Speech

Speech models read text aloud. Ollama streams the audio as it is generated, so playback can start before the whole text has been spoken.

Setup

Start Ollama v0.40.8 or later, then download Phonon:

setup.sh

ollama pull phonon

Phonon speaks English with four voices: Freya (the default), Harper, Sterling, and Toby. Voice names are case-sensitive.

Speak from the terminal

ollama run plays the audio through your computer’s speakers:

examples.sh

# Speak some text
ollama run phonon "Hello from Ollama."

# Choose a voice
ollama run phonon --voice Toby "Hi, this is Toby."

# Speak text from another program
echo "Text from another program works too." | ollama run phonon

# Speak a chat model's answer
ollama run gemma4 --hidethinking "Tell me a fun fact about owls in two sentences." | ollama run phonon

Piped text is spoken as it arrives, so a chat model’s answer starts playing after its first sentence or two. Run ollama run phonon without any text to type lines at a >>> prompt. Each line is spoken when you press Enter. Press Ctrl+C to stop speaking, and type /bye or press Ctrl+D to exit. Audio plays with your system’s built-in player: afplay on macOS, the first of paplay, pw-play, aplay, or ffplay that is installed on Linux, and PowerShell on Windows.

Save audio to a file

When the output is redirected, ollama run writes a WAV file instead of playing it. This also works on servers without speakers:

ollama run phonon "Save this to a file." > speech.wav

To hear a remote server, run ollama on your own computer and point it at the server. The audio plays where the command runs:

OLLAMA_HOST=my-server:11434 ollama run phonon "Hello from the server."

Generate speech with the API

Use the OpenAI-compatible /v1/audio/speech endpoint:

cURL
Python
JavaScript

curl http://localhost:11434/v1/audio/speech \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "phonon",
    "input": "Hello from Ollama.",
    "voice": "Freya"
  }' --output speech.wav

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(base_url="http://localhost:11434/v1", api_key="ollama")

with client.audio.speech.with_streaming_response.create(
    model="phonon",
    voice="Freya",
    input="Hello from Ollama.",
    response_format="wav",
) as response:
    response.stream_to_file("speech.wav")

import fs from 'node:fs'
import OpenAI from 'openai'

const openai = new OpenAI({ baseURL: 'http://localhost:11434/v1', apiKey: 'ollama' })

const response = await openai.audio.speech.create({
  model: 'phonon',
  voice: 'Freya',
  input: 'Hello from Ollama.',
  response_format: 'wav',
})
fs.writeFileSync('speech.wav', Buffer.from(await response.arrayBuffer()))

The response streams while audio is generated, so you can start playing it right away:

curl -sN http://localhost:11434/v1/audio/speech \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model": "phonon", "input": "Playback starts while the rest is still being generated."}' \
  | ffplay -nodisp -autoexit -loglevel error -

Audio formats

`response_format`	Output
`wav` (default)	A WAV file: 16-bit, mono, 24 kHz. The header is written before the length is known, so its size fields hold the maximum value.
`pcm`	Raw 16-bit little-endian samples, mono, 24 kHz, with no header.

Limits

input can be up to 4,096 characters per request. ollama run splits longer text at paragraph and sentence breaks for you.
Text is spoken as written. Numbers, dates, and abbreviations are not expanded into words, so write them out (twenty-one, not 21) for predictable results. Emoji, bullet characters, and * emphasis markers are skipped.
Options the model doesn’t support, such as other formats, speeds, or instructions, return a 400 error instead of being ignored. An unknown voice returns a 400 error that lists the available voices.
Speech models only generate speech: chat, completion, and embedding requests to them return a 400 error.

ollama show phonon and /api/show list the model’s capabilities as speech. See OpenAI compatibility for every supported field.

Get started

Capabilities

More information

Setup

Speak from the terminal

Save audio to a file

Generate speech with the API

Audio formats

Limits

​Setup

​Speak from the terminal

​Save audio to a file

​Generate speech with the API

​Audio formats

​Limits

Setup

Speak from the terminal

Save audio to a file

Generate speech with the API

Audio formats

Limits