Set Up Text-to-Speech

Set Up Text-to-Speech#

gptme’s webui can speak assistant messages aloud. Three engines are available, from highest quality to simplest setup:

Option 1 — OpenRouter (cloud, highest quality)#

Requires an OPENROUTER_API_KEY. The gptme server proxies synthesis via OpenRouter’s speech API.

  1. Get an API key at https://openrouter.ai.

  2. Set it on the server: export OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-... before starting gptme-server.

  3. In the webui, open Settings → TTS engine and select Automatic or gptme-server (provider-backed).

Option 2 — gptme-tts server (local, no API key)#

gptme-tts is a standalone TTS server that runs locally using Kokoro. No cloud, no API key, ~80 MB model download.

  1. Install: pip install gptme-tts

  2. Start the server: gptme-tts (defaults to http://localhost:5001)

  3. In the webui, open Settings → TTS engine and select gptme-tts server.

  4. Set the gptme-tts server URL to http://localhost:5001.

Kokoro models are downloaded automatically on first use.

Option 3 — Browser (always available)#

The browser’s built-in Web Speech API requires no setup but quality varies by OS and browser. Select Browser (Web Speech API) in the TTS engine dropdown to use this always, or it is used as an automatic fallback when neither of the above is configured.

Choosing an engine#

OpenRouter

gptme-tts

Browser

Quality

High

Good

Variable

Latency

~500 ms

~1–5 s (CPU)

Instant

Privacy

Cloud

Local

Local

Setup

API key

pip install

None

The Automatic mode tries engines in order: gptme-server → gptme-tts server (if a URL is set) → browser.

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