What is this?
Piper is a fast, local neural text-to-speech (TTS) engine written in C++ that converts text into speech entirely on-device, without needing a cloud service.
Piper is a fast, local neural text-to-speech (TTS) engine written in C++ that converts text into speech entirely on-device, without needing a cloud service.Is this a command-line tool or something I embed in an app?It's primarily a command-line TTS engine: the repository ships a Makefile for building a standalone executable and a Dockerfile for running it in a container, so it's meant to be called from scripts or other software rather than imported as a code library.
It's primarily a command-line TTS engine: the repository ships a Makefile for building a standalone executable and a Dockerfile for running it in a container, so it's meant to be called from scripts or other software rather than imported as a code library.How do I get it running?You build it from source using the included Makefile, or build and run the provided Docker image if you don't want to set up a C++ toolchain yourself.
You build it from source using the included Makefile, or build and run the provided Docker image if you don't want to set up a C++ toolchain yourself.Is this project still actively maintained?No — the repository is archived, and the README itself says development has moved elsewhere, so no new fixes or features will land in this repo.
No — the repository is archived, and the README itself says development has moved elsewhere, so no new fixes or features will land in this repo.Who would actually use this?Developers and hobbyists building offline voice assistants, accessibility tools, or embedded/edge devices that need fast, on-device speech synthesis without cloud dependencies.
Developers and hobbyists building offline voice assistants, accessibility tools, or embedded/edge devices that need fast, on-device speech synthesis without cloud dependencies.Does Piper need an internet connection to generate speech?No, Piper runs entirely locally — it's described as a fast, local neural TTS system, so speech synthesis happens on-device without calling out to a cloud API.
No, Piper runs entirely locally — it's described as a fast, local neural TTS system, so speech synthesis happens on-device without calling out to a cloud API.Why is this repository archived?The maintainers moved active development to a successor project; this repo is kept around but is no longer where new work happens.
The maintainers moved active development to a successor project; this repo is kept around but is no longer where new work happens.Can I run Piper without installing C++ build tools?Yes — the project includes a Dockerfile, so you can build and run Piper inside a container instead of setting up a native build environment.
Yes — the project includes a Dockerfile, so you can build and run Piper inside a container instead of setting up a native build environment.What are similar projects?supertonic, DeepSpeech, moonshine, tortoise-tts, pocket-tts, pyvideotrans, yovoice, TTS
supertonic, DeepSpeech, moonshine, tortoise-tts, pocket-tts, pyvideotrans, yovoice, TTSWhich topics is it in?voice-assistant, speech-synthesis, tts, text-to-speech, accessibility, neural-network, audio, offline, deprecated, cpp, c++, command-line
voice-assistant, speech-synthesis, tts, text-to-speech, accessibility, neural-network, audio, offline, deprecated, cpp, c++, command-line