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On the mac there is a feature which allows you to get your computer to verbally announce the time on the hour, is there something similar on Ubuntu? That is is there a package which already does this or do I need to configure something like say to read out the time on the hour? And if so then how do I do that? I am running Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 with GNOME 3.16.

  • `date` outputs it in text. maybe you could pipe that through a text-to-speech program? – Promille Oct 18 '15 at 10:47
  • @Wildcard: Though I would have to greatly trim and change the output of that command because it says too much, all I need and want on the hour is something like (`[time]` replaced with the hour): `It is now [time] O'clock` –  Oct 18 '15 at 10:59
  • See my answer, hope that can help some. You could also add something like "It is now..." before it announces the time with `sed` – Promille Oct 18 '15 at 11:00
  • Wow, this sounds annoying. – Lightness Races in Orbit Oct 18 '15 at 14:34
  • @LightnessRacesinOrbit: Yes, it is becoming so... :D –  Oct 18 '15 at 14:48

2 Answers2

22

You could use your crontab

  1. Create a little script

    mkdir -p ~/bin
nano ~/bin/say_hour

    add the code below

    #!/usr/bin/env bash
my_date=$(date +'%H:%M:%S')
padsp espeak "$my_date"

    and set executable rights

    chmod +x ~/bin/say_hour

  2. Edit your crontab via

    crontab -e

    and add the configuration below

    0 * * * * bin/say_hour

You can replace the espeak line with one of the possibilities below

sudo apt-get install espeak
espeak $(date +"%H:%M:%S")
espeak $(date +%T)

# Adjust speed with `-s`, in words per minute, default is 160
espeak -s 10 $(date +"%H:%M:%S")

or

sudo apt-get install festival
date +"%H:%M:%S" | festival --tts
date +%T | festival --tts

or

sudo apt-get install speech-dispatcher
spd-say $(date +"%H:%M:%S")
spd-say $(date +%T)

# Adjust speed with  (-100 .. 0 .. 100)
spd-say -r -50 $(date +%T)
  • %I – hour (01..12) format
  • %H – hour in (00..23) format
  • %M – minute (00..59)
  • %S – second (00..60)
  • %T – HH:MM:SS in 24 Format

More options via man date, man espeak, man festival and man spd-say

A.B.
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  • That doesn't work, it just wants input and gives me one of these `> `. –  Oct 18 '15 at 11:12
  • @A.B nice=)...Is it possible to adjust speed ? – Ravan Oct 18 '15 at 11:12
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    wow @A.B working :) +1 – Ravan Oct 18 '15 at 11:16
  • Could you also please include in your answer how to get it to run on the hour, perhaps with a cron job as I know about them and how they work, but have never actually set one up manually. –  Oct 18 '15 at 11:22
  • In fact, I have a Raspberry Pi under my desk which does exactly this (and much more). It runs not the full Festival but Festival Light (`flite`). It speaks the time at the full hour, and (hh:mm) whenever I send it a Wake-on-Lan packet. I set it to speak slightly slower (`set Duration_stretch=1.3`) to get a more pleasant tone of voice. – Jos Oct 18 '15 at 14:23
  • A 2022 update/supplement to @A.B. 's answer: spd-say seems to be the preferred/default TTS tool. However, it requires XDG_RUNTIME_DIR to be set, yet cron does not do this for you. See this nice solution: https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/61778 . With that at the top of your shell script, spd-say should successfully run when invoked by crond. Side note: I found no mention of XDG_RUNTIME_DIR in the manpages for spd-say and speech-dispatcher, nor in the output of the "silent" spd-say call. – Justin Sep 14 '22 at 17:05
5

This gives you the time in speech (thanks to kos for providing better syntax) :

First install say , which is found in gnustep-gui-runtime:

sudo apt-get install gnustep-gui-runtime

Then run it.

24-hour mode:

say "$(date +%R)"

12-hour mode 

say "$(date +%I:%M%p)"
Promille
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  • Could you also please include in your answer how to get it to run on the hour, perhaps with a cron job as I know about them and how they work, but have never actually set one up manually. –  Oct 18 '15 at 11:13
  • Sorry, I don't know how to do that @ParanoidPanda . If someone else does, they can post it as a comment and I'll include it in my post – Promille Oct 18 '15 at 11:21
  • @ParanoidPanda http://askubuntu.com/questions/2368/how-do-i-set-up-a-cron-job ;) – kos Oct 18 '15 at 11:23
  • @Wildcard: A.B. has included it in his answer so you could probably just take it from there or read what kos commented. :) –  Oct 18 '15 at 11:34
  • @ParanoidPanda A.B. has the accepted answer, so it's not really that important – Promille Oct 18 '15 at 11:38
  • @Wildcard: Ok, I have done that. –  Oct 18 '15 at 13:04