Native macOS menu bar application for reading text and URLs aloud, with built-in system TTS and optional Google Cloud TTS for premium voice quality.

• Dual TTS engines: Free system voices (AVSpeechSynthesizer) or premium Google Cloud TTS
• Menu bar interface with SwiftUI
• URL content extraction with HTML parsing
• Customizable voice and playback speed (0.5x - 2.0x)
• Real-time playback progress with text highlighting
• Playback controls: play/stop (input window), pause/resume/stop (menu bar)
• API key stored securely in macOS Keychain
• Structured logging using OSLog

• macOS 14.0+
• Xcode 15.0+ (for development)
• Swift 5.9+

brew tap minac/speakeasy-mac
brew install --cask speakeasy

1. Download the latest .dmg from Releases
2. Open the DMG and drag Speakeasy.app to Applications
3. Launch from Applications or Spotlight

git clone https://github.com/minac/speakeasy-mac.git
cd speakeasy-mac
./run.sh build release
cp -r build/release/Speakeasy.app /Applications/

1. Click the speaker icon in the menu bar
2. Select "Read Text..."

3. Enter text or paste a URL
4. Click "Play" to start playback (button changes to "Stop")

• Input Window: Play/Stop toggle button
• Menu Bar: Pause, Resume, and Stop buttons appear during playback with progress indicator

• Engine: Switch between System (free) and Google Cloud TTS
• Voice: Choose from system voices or Google Cloud voices
• Speed: Adjust playback speed (0.5x - 2.0x)

For more natural-sounding free voices on macOS:

1. Open System Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content
2. Click System Voice > Manage Voices...
3. Download Enhanced or Premium versions

Google Cloud TTS provides dramatically better voice quality than system voices. The free tier includes 1 million characters per month for standard voices and 1 million for WaveNet/Neural2 — most users will pay nothing.

1. Go to Google Cloud Console
2. Sign in with your Google account (or create one)
3. If this is your first time, you'll get $300 in free credits for 90 days

1. Click the project dropdown at the top of the console
2. Click New Project
3. Name it (e.g. "Speakeasy TTS") and click Create
4. Make sure the new project is selected in the dropdown

1. Go to APIs & Services > Library
2. Search for "Cloud Text-to-Speech API"
3. Click it, then click Enable

1. Go to APIs & Services > Credentials
2. Click + Create Credentials > API Key
3. Copy the API key

Recommended: Restrict the key to only the Text-to-Speech API:

1. Click on the newly created key
2. Under API restrictions, select Restrict key
3. Choose Cloud Text-to-Speech API from the dropdown
4. Click Save

1. Open Speakeasy Settings
2. Switch the engine to Google Cloud
3. Paste your API key — voices load automatically
4. Pick a voice (Neural2 and Studio voices sound the most natural)
5. Click Save

A typical article is ~5,000-10,000 characters. With Neural2 voices, the free tier covers 100-200 articles per month.

Full pricing: Google Cloud TTS Pricing

# Debug build (for development)
./run.sh build debug
open build/debug/Speakeasy-build.app

swift test --package-path Speakeasy

Or in Xcode: Cmd+U

Speakeasy/
├── Speakeasy/
│   ├── SpeakeasyApp.swift              # App entry point
│   ├── Core/
│   │   ├── AppState.swift              # Central state management
│   │   ├── SpeechEngine.swift          # TTS engine (system + audio playback)
│   │   └── TextExtractor.swift         # URL/HTML processing
│   ├── Models/
│   │   ├── SpeechSettings.swift        # Settings model
│   │   ├── TTSEngine.swift             # Engine enum (system/googleCloud)
│   │   ├── Voice.swift                 # Voice wrapper (system + Google)
│   │   └── PlaybackState.swift         # Playback states
│   ├── Services/
│   │   ├── SettingsService.swift       # UserDefaults persistence
│   │   ├── KeychainService.swift       # Secure API key storage
│   │   ├── GoogleCloudTTSService.swift # Google Cloud TTS API client
│   │   └── VoiceDiscoveryService.swift # System voice enumeration
│   ├── Utilities/
│   │   ├── Logger.swift                # OSLog structured logging
│   │   └── Extensions.swift            # String extensions
│   ├── Views/
│   │   ├── MenuBarView.swift           # Menu bar interface
│   │   ├── InputWindow.swift           # Text input window
│   │   ├── SettingsWindow.swift        # Settings interface
│   │   └── Components/
│   │       ├── VoicePicker.swift
│   │       ├── SpeedSlider.swift
│   │       └── HighlightedTextView.swift
│   ├── ViewModels/
│   │   ├── InputViewModel.swift
│   │   └── SettingsViewModel.swift
│   └── Resources/
│       ├── Info.plist
│       ├── Speakeasy.entitlements
│       └── Speakeasy-MAS.entitlements
└── Tests/
    ├── CoreTests/
    ├── ServicesTests/
    └── ViewModelTests/

• SwiftSoup - HTML parsing

The project uses Swift Package Manager with run.sh to build, sign, and package the app.

./run.sh                    # Build and run (swift run)
./run.sh build [debug|release]  # Build .app bundle
./run.sh sign               # Code sign release build
./run.sh dmg <version>      # Create signed + notarized DMG
./run.sh mas <version>      # Create Mac App Store .pkg
./run.sh release <version>  # Full pipeline: build → sign → dmg

Releases are automated via GitHub Actions — pushing a v* tag builds, signs, notarizes, and publishes a DMG to GitHub Releases.

Make sure you're running the app as a proper .app bundle (not via swift run), as terminal-launched apps capture keyboard input.

1. Verify your API key is correct in Settings
2. Ensure the Cloud Text-to-Speech API is enabled in your Google Cloud project
3. Check that the API key is not restricted to other APIs
4. If you see "API key is invalid", regenerate the key in Google Cloud Console

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Write tests first (TDD)
4. Implement feature
5. Run tests (swift test)
6. Commit your changes
7. Push to the branch
8. Open a Pull Request

MIT

• Built with Claude Code