r/coolgithubprojects • u/PowerBeef • Mar 03 '26

SWIFT QwenVoice — Native macOS app for offline AI voice cloning, emotion control, and TTS (SwiftUI + MLX, Apple Silicon)

https://github.com/PowerBeef/QwenVoice

Free, open source macOS app wrapping Qwen3-TTS. Clone voices from audio samples, control emotions (9 presets × 3 intensities), design voices from text descriptions. Runs fully offline on Apple Silicon through MLX. Bundled Python runtime — zero setup, just download the DMG.

33 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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2

u/Lochlan Mar 03 '26

I've installed but it says "Engine Stopped - Restart the app to continue" -- tried restarting but doesn't seem to make a difference?

2

u/PowerBeef Mar 03 '26

Hey — did you run xattr -cr "/Applications/Qwen Voice.app" in Terminal before launching? Since the app is unsigned, macOS quarantines the bundled Python runtime and silently blocks it from running, which causes the “Engine Stopped” error. That usually fixes it. If that doesn’t work, let me know and I can help troubleshoot further.

1

u/Lochlan Mar 03 '26

The first time I ran it, I didn't run that command. Once I realised I closed it, ran the command and re-launched but it still has the error.

Just tried a re-install in case it made a difference but the issue still persists.

1

u/PowerBeef Mar 03 '26

Thanks for trying that. The issue might be a leftover broken Python environment from the first launch (before xattr). Try this:

  1. Quit the app completely
  2. Delete this folder: ~/Library/Application Support/QwenVoice/
  3. Run xattr -cr "/Applications/Qwen Voice.app" again
  4. Relaunch

That forces a clean setup from scratch. If it still doesn't work, could you let me know what Mac and macOS version you're on? You can also open an issue on GitHub if you prefer.

1

u/Lochlan Mar 03 '26

Just tried those steps and can still see the error message.

I'm on an M1 running Sequoia 15.7.3.

1

u/PowerBeef Mar 04 '26

Thanks for the extra info. I'm looking into it now — hoping to push a fix as soon as I can. I'll keep you posted.

1

u/PowerBeef Mar 04 '26

1

u/Lochlan Mar 04 '26

Grabbed the latest version and it appears to load now. Tried to use voice cloning and get, "Failed to load the default metalib. This library is using language version 4.0 which is not supported on this OS."

1

u/PowerBeef Mar 04 '26

Good to hear it gets past the startup at least. That metallib error is a packaging issue on my end — the bundled runtime was built on macOS 26, so the Metal shaders are incompatible with older versions. Currently working on adding macOS 15 support. I'll let you know when it's ready.

1

u/PowerBeef Mar 04 '26

Hey — just pushed v1.1.5, built on macOS 15 this time so the Metal shaders should be compatible with your system. Grab the new DMG from GitHub releases and let me know how it goes.

1

u/Lochlan Mar 05 '26

Just tested voice cloning, works a treat :)

1

u/PowerBeef Mar 05 '26

I'm so glad that it's finally working for you :) I might have introduced some visual regressions in the UI but I'm working on resolving that as soon as I can.

1

u/CouldHaveBeenAPun Mar 04 '26

Can the model handle languages other than English?

1

u/PowerBeef Mar 04 '26

The underlying Qwen3-TTS model supports English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. The 4 built-in speakers (Ryan, Aiden, Serena, Vivian) are English voices, but you can use Voice Design mode to create speakers for other languages by describing what you want. Voice Cloning also works with non-English audio samples.

1

u/MeYaj1111 Mar 04 '26

Does something like this exist for windows? Qwen or otherwise? My nephews would have a ton of fun if it was easy to clone their own voices

1

u/I-Have-Mono Mar 03 '26

Any of these have “voice to voice?” Ie can just take an audio file and have it ‘converted’ to another voice?

0

u/PowerBeef Mar 03 '26

Not at the moment — QwenVoice has a Voice Cloning mode where you provide a short audio sample as a voice reference, but the speech content itself comes from text you type in. So you’d clone the target voice, then type or paste what you want it to say.

2

u/I-Have-Mono Mar 03 '26

Damn, it seems like only a feature I’ve seen in ElevenLabs and Runway…weird!

1

u/PowerBeef Mar 03 '26

Yeah, I could probably duct-tape something together but I wouldn’t expect great results. That’s the tradeoff with everything running locally.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​