ZoTTS

ZoTTS is a Zotero plugin to add TTS functionality

Install 🚀

The latest stable version is available here The full version list, including any prerelease versions is here

1. Download the .xpi file from the latest release
   • If you're using firefox, right click and select "Save as..."
2. In Zotero, go to Tools > Plugins
3. Click the gear icon in the top right
4. Select Install Add-on From File...
5. Browse to the downloaded .xpi file and select it

The plugin should load straight away, and future updates will be downloaded automatically!

Note

ZoTTS might fail to init the TTS engine for Linux users who use Zotero in sandboxed environments (flatpak/snap/etc) due to a long-standing non-trivial bug, a workaround might be possible but you might find it easier to use a non-sandboxed Zotero if you can, feel free to open a bug report for further assistance

Features ✨

Shortcuts

• Ctrl/Cmd + S will begin speaking (extra functionality is available with Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + S, discussed below)
• Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + P will pause
• Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + C will cancel

In the Library tab, by default Ctrl/Cmd + S will speak a paper's title, Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + S will speak its abstract.

In Reader tabs, Ctrl/Cmd (+ Shift) + S will speak the full text of a paper. If you have any text selected within the document, it will read that instead. If no text is selected but some annotations are selected Ctrl/Cmd + S will speak their annotated text, Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + S will speak the attached comment if there is one.

You can swap the behaviour of Ctrl/Cmd + S and Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + S in the preferences.

UI Elements

In the Library tab, right clicking an item will bring up a context menu, you can tell ZoTTS to speak the title or abstract from here.

In Reader tabs there's also buttons for playing/pausing/cancelling in the top right. These will act the same as using the speak/pause/cancel shortcuts in terms of speaking selected text/annotations, however, when speaking annotations it will default to speaking the annotated text.

On each annotation there are also buttons to speak the annotated text, and the comment if one exists.

Preferences

In the preferences you can:

• Enable/disable queueing - if you want to speak a new item, should ZoTTS add it to a queue, or cancel the current item and speak the new one?
• Adjust the current voice and related settings
  • Voices used are the ones built in to your computer
  • You can also adjust the rate/pitch/volume
• Tweak shortcuts
  • Rebind the speak, pause and cancel shortcuts to use other letters
  • Change what happens when you're holding Ctrl/Cmd vs Ctrl/Cmd + Shift
• Specify substitutions
  • A lot of TTS engines don't pronouce things how you might want, you can tell ZoTTS text to look out for and what to replace it with
  • Patterns to be replaced can be either raw strings or regex patterns

Contributing 🔧

Refer to the contribution guide for details on setting up your environment and places to start!