works.

Requirements

  • Obsidian 1.8.7 or newer, desktop (macOS, Windows, Linux). isDesktopOnly is set — the synthesis worker and the browser cache the voice lives in are not reliable on mobile.
  • Reading aloud uses the voices of your operating system. If no German voice is listed, install one in the OS (macOS: System Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → System voice).
  • WAV export needs about 80 MB of free disk space for the first voice and its runtime; a second voice adds about 60 MB, because the runtime is shared.

Install

Community Plugins

The plugin has been submitted to the Obsidian community directory; once listed: Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search “Audio Interface”.

Manual

Copy main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/audio-interface/, then enable the plugin.

BRAT (beta)

Add the GitHub mirror johannes-kaindl/audio-interface in BRAT.

From source

git clone https://git.jkaindl.de/jkaindl/audio-interface
cd audio-interface && npm install && npm run build
# main.js manifest.json styles.css → <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/audio-interface/

Usage

  1. Open a note and run Read note aloud (command palette, or the ribbon icon). Select some text first and use Read selection aloud for just that part.
  2. Pause / resume reading and Stop reading / cancel export are commands too — or click the status bar item, which shows the progress while the plugin speaks.
  3. To export: enable WAV export in the settings and download the voice (see below). The commands Export note as WAV and Export selection as WAV appear in the palette as soon as the voice is ready. The file is written next to the note (or into your target folder), and a notice tells you where.
The status bar item shows what is happening — Reading 1/5, Rendering 2/9, Downloading 12/78 MB — and a click stops it.

Configuration

Setting What it does Default
Voice Which system voice reads aloud; Automatic picks the first German one Automatic
Rate Speech rate for reading aloud (0.5×–2×) 1.0×
Read aloud with the downloaded voice Use the Piper voice instead of the system voice for reading aloud (only shown once the voice is ready) off
Enable WAV export Reveals the voice row and the export settings — downloads nothing by itself off
Voice for export Which downloadable voice speaks: Piper · LJSpeech (en_US) or Piper · Thorsten (de_DE). Each entry shows what it still costs to download, or downloaded follows Obsidian's display language
Piper · … (the selected voice) The voice row: size, source and licenses, with Download / Cancel / Remove not downloaded
Output profile Phone system — 8 kHz mono or Native (voice sample rate) Phone system
Target folder Vault folder for the WAV files; empty = next to the note empty
File name pattern {{note}} and {{date}} are replaced; existing files get -2, -3, … {{note}}
Insert link into note Append ![[file.wav]] at the cursor after a successful export off

How it works

Reading aloud uses the browser's speech synthesis inside Obsidian — your operating system's voices, sentence by sentence, with pauses derived from the note's structure. No audio data is produced, which is also why system voices cannot export a file.

WAV export is an opt-in. Out of the box the plugin downloads nothing. When you enable export and press Download, it fetches these files once, from this repository's GitHub release (https://github.com/johannes-kaindl/audio-interface/releases); no other server is contacted:

File Size What it is License
piper-worker.js ≈ 3 MB Synthesis worker (Piper pipeline, eSpeak-NG phonemizer as WASM, English + German dictionaries) AGPL-3.0-or-later; contains ephone/eSpeak-NG (GPL-3.0-or-later), onnxruntime-web (MIT)
ort-wasm-simd-threaded.wasm ≈ 13 MB ONNX Runtime Web (CPU) MIT
en_US-ljspeech-medium.onnx + .json ≈ 61 MB Piper voice LJSpeech (English, 22.05 kHz) dataset public domain
de_DE-thorsten-medium.onnx + .json ≈ 60 MB Piper voice Thorsten (German, 22.05 kHz) dataset CC0

Only the voice you selected is fetched — the first two files are shared, so a second voice costs just its model.

Synthesis then runs in a Web Worker inside Obsidian (ONNX Runtime, CPU), the result is resampled to the chosen profile, encoded as 16-bit WAV and written through Obsidian's vault API. There is no telemetry and no other network access. Architecture and measurements: AGENTS.md.

Roadmap

Dictation (speech-to-text) and connecting to a local speech service for higher-quality voices are planned for later releases; the settings already reserve a place for it.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests on git.jkaindl.de. Test-driven (npm run gate); larger features via brainstorm → spec → plan → TDD (docs/superpowers/). See AGENTS.md.

License

  • Code: AGPL-3.0-or-later (LICENSE).
  • Third-party: onnxruntime-web (MIT), ephone/eSpeak-NG (GPL-3.0-or-later), Piper voices LJSpeech (dataset public domain) and Thorsten (dataset CC0) — shipped as release assets, see the table above.

Copyright © 2026 Johannes Kaindl.

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