13

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.

2 Answers2

24

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

  1. 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)
  • %P – period (AM/PM)
  • %T – HH:MM:SS in 24 Format

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

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A.B.
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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)"
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