Difference in TTS speed Mac vs iOS

[revilingjet]

i saw previous posts addressing the topic but never found any solutions, it’s basically the title, which is that TTS is slower on Mac compared to iOS even though the settings are the same. Is there a way to use specific settings for each platform? the following plays normal speed on iOS but is super slow on Mac. any fix?

{{tts en_US voices=Apple_Zoe_(Premium) speed=1.08:cloze:Text}}

[BenJamesBen]

I tried but was not able to reproduce the behavior on my devices, using the Apple_Samantha voice. Instead, the voices played at the same speed on both of my devices, as expected.

1. Mac: macOS Tahoe 26.5.1, Anki 26.05b2
2. iPhone: iOS 26.5, AnkiMobile 25.09

Text field: Testing TTS {{c1::cloze}} functionality.
Front template: {{tts en_US voices=Apple_Samantha speed=1.08:cloze:Text}}

Added:
Steps to try to Reproduce:

1. In the desktop Anki app on a Mac, create a new Cloze TTS note type by cloning the Cloze note.
2. Add a new Cloze TTS note type, with the Text field set to the above value and with the Back Extra field set to the text back extra field.
3. Edit the cards for the new Cloze TTS note type, changing the Front Template to the above value.
4. Browse the newly-created card and use the Preview button to listen to the card audio.
5. Sync the deck to AnkiWeb.
6. In AnkiMobile, sync to get the changes from AnkiWeb.
7. Browse to the newly-created card and use the preview icon button to listen to the card audio.
8. I observed that the card audio was spoken at the same speed on AnkiMobile and the desktop Anki app. The speed on both devices was slightly-speeded-up compared to the normal Samantha voice speed, as expected.

[abdo]

This probably differs between iOS versions. What’s your version @revilingjet?

iOS tts speed slower than MacOS tts speed

I’m currently using the AnKing note type which has tts speed set to 1.5 that I set in the add-on menu. This is the preferred sped when I am using Anki on my mac. However, when reviewing cards on mobile, the playback is actually much slower (even though it is still set to 1.5). I find that I need to manually set it to something like 2.3 in the note type code to get a similar on mobile. Is there any reason for the speed difference? Would it be possible to set a mobile speed and desktop speed in t…

[pondfrog]

(Deleted brainstorming involving two solutions that don’t work to avoid causing confusion. See the working addon-based solution below.)

[pondfrog]

I found a way you can have different speed settings on iOS and on your Mac. You can make the default speed correct for iOS (because you can’t use Anki addons on iOS), and then on Mac use an addon to modify the speed setting for your {{tts:: }} field.

Here is a very simple version of an addon that will do this. I cannot guarantee that this addon will work properly under all circumstances, but it should be enough to get you started and then you can modify it as needed:

from anki import hooks

def faster_tts_on_mac(output, context):
    all_tags = output.question_av_tags + output.answer_av_tags
    
    for tag in all_tags:
        if hasattr(tag, "field_text") and hasattr(tag, "speed"):
            if tag.speed == 1.08:
                tag.speed = 1.25

hooks.card_did_render.append(faster_tts_on_mac)

What this addon does:

1. Check your cards for TTS fields that have a speed of exactly 1.08 (you may need to change this value, it should be whatever your speed setting is in your template, eg. the speed you’ll use on iOS)
2. When it finds one, changes the speed to 1.25 (you may need to change that too, whatever your desired speed is on Mac).

As written, this addon will run for every card on your Mac. But it will only change the speed if the original speed is exactly 1.08, so if you want it to not change the speed on certain card templates you could set a speed of 1.07 or 1.09 and it would leave cards with that template alone.

There are lots of other ways you could modify it to make it more sophisticated too depending on what you need.

To install it:

1. Create the directory faster_tts_on_mac under ~/Library/Application\ Support/Anki2/addons21/
2. Edit the file ~/Library/Application\ Support/Anki2/addons21/faster_tts_on_mac/__init__.py and add the addon code
3. Restart Anki

Please be very careful running random code from someone on the internet like this. Even though this code is short enough you can probably make sense of what it does and confirm it’s not going to do anything malicious, it is still possible that there is some bug I didn’t find while testing that could cause Anki to malfunction under certain circumstances.

If this addon ever causes any weird problems, you can disable it the same way you would disable any other Anki addon (Tools → Add-ons, select the addon and click “Toggle Enabled”), or by removing the directory ~/Library/Application\ Support/Anki2/addons21/faster_tts_on_mac/