Obsidian Vox: Listen to your notes with natural voices
I recently built a plugin for Obsidian to listen to my notes with natural voices that are generated by LLMs. It supports ElevenLabs, OpenAI and the built-in computer voice. The last one is not really natural, but convenient.
I initially wanted to listen to a piece of writing in a self-made Epictetus voice; I know, nobody knows how Epictetus sounds! But I tried to generate something that gives me the impression of his voice from his writing characteristics. In my head, Epictetus would sound something like this: An older male voice, weathered and direct. Speaks slowly and with weight, as if each sentence has been earned through hardship. No softness, no flattery — just plain truth delivered with patience and quiet authority. A slight roughness to the voice, grounded and still.
So I created this exact voice with ElevenLabs and tried to listen to one of my notes. And frankly, it was refreshing! I even got goosebumps. Imagine your ideals are talking to you.
Then I decided to build a small plugin to fully integrate it with my note-taking app, Obsidian.
I also use it to see sometimes how a written piece sounds when spoken. It's useful if you are presenting or writing for an audience. It can give you an idea of how it sounds when someone reads it.
How to use it?
I created a request on Obsidian to include this plugin in their Community Plugins, and I am still waiting for their approval. In the meantime, you can just download/clone the code from my GitHub and use it. The steps are in the repository's README.
danialkalbasi