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A Realistic, Offline & Unlimited Text-to-Speech App for Mac

catmademedoit

catmademedoit

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 31, 2025
14
2
Hey everyone đź‘‹

Ex AI engineer turned indie maker here - excited to share something I shipped last month:

Bantr! A natural-sounding text-to-speech app that runs entirely on your Mac. I built it because almost every TTS tool these days lives in the cloud: so subscriptions, usage limits, training models with your data and... privacy leaks. Bantr is the opposite, Offline + Private + Unlimited:

  • 🤖 150+ natural, expressive voices
  • đź”’ Runs entirely on your Mac (no cloud)
  • 🆓 No login, no credit quotas
  • đź’¸ No subscription (one-time purchase, free future updates)
  • ⚡ Fast local generation leveraging Apple's MLX framework
My first users were students, educators, ADHD minds, dyslexic readers, privacy-first folks, and more - their feedback shaped Bantr. Now I’m broadening the use cases, so I’m hosting a small giveaway.

Le Giveaway:
I’m giving away 100% off codes to 20 people! Just comment your use case to participate and I’ll generate and publish a randomized list of winners by the end of next week.


P.S. Social workers, students, and creators (w/ reach) get special deals - just shoot me a dm!
 
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You note on your website that you are going to support additional languages. Do you have plan for which languages and when? My use case is for learning Latin.
 
I'd be very happy to try this out. I work as a translator and I'm always on the lookout for a good way to read my translations out loud to me, as that helps me check if they sound natural, better than just reading on screen or on paper. The translation industry being the way it is I'm also studying to become a librarian, and there it's also always nice to be able to point patrons with special needs towards specific apps that can help them. I especially like the fact that your app is not cloud based, as nearly everything seems to be nowadays.
 
Hello,
I am an elementary school teacher, and I am looking for a local solution for high-quality TTS, ideally taking advantage of the power of Apple’s M-series chips. Your software looks perfect! However, I can’t find this information: is it possible to do TTS in French?


If so, I would be happy to try your software and take part in the giveaway.
Thank you!
 
Looks and sounds interesting with pretty natural voices. An easy way to apply different voices to read through/learn theatre scripts would be an interesting usage. So would be pleased to be considered in your giveaway.
 
I work in education and this would be incredibly useful with my students. Please include me in the giveaway 🙏🏻
 
I think the application would be very helpful for students because many are auditory learners and therefore like to listen to scripts and similar material. It could also help improve pronunciation when learning foreign languages. The application would definitely help me study scripts and legal texts.
 
gregmac19 said:
You note on your website that you are going to support additional languages. Do you have plan for which languages and when? My use case is for learning Latin.
Click to expand...
The first set of languages I'm picking up this quarter based on user feedback are (in order) Spanish, German, French, and Italian.
 
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p33t3r said:
I'd be very happy to try this out. I work as a translator and I'm always on the lookout for a good way to read my translations out loud to me, as that helps me check if they sound natural, better than just reading on screen or on paper. The translation industry being the way it is I'm also studying to become a librarian, and there it's also always nice to be able to point patrons with special needs towards specific apps that can help them. I especially like the fact that your app is not cloud based, as nearly everything seems to be nowadays.
Click to expand...
Ah that's a really interesting use case - thanks for sharing!
 
m4tronix said:
Hello,
I am an elementary school teacher, and I am looking for a local solution for high-quality TTS, ideally taking advantage of the power of Apple’s M-series chips. Your software looks perfect! However, I can’t find this information: is it possible to do TTS in French?


If so, I would be happy to try your software and take part in the giveaway.
Thank you!
Click to expand...
It's English only at the moment, but I have a few EU languages on the roadmap for this quarter (including fr) so I'll hit you up when they roll out :)
 
Big Bad D said:
Looks and sounds interesting with pretty natural voices. An easy way to apply different voices to read through/learn theatre scripts would be an interesting usage. So would be pleased to be considered in your giveaway.
Click to expand...
Yeah multi-speaker dialog generation ux is on the roadmap, but I deprioritized it to next quarter because of strong interest for multilingual and voice cloning support. I'll send you a message when I roll that out in case you're still interested!
 
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theHaxxor said:
I think the application would be very helpful for students because many are auditory learners and therefore like to listen to scripts and similar material. It could also help improve pronunciation when learning foreign languages. The application would definitely help me study scripts and legal texts.
Click to expand...
Nice - that's actually the core use case for a few of my early adopters. I'd love to help here so feel free dm me for a discounted license if you don't win. Also fyi it's english only at the moment (but es, de, fr, it are on the roadmap for this quarter).
 
bogdanw said:
The website provides no information about what voices and languages are offered.
“Over 150 voices” “Support for additional languages”
You can’t expect people to pay $60 without basic information about the app’s capabilities.
Click to expand...
Feedback received! it's only been a few weeks since launch so I'm still iterating on the copy - thanks for being specific, I'll add more context.
 
The voice sounds super natural and realistic, like, almost too good to be real, capturing every nuance and inflection with impressive clarity. It feels as if a real person is speaking, making the listening experience incredibly engaging and authentic.

If I get picked, I’m definitely gonna use it to listen to articles while I’m out running errands, turning otherwise mundane tasks into productive and enjoyable moments throughout my day.
 
Saw this post. I love apps that are private and run locally. Have bought it to support you. I will likely be only a light user, but it is useful to have. Happy New Year.
 
Quick feedback, like the large number of voice options. As a former PC user, I still use my Mac in a similar way to how I used a PC.

Please could you set your app so that two fingers click on the trackpad allows the menu to come up, so I can select paste. Old habits die hard and it would make your app easy to use for all users.
 
I would be quite interested in your app.

I teach English to high school students in China who will be going to universities abroad. Many of my students are weak with English listening, and I make extensive use of online videos, for which I get AI to create a transcript, and then blank out words to do listening practice. Finding the right accent I want, which also matches the topic and English level I want, can sometimes be very challenging if not impossible.

For my super weak students in the IFY (International Foundation Year) curriculum, I've pivoted towards British speakers/accent because their listening exam is with British speakers.

For my IBDP (International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme) students, they can have listening exams with a variety of English accents.

I have tried using Text-to-Speech on my Mac (running macOS 15.7.3 Sequoia), but the results leaves something to be desired, even with the enhanced voices.

I watched your Youtube video and the voice "Tess - British Female (GB)" sounds great for my IFY students. The voice "Zara - South African Female (ZA)" and would be useful for my IBDP students. I think it's much easier to do TTS with a voice/accent I select than the other way around, which is the way I have been doing it. I hope there are also Australian, French, and Indian accents as well for English.
 
Hi, It's a really interesting project. i would like to participate to the giveaway. I need something like this to read what i'm writing , i'm aspiring to writing a novel, if i read what i write is hard to catch mistakes. Does the app at the moment works with italian language?
 
87arc said:
The voice sounds super natural and realistic, like, almost too good to be real, capturing every nuance and inflection with impressive clarity. It feels as if a real person is speaking, making the listening experience incredibly engaging and authentic.

If I get picked, I’m definitely gonna use it to listen to articles while I’m out running errands, turning otherwise mundane tasks into productive and enjoyable moments throughout my day.
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing - A few other users have mentioned this so I'm evaluating for ways to improve the UX so you don't have to copy paste content. A couple ideas were to maybe have a global right click context menu item wherever you highlight text, or a smart companion browser extension that reads core page content on click.
 
RecentlyConverted said:
Saw this post. I love apps that are private and run locally. Have bought it to support you. I will likely be only a light user, but it is useful to have. Happy New Year.
Click to expand...
That's super cool of you! The early support is really motivating - happy new year ✨
 
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