What it does
Balabolka is a text-to-speech program that works with all the voices already installed on your system through Microsoft Speech API. It can read on-screen text or clipboard content aloud and save text as an audio file. It opens many document and ebook formats, including DOC, DOCX, PDF, EPUB, FB2, HTML, RTF and ODT. You can change a voice's rate and pitch, and a substitution list that uses regular expressions lets you correct how particular words are pronounced. Text can be saved together with synchronised timing in LRC files or in MP3 tags, so players can show the text as the audio plays. Reading can be controlled from the system tray or with global hotkeys. Separate downloads include a portable version that runs from a USB drive and a command line utility for reading text aloud or saving audio. Spell checking can use Hunspell, GNU Aspell, Ispell or the one built into the operating system. The site notes that access to the Yandex SpeechKit service stopped working in the application on October 11, 2026.
Capabilities
- Reads text aloud with any voice installed on the system
- Saves text as audio files
- Opens many document and ebook formats
- Pronunciation corrections with regular expression substitution lists
- Portable version and command line utility
When to use it
- You want to listen to documents or ebooks instead of reading them on screen
- You need to turn text into audio files using voices you already have installed
- You want to read or convert text to speech from scripts using the command line
