How do I always send navigation audio through the phone speaker instead of Bluetooth?

My car stereo is connected to my phone via Bluetooth even when I'm listening to another audio source. Phone calls go through even then, but navigation audio instructions do not. I know I can simply uncheck the "media audio" checkbox in the Bluetooth profiles, but this is annoying when I actually want to stream. That is why I always need them to go through the phone speaker rather than Bluetooth.

If you are using Google Nav, which uses TTS, you can use the new Text To Speech settings in the beta version.

The newest Beta versions are located here:

https://soundabout.forumotion.com/f8-download-beta-versions

Thanks for the prompt response! I downloaded the latest beta but I was unable to figure out the settings to accomplish my goal. I promise to buy the full version key if I can get this to work!

Oh, you WANT the Navigation to go through the phone speakers.

You could do a few things in SoundAbout.

1) Temporarily change the "Media Audio" setting to "Speaker" while in the car. You would have to put it back to "Let app decide" afterward.

2) You could go into the SoundAbout "Bluetooth behavior..." and uncheck "(A2DP) Media audio usage" so that the phone will not use Bluetooth A2DP automatically when it connects to a Bluetooth media device (car). Might have to put it back, if you do want to stream audio to Bluetooth, or you could temporarily change
"Media Audio" setting to "Bluetooth (A2DP)".

3) If using Google Navigation, you could go into the SoundAbout "Text-To-Speech behavior...". I normally set the "Max Utterance per request" to Two otherwise Google Nav will request ALL the directions for your trip up front. Since you want to use the phone speaker, set the "Audio Output" to "Speaker". The "Delay Utterance(secss)" can be set to "None" when using the phone speaker as that is an instant connection. When sending Text To speech audio to Bluetooth Mono, this delay setting comes in handy because Bluetooth mono takes a second to connect.
Next, click on the "Android TTS settings". Change the Text-to-speech engine to use the "SoundAbout TTS". The settings inside SoundAbout TTS let you choose the real TTS engine. SoundAbout TTS is just a wrapper to capture TTS requests so that SoundAbout can switch the audio to another output.

Let me know how it goes.

I tried option 3 because I prefer everything to be automatic once I enter the right settings. It solved my problem, and now I can get navigation audio even if my phone is connected by bluetooth. I set the "max utterance" to 2, which results in an "echo", but I assume that's a limitation of using a TTS wrapper. Either way, it does the job and I bought your pro version. Thank you!

Excellent.

I just ran across this app and looked like it would make my phone behave just as I wanted... I read this thread and tried setting it up the same way, no luck...

So to recap, I want to be able to use my phone to connect to my car stereo to make/receive phone calls and to be able to stream music/audiobooks from my phone using A2DP, but I would like all my navigation speech to still be routed through the phone speaker. My phone auto-connects to the stereo, but if I am listening to FM at the time then I will never hear the navigation as it's trying to pipe it through the bluetooth. If I can restrict navigation to the phone speaker then it won't matter what I am listening to on my stereo at the time.

Also, this is on a Samsung Galaxy S4 with all software up to date...

1. Scroll down to the bottom of the SoundAbout app, and click on "Text-to-speech behavior".
2. Set "Audio output" to speaker.
3. Set "Max utterance" to 2. This is the best compromise.
4. MOST IMPORTANT: Click on "Android TTS settings" on top and select "SoundAbout TTS" instead of Google TTS or Pico TTS or whatever your current setting is.

ctyt wrote:1. Scroll down to the bottom of the SoundAbout app, and click on "Text-to-speech behavior".
2. Set "Audio output" to speaker.
3. Set "Max utterance" to 2. This is the best compromise.
4. MOST IMPORTANT: Click on "Android TTS settings" on top and select "SoundAbout TTS" instead of Google TTS or Pico TTS or whatever your current setting is.

I did all this except for the "Max utterance" setting, would that cause the audio to not route to the internal speaker?

No it should go to the speaker. What navigation software do you use?

SoundAbout wrote:No it should go to the speaker.  What navigation software do you use?  

Just the built-in Google Maps/nav... Tried it with Google and Samsung TTS and it seems to want to route to the Bluetooth output regardless. I'm still using the trial software right now, more than willing the buy the license immediately if I can get it to send the nav TTS to the phone speaker at all times...

If you don't set the Max Utterance, then Google Nav will request ALL the directions to be processed at the beginning of the trip.  Google Nav wants to process all the directions and save them for later, when needed.  This would mean we could not control the audio output when Google Nav decides when to play the audio.   By only processing one or two at a time, we force Google Nav to request directions again when they are needed.

That being said, I tried your setup with media/music playing through Bluetooth A2DP and setting the TTS audio to go through speaker and it worked.

The important part is going into Text-To-Speech behavior and then clicking on "Android TTS settings" on top and select "SoundAbout TTS".  After selecting the SoundAbout TTS, you can test by click on the "Listen to example".

I did notice an error report that someone received an error when the code was initializing the TTS.  Did you get any kind of error when selecting a TTS engine?

Can you go into the Beta section and try installing the Beta Version 2.5.3.1 and see if it helps.

The Beta versions are located here:  https://soundabout.forumotion.com/f8-download-beta-versions