Locking text-to-speech settings?

[e_canuck]

I'm not certain my specific phone is the right place to post this question so I've copied it here. (Asus Zenfone 3 Zoom)

I use Text-to-Speech a lot on my phone and tonight I found the settings were suddenly changed on their own and were very difficult to get back to what I had before. The "pitch" (highness or lowness of the voice) had changed, and perhaps the speech rate, too. The voice sounds awful, can hardly stand to listen to it when the settings have been messed up.

If there was a way to lock these settings (or settings in general) I would lock it down so this doesn't happen again. If there is a way to restore settings from a backup I would also opt for that. .

(It took a long time to try to get the voice settings back to where they were (the slide button hides behind my finger when pressing and moving it so I can't even tell if I am getting it to move--you don't want to move it very much, only a tiny bit as a small slide makes a big change.)

 

[MoodyBlues]

If there was a way to lock these settings (or settings in general) I would lock it down so this doesn't happen again. If there is a way to restore settings from a backup I would also opt for that. .

I have two suggestions--one kind of clunky and the other not guaranteed to work.

1) take a screenshot of your settings; refer to it as a guideline in the future:

2) make use of Google's backup:

You'll note that one of its entries is 'device settings'--this is the non-guaranteed part. I don't know, for sure, that it includes text-to-speech settings.

 

[e_canuck]

THANKS very much for your suggestions, I'll try them both. I think maybe slider bars are a little more functional on tablet screens than they are on phone screens, making it easier to fine tune fussy settings like these ones.

 

[e_canuck]

duplicate deleted

 

[MoodyBlues]

THANKS very much for your suggestions, I'll try them both.

You're welcome! Hopefully they'll help.

I think maybe slider bars are a little more functional on tablet screens than they are on phone screens, making it easier to fine tune fussy settings like these ones.

I find them very annoying/frustrating. I have the same problem you do--my finger covers up the slider and I can't tell where I am. (I'm speaking in general terms; I actually don't use text-to-speech at all.)

 

[e_canuck]

Tonight the text-to-speech is acting up even more than yesterday. I changed to a different default voice to get away from the pitch and speed isuses and in the middle of listening to a book it just switched back to the other voice that had sounded bad and wouldn't change from that one no matter which voice I downloaded/selected. I eventually uninstalled Google T-T-S updates and then reinstalled them, kept trying repeatedly and finally managed to reset the voice to a different one. Hope it stays put. I think I will try clearing out all the app data and reset the voice if this happens again.

I think there's something going on with TTS on Android 8 but I can't find any news about it online. My phone is fully up-to-date.