GitHub - selmetwa/AnkiTTS: Add audio to your Anki deck by leveraging eleven labs text-to-speech API

3 min read Original article ↗

🎵 Anki Audio Generator CLI

A command-line tool to automatically generate and add text-to-speech audio to your Anki cards using ElevenLabs TTS.

🔧 Prerequisites

  1. Anki - Make sure Anki is installed and running
  2. AnkiConnect Addon - Install from: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2055492159
  3. ElevenLabs Account - Get your API key and voice ID from ElevenLabs
  4. Python 3.7+ - Make sure Python is installed

📦 Installation

  1. Clone or download this repository

    git clone https://github.com/selmetwa/AnkiTTS.git
cd AnkiTTS

  2. Create and activate virtual environment

    # Create virtual environment
python3 -m venv venv

# Activate it
source venv/bin/activate  # On macOS/Linux
# OR
venv\Scripts\activate     # On Windows

  3. Install dependencies

    pip install -r requirements.txt

🚀 Usage

For first-time setup:

python3 -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate && pip install -r requirements.txt && python main.py

For subsequent runs:

source venv/bin/activate && python main.py

The CLI will guide you through:

  1. Anki Setup Check - Verify Anki is running with AnkiConnect
  2. Deck Selection - Choose which Anki deck to process
  3. Field Configuration - Select text and audio fields
  4. ElevenLabs Setup - Enter your API key, voice ID, and language
  5. Processing - Watch as audio is generated and added to your cards

📋 What You'll Need

  • Deck Name: The name of your Anki deck
  • Text Field: The field containing text to convert to speech
  • Audio Field: Where to store the generated audio (can be same as text field)
  • ElevenLabs API Key: Your ElevenLabs API key
  • Voice ID: The ElevenLabs voice ID you want to use
  • Language Code: e.g., 'ar' for Arabic, 'en' for English

🎯 Features

  • ✅ Interactive CLI with step-by-step guidance
  • ✅ Automatic deck and field detection
  • ✅ Support for all ElevenLabs voices and languages
  • ✅ Skip cards that already have audio
  • ✅ Progress tracking with tqdm
  • ✅ Error handling and recovery
  • ✅ Support for appending audio to text or separate fields

🔧 Troubleshooting

"Cannot connect to Anki"

"ElevenLabs API Error"

  • Check your API key is correct
  • Verify your voice ID exists
  • Make sure you have sufficient API credits

📝 Example Usage

🎵 ANKI AUDIO GENERATOR 🎵
    Automatically add TTS audio to your Anki cards
============================================================

🔍 Step 1: Checking Anki Setup
========================================
Please make sure Anki is running on your computer.
Press Enter when Anki is open and ready...
✅ Anki is running (AnkiConnect version 6)

🛠️  Step 2: Configuration
========================================
Available decks:
  1. Spanish Vocabulary
  2. Arabic Colors
  3. French Verbs

Enter deck name (or number from list above): 2
✅ Selected deck: Arabic Colors

Available fields in 'Arabic Colors':
  1. Front
  2. Back
  3. Audio

Enter field name containing text to read (or number): 1
Enter field name where audio should be added (or number): 1

🎤 ElevenLabs Configuration
==============================
Enter your ElevenLabs API key: sk_...
Enter ElevenLabs voice ID: nPczCjzI2devNBz1zQrb
Enter language code (e.g., 'ar' for Arabic, 'en' for English) [en]: ar

📋 Configuration Summary
==============================
Deck: Arabic Colors
Text field: Front
Audio field: Front
Voice ID: nPczCjzI2devNBz1zQrb
Language: ar

Is this configuration correct? (y/n): y
✅ ElevenLabs client initialized successfully

🎵 Step 3: Processing Deck 'Arabic Colors'
==================================================
✅ Found 25 cards in deck
Processing cards: 100%|████████████| 25/25 [00:45<00:00,  1.82s/it]

🎉 Processing Complete!
==============================
✅ Successfully processed: 25 cards
⚠️  Skipped: 0 cards
❌ Errors: 0 cards

🎉 All done! Your Anki cards now have audio!