How Do I Turn On TTS in Discord

Gregory Read more May 20, 2019

Text to speech, abbreviated as TTS, is a form of speech synthesis that converts text into spoken voice output. TTS systems are theoretically capable of “reading” any string of text characters to form original sentences. To put it simply, you type out what you want to say and an automated robot-like voice will speak that text for you.

TTS was primarily developed to aid the visually impaired. However, when it comes to Discord, I’d say it suits users without microphones or those who may be a bit too nervous to openly speak, perfectly. TTS on Discord is enabled by default and has a couple of ways in which it can be used.

This article is aimed at Discord members who wish to use this feature or those server administrators who would rather see it disabled. After all, it can get annoying very quickly when every text that pops up is read aloud with a robotic tone. In a heavily populated server where everyone is using the feature, could replicate a scene ripped directly out of a Terminator movie.

Beware of Skynet!

But I digress. Let’s get to the task at hand and discuss how to use and disable the Discord text to speech feature.

Enabling & Disabling Text-to-Speech (TTS) On Discord

Using text to speech is insanely simple. Seriously, there isn’t much to it at all. All it requires is that you add /tts before typing out what you want to say. That’s it. Remember that TTS is enabled by default so if this action doesn’t work then it means that the feature has been disabled.

An example sentence would be as follows:

If you want to say, “I’m the greatest!”

You’ll want to type in:

/tts I’m the greatest

Something to keep in mind, which I find pretty cool, is that if you’re using Discord in your browser, the browser that you’ve chosen to use can actually alter the voice in the text to speech. This means that those using the Google Chrome browser will have a different text to speech voice from those who use Mozilla Firefox. This happens based on whichever voice is set to default for those browsers.

Disable Text to Speech

There are two methods you can follow in order to disable the TTS feature if it hits those headache-inducing levels.

1st Method

To toggle the TTS feature off on your Discord server:

Head to the User Settings by clicking on the Cog icon to the right of your user panel.
- The user panel is found below the channel window.
Next, in the menu to the left, click on “Notifications”.
In the primary window, locate the Text-to-Speech section. It’ll be here that you’ll see three different selections to choose from:
- For all channels: This setting allows any channel, across any server, to have messages be read in Text-to-Speech, regardless if they use the /tts command or not. You’ll be hearing a fair amount of TTS across all of your channels if you have this enabled. Use with caution!
- For current selected channel: This setting means the current text channel you have selected will have messages read in Text-to-Speech.
- Never: No matter how hard your friends try, you won’t ever hear the dulcet tones of the Text-to-Speech bot anywhere within Discord. (Unless you engage it yourself, of course.)
Click the box to the left of Never to place a check mark in it, disabling TTS from being heard on your end.

2nd Method

This method can be used to enable or disable the /tts command. This means that even if you try to use it, unlike the previous method, it will not work for you.

To toggle this feature off or on:

Head to the User Settings by clicking on the Cog icon to the right of your user panel.
- The user panel is found below the channel window.
Next, in the menu to the left, click on “Text & Images”.
Scroll down the main window until you come to “Text-To-Speech”.
- From here, you can toggle the switch off or on.
Click the Save Changes button when you’re finished.

Now, the ability to use the /tts command is either enabled or disabled depending on the actions you’ve taken. If you have this option disabled and attempt to use the /tts command followed by what you want to say, the Text-to-Speech bot will not read it aloud.

An important note is that both of these methods are completely separate from one another. This means that the TTS option in “Text & Images” is detached from the option in “Notifications”. If a user has TTS notifications enabled, what was discussed in the 1st Method, other members can still hear your messages written for TTS regardless of your settings. So in the end, you’re really only disabling or enabling the feature for yourself.

Another helpful tip, should the above not work for you or if TTS itself just stops working, you should reach out to Discord support. Fill out the necessary information for the request, submit it, and someone from the Support Team should get back to you as soon as they can.