Vocast – Turn articles into self-hosted podcast feeds using local TTS

Hi all,

I wanted a way to listen to articles in my reading queue while out for a walk or just generally away from the computer. There are apps that can do this already, but I didn't want to pay for one and I thought it seemed simple enough to build myself. So, I built Vocast - a cli tool using local TTS to convert articles to audio and expose them as a podcast RSS feed. You can subscribe using your existing podcast app (Apple Podcasts has worked well for me).

Currently it uses Kokoro for TTS which I chose because it seems to be a good compromise between quality and speed. Generated audio files are stored in a local library and the cli provides commands to add, list, and delete those files. I use Tailscale to expose the local web server to my mobile device. I've provided instructions on how to do so in the README.

So far it's worked well for turning articles into something I can listen to while away from the desk so I'm pretty happy with the result. There are still cases where article formatting or writing style can produce awkward pacing, but for most articles the results are pretty good. If this is something that you need, I hope it serves you well too! I'd be interested to hear how others handle read-later content, whether there are features you'd want from a tool like this, or just your overall experience using it if you give it a try.