Quick Start

This page walks you through generating your first speech output in three commands.

1. Initialize configuration

If you used one of the install scripts, this step is already done. Otherwise:

qwen-tts config init

This auto-detects your platform and backend, then writes a config file to ~/.config/qwen-tts/config.toml.

2. Download a model

qwen-tts models download --variant pro

The pro variant downloads the full-precision model. Use --variant lite for a smaller quantized model (MLX only: 4-bit; recommended if disk space or memory is limited).

Model files are saved to ~/.qwen-tts/models/pro/ (or lite/).

3. Generate speech

qwen-tts speak "Hello, world!"

That's it. The audio is saved to ~/.qwen-tts/outputs/ and plays automatically.

What's next?

Try a few more things:

# Use a specific emotion
qwen-tts speak "I can't believe we did it!" --emotion "Excited"

# Read text from a file
qwen-tts speak --file article.txt --output narration.wav

# Design a voice from a description
qwen-tts design "A warm, friendly female narrator" --text "Welcome to the show."

# Clone a voice from a reference clip
qwen-tts clone --ref speaker.wav --ref-text "Hello, my name is Alex." --text "Now I can say anything."

For complete details on every command and flag, see the Commands section.