Listen to the Bible in other languages
The Listen button reads with the voices already on your phone or computer. If a chapter in Spanish, Hindi, or Chinese sounds wrong, the fix is a better voice, and it takes about two minutes.
Voices on this device
Checking which of the site's languages this browser can read aloud…
Browsers list voices a moment after the page loads. If the list looks short, wait a second or reload. Chrome may also add Google network voices when online.
Why a voice sounds off
No voice for that language. The most common case. When nothing on the device can speak Spanish, the browser falls back to an English voice and sounds out Spanish with English rules. It is recognisable, barely. The reader shows a note above the chapter when this happens, with a link back to this page.
A compact voice. Phones ship with small, robotic voices so that speech works out of the box, and keep the natural-sounding ones as a separate download. On iPhone they are labelled Enhanced or Premium; on Android they are the higher-quality voice data in the Google Text-to-speech settings; on Mac they are Enhanced and Premium as well. A compact voice passes the site's check but stumbles over long sentences.
The wrong regional voice. A Portuguese chapter read by a Brazilian voice, or Spanish from Spain read by a Mexican one, is correct but may not be the accent you expected. Most systems let you install several and choose a default.
A network voice. Chrome can supply Google voices over the internet and Edge supplies Microsoft "Online (Natural)" voices. They sound good but ignore the speed control and pause unreliably, so BibleVerse prefers an installed voice whenever one exists. If the installed one is poor, replacing it is the real fix.
Set up a voice on your device
The voice lives in the operating system, not the browser, so start here. Menu names shift a little between versions and manufacturers; the words to look for are Spoken Content, Text-to-speech, or Speech.
iPhone and iPad
- Open Settings › Accessibility › Spoken Content › Voices.
- Tap the language, then the voice you want, and tap the download icon. Choose an Enhanced or Premium voice where one is offered; the default voice is the compact one.
- Reload the chapter in Safari or Chrome. The Listen button now uses the new voice.
Every browser on iPhone and iPad, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Brave, uses Apple's engine underneath, so this one download covers all of them. Speech starts only after a tap, which is why Listen never begins on its own.
Android
- Open Settings › General management › Text-to-speech output on Samsung phones, or Settings › System › Languages & input › Text-to-speech output on Pixel and most others. Searching Settings for "text-to-speech" gets there fastest.
- Set the preferred engine to Speech Services by Google (older phones call it Google Text-to-speech). Samsung's own engine works too but covers fewer languages.
- Tap the gear beside the engine, then Install voice data, pick the language, and download a voice. Higher-quality voices are listed alongside the default one.
- Reload the chapter. Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, and Samsung Internet all use this engine.
If the engine is missing, install "Speech Recognition & Synthesis" from Google on the Play Store. This is also the best route for less common languages: Google's engine has Amharic, Bengali, Burmese, Nepali, Swahili, Urdu, and many Indian languages that desktop systems lack.
Windows 10 and 11
- Open Settings › Time & Language › Speech.
- Under Manage voices, choose Add voices, pick the language, and install. Each language brings one or two voices.
- If the language is not listed, add it first under Settings › Time & Language › Language & region › Add a language, ticking the Text-to-speech feature during setup.
- Restart the browser, not just the tab; Windows browsers read the voice list once at launch.
These are the voices Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Brave all see. Edge also offers Microsoft's Online (Natural) voices, which sound better but ignore the speed control. The "natural" voices in Windows 11's Narrator settings are for Narrator only and do not reach the browser.
Mac
- Open System Settings › Accessibility › Spoken Content.
- Beside System voice, open the menu and choose Manage Voices… (older macOS: the "Customize…" entry).
- Find the language, tick the voice, and let it download. Enhanced and Premium voices are much better than the defaults and are free.
- Reload the chapter. Safari picks the change up at once; Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Brave may need a restart.
Chromebook
- Open Settings › Accessibility › Text-to-speech › Text-to-speech voice settings.
- Under Speech engines, the Google engine lists downloadable languages; the built-in eSpeak engine covers many more languages at lower quality.
Browser notes
Browsers do not carry voices of their own, with two exceptions noted below. What each one does is decide which of the system voices to offer, and when.
Chrome
Uses the system voices above, and when online adds a set of Google voices for major languages. If a language has no installed voice, Chrome may quietly pick the Google one, which works but ignores the speed control and stops on very long passages. Install a system voice and Chrome will prefer it. On Android, Chrome uses the Google engine directly, so the Android steps are all it needs.
Safari
Uses the voices from Spoken Content on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and nothing else, so a missing language means silence or an English fallback until one is downloaded. Safari refreshes its voice list immediately after a download. On iPhone, Listen has to be started by a tap; it cannot begin when the page loads.
Firefox
On Windows and Mac, Firefox uses the system voices only, with no network voices at all, so whatever is installed is exactly what it can offer. On Android, Firefox uses the phone's text-to-speech engine, so set up Speech Services by Google as above. Older Firefox builds on Android had no read-aloud support; if the Listen button does not appear there, update Firefox or use Chrome for listening.
Edge
Uses the Windows or Mac system voices and adds Microsoft's Online (Natural) voices for many languages. The online voices sound the most human of any browser's, but they ignore the speed control and need an internet connection. BibleVerse prefers an installed voice when one exists; if you would rather hear the online one, temporarily uninstall the local voice for that language.
Brave
Built on Chrome, but as part of its privacy settings Brave does not offer Google's network voices, so it reads only with installed system voices. That makes Brave the browser most likely to show the "needs a voice" note: install the language in the device settings and it behaves like Chrome.
After installing
Reload the chapter, or restart the browser on Windows. The note above the chapter disappears once the voice is found, and the check at the top of this page lists it. Then press Listen and adjust the speed slider in the reader; new voices usually sound best a notch slower than English.
Hebrew and Arabic voices read right to left and handle the vowel marks in the Hebrew Old Testament differently from voice to voice; Apple's and Microsoft's Hebrew voices manage pointed text well. Chinese chapters read best with the Mandarin (Mainland or Taiwan) voice that matches the edition's script.
Questions
Why does the Bible read aloud in Spanish with an English accent?
Because the device has no Spanish voice installed, so the browser falls back to an English one and sounds out Spanish words with English rules. BibleVerse does not stream audio; it asks the browser to speak with whatever voices the phone or computer already has. Install a Spanish voice in the system settings, reload the page, and the Listen button will use it.
Does BibleVerse stream audio, or is the voice on my device?
The voice is on your device. BibleVerse uses the browser's built-in speech synthesis, which reads the text with voices supplied by the operating system, so nothing is recorded or sent to BibleVerse. Some browsers can also offer network voices from the browser maker, for example Google voices in Chrome or Microsoft Online voices in Edge; BibleVerse prefers the voices installed locally because they honour the speed control and pause reliably. The privacy page has the details.
Which languages can BibleVerse read aloud?
Any language your device has a voice for. The site's editions cover forty languages, and iPhone, Android, Windows, and Mac all ship downloadable voices for the widely spoken ones, from Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German through Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Tamil, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean to Swahili. Voices for Amharic, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and Somali are rare; Android with Google's engine is the best bet, and the text still reads normally on screen.