Two reports, one root: the platform's speech engine.
"Loud cracking at the end of every sentence" is the browser/OS TTS popping
between its internal sentence chunks (an idle cancel makes it worse). Hygiene
for that path: never cancel when nothing is pending, normalise the spoken text
(control characters, ellipses, dashes), and a 140ms beat between sections so
speech never runs into the engine's tail.
The real fix is a second voice source that does not use the platform engine:
- lib/providers carries TTS profiles (OpenAI gpt-4o-mini-tts, Groq
playai-tts, any OpenAI-compatible /audio/speech behind the custom provider),
male voices first.
- /api/tts proxies them with the same guards and the key still in headers.
- the picker gains System / Natural, with the provider's voice list.
- lib/podcast-audio plays one clip per section through a hidden <audio>
element, measures the clip's real duration and gives each word a slice of it
proportional to its spoken length - the highlight follows the audio exactly,
and pause/seek/chapters become real audio operations. Clips cache per
session, the next section generates while the current plays, and a voice
change disposes the element and its blobs. Speed applies live (setRate)
without dropping the cache.
podcast-test stubs /api/tts with a real silent WAV and pins the path: the
voice list, the request body, exactly one playing element, and the highlight
riding currentTime. 43 checks. tests/lib.mjs launches Chromium with the
autoplay policy relaxed (a real device has the listener's gesture).
Version 0.7.6, SW v98.
Safari hands web pages one voice per language, whatever the iPhone has
installed, so the picker cannot fix that on iOS. It now carries the way out
instead: Accessibility -> Spoken Content -> Voices -> your language, download
an Enhanced/Premium voice and make it preferred. The speaker button wears an
amber dot while the note is waiting, and the voice-less banner appends the
same guidance. Detection covers iPadOS too (maxTouchPoints, since it reports
as a Mac).
The suite fakes an iPhone user agent, a single Daniel voice and pins the dot
and the note's actual steps (37 checks). Version 0.7.5, SW v97.
"The scrolling works kinda weirdly" + "maybe a less robotic voice, preferably
male".
Scroll: the transcript now follows by LINE, not by word - words on the same
line never move the page (that was the jitter), a line only scrolls once it
leaves a comfortable band, small corrections are instant rather than animated,
and a wheel/touch/drag on the transcript pauses the following for four seconds
instead of fighting the reader. Chapter jumps and word taps re-centre at once.
Voice: lib/podcast-voices ranks what the platform installed (natural / neural
/ online names up, espeak / SAM / compact down, a male name preferred) and the
player picks the best one automatically; a new picker in the chrome lists
everything in the episode's language, applies it live and remembers the choice
per language. A note points at the system settings when only robotic voices
exist. The engine takes the chosen voice instead of guessing.
podcast-test: 34 checks now (voice ranking, filtered picker, persisted pick,
same-line silence, line following, manual-scroll suspension). Version 0.7.4,
SW v96.
The third segment of the note-powered wizards (Study deck / Homework /
Podcast) takes the same intake - photos, documents, pasted text, the share
target - and turns it into a spoken episode.
- prompts: PODCAST_SYSTEM_PROMPT writes for the ear (plain prose, no markdown,
no visual references), chaptered into 3-8 sections around a length target.
- /api/podcast mirrors /api/generate's plumbing (rate limit, model gate,
provider keys, heartbeats, the 2x deadline, the optional vision pass).
- storage: frezmo.podcasts.v1, zod-validated, included in the backup and the
encrypted sync payload; a new library tab lists episodes with listen /
rename / delete-with-undo, and the wizard switch deep-links in.
- player: the transcript is word-wrapped spans and the word under the voice
rides a lyric-style highlight that keeps itself centred. Two clocks: exact
onboundary events where the browser reports them, a per-word length timer
where it does not (iOS Safari); the first boundary retires the timer.
Pause = cancel + re-speak from the word, which makes resume, chapter jumps
and tap-any-word-to-seek the same operation; the position saves on pause,
page-hide and unmount, so reopening resumes. Speed rebuilds the engine and
keeps playing; the Aero soundtrack pauses itself when the voice starts; a
browser with no voice gets an honest note and a readable transcript.
- the script sits on a glass pane (plain paragraphs over Aero's grass failed
contrast; the scan now covers the player too).
tests/podcast-test.mjs (17th suite) stubs the model and the speech engine and
drives the highlight by hand: 26 checks. All suites green, contrast clean.
Version 0.7.3, SW v95.
