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Generate your first audio

4 min read

Two ways to generate audio for your posts. The first is manual, one post at a time, from your posts list. The second is automatic, every time you publish a new post. Both use the same number of credits.

Manual: generate from the posts list

Use this method when you want to pick which posts get audio, or when you want to try out a voice before rolling things out site-wide.

  1. Go to Posts → All Posts in your WordPress admin.
  2. Look at the TTS column on the right. Posts without audio show a Generate link.
  3. Click Generate on any post.
  4. A spinner appears for a few seconds. When it finishes, four icons replace the Generate link: Play, Download, Regenerate, Delete.
  5. Click Play to listen right from the posts list.

Automatic: generate on publish

When Auto-generate on publish is on, every post you publish gets audio created in the background. You do not need to click anything.

To turn it on:

  1. Go to Text to Speech → Overview.
  2. Scroll to the Quick Settings card.
  3. Flip Automatically generate audio on publish to on.

The next post you publish gets audio. Posts published before you turned this on are not affected. For those, use the manual method above.

See Auto-generate on publish for details on post types, drafts, and scheduled posts.

The four action icons

After a post has audio, the TTS column shows four icons:

  • Play: preview the audio right in the posts list
  • Download: save the audio file to your computer
  • Regenerate: create a fresh audio file, replacing the old one
  • Delete: remove the audio file but keep the post

Each icon has a tooltip on hover so you do not need to memorize them.

What happens when you click Generate

Here is what runs behind the scenes when you click Generate:

  1. The plugin reads your post text and strips out images, captions, and anything with the no-audio class.
  2. It sends the text to the TTSWP cloud.
  3. TTSWP sends the text to ElevenLabs with your chosen voice.
  4. ElevenLabs returns an MP3 file.
  5. TTSWP stores the MP3 in your cloud or on your WordPress server, depending on your plan.
  6. The plugin saves the audio URL on the post and shows the player.

On a free plan, the audio lives on your WordPress server and plays back from there. On a paid plan, the audio lives on TTSWP CloudFront and plays back from a fast CDN.

Regenerating audio

If you change your post text, regenerate to update the audio. The old audio is replaced. Regenerating uses the same number of credits as a fresh generation. It is not free.

Deleting audio

Deleting removes the audio file and clears the post meta. The player stops appearing on that post. The post text itself is untouched. Credits already spent are not refunded.