Google Text-to-speech update adds “high quality” languages, Google Play Games gets new features
It’s about that time of the week where we see Google doing some tidying up on Google Play, pushing out new features and bug fixes for some of their apps. The most noteworthy new updates for today include Google Play Games, and Google TTS (text-to-speech) both rolling out slowly across devices (so don’t freak out if you don’t see the updates just yet).
Google TTS (text-to-speech) 3.0
The biggest of the updates comes by way of Google TTS. Google’s own text-to-speech app adds new languages like Portuguese and US Spanish (different from Spain Spanish) and “high-quality” voice options for languages. To be honest — you probably wont notice much of an improvement between the non and high-quality versions, but perhaps it makes a bigger impact when listening through car speakers/headphones.
After updating, you’ll still need to download the new high-quality versions — whose file sizes top off at around 240MB. Here’s a quick walkthrough to get you up and running:
Settings > Language & input > scroll down to Text-to-speech output > under “Preferred Engine” click the settings icon next to Google Text-to-speech Engine > Install voice data > select whichever language you like > click the download icon next to the “high quality” version (should be around 240MB) > once downloaded it should already be selected for you.
Should you decide you no longer wish to have a downloaded language taking up space on your internal memory, simply click the new trash can icon to delete it. Don’t worry if the new languages aren’t spoken in apps like Google Now or Maps, that seems to be an issue with the way text-to-speech is handled in those apps (keeps the default).
Google Play Games 1.5
Also updated in the Play Store was Google Play Games. The update brings new features that actually help to make the app a little more useful (imagine that). Android gamers can now see invitations for multiplayer games, see who’s playing a game, and find recommended titles in a new “Find Games” section. It’s not much, but it’s definitely a start. Google also added smaller UI tweaks like moving the 3-dot settings into the slide out side-bar menu, a new trend we’ve been seeing a lot from Google these days.
You can download and/or update the apps via the Play Store links below, just don’t forget that because these are Google’s doing, the rollout wont hit everywhere at once. Cheers.
Download/update on Google Play: Google TTS | Google Play Games